Welcome home, Bulldogs!
We’ve been waiting for you. While it was nice to be able to find a place to park for most of the summer, the campus is just not the same without the energy and enthusiasm that fill our days and nights when you’re here. Turns out you’re the reason we’re here.
Hope everybody had a good summer. It’s time to take a bite of out the next phase of your life, and we want to whet your appetite. It should be an exciting fall-lots of changes on the campus and more to come. New buildings and roads-I get lost about every other week running across the campus. Closed roads and gravel on our streets are a good thing-it means we’re constructing streets and buildings.
Strap on your chaps this year. We’re going for a high-energy ride with lots of football, campus activities and of course your favorite pastime-cranking through homework and quizzes (that was always my favorite Friday surprise-ugh!).
Here’s something for you to remember: you’ll only get out of life what you put into it. Hey, you’ll figure that out-but it’s better if you figure it out before finals.
A little insight for you-we’ve been busy putting together a strategy for the Great Bulldog Nation that should help us navigate our way through the next decade. It’s called FutureSTATE 2015. We had everybody involved-including JR Love, who represented you well. It’s available for your review and comment on the university’s home page at msstate.edu.
It’s not perfect, but nothing is. I believe it’s an excellent roadmap to lead us to national respect. We’ll implement many of the recommendations that have been suggested right away. Other recommendations will have to wait until we have the resources to pull the trigger. The faculty, staff, students, and community did a great job helping identify where we are and where we should be going.
I have one serious request. I attended three funerals for your friends this summer-students who had incredible potential and who touched many of us. All involved automobile accidents. I hate that-it’s the hardest thing I do. Help me with this. Judge the benefit you will achieve against the risk you will take. If the risk is too high for the benefit you may achieve, don’t do it. We all take risks. Just think them through for me (and, more importantly, for your parents, relatives and friends. Losing sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and good friends changes lives forever). I’m committed to you and your parents to do all I can to make sure the same number of you leave as safe as you arrived.
Don’t be surprised to see me rooting around in your classes or in the library with you. It’s OK to come over and say hello-just don’t ask me to solve any coupled partial differential equations.