DCSI-LCE Week 2: Lifetime Speech and Happy Memorial Day!

I would like to start off by wishing a Happy Memorial Day to all the brave men and women who have ever served in the United States’ Armed Forces: words cannot even begin to describe my gratitude and appreciation for the sacrifices you all have made in letting freedom to still ring from sea to shining sea. This especially applies to two men who I have been incredibly fortunate to have gotten to know and have as role models in my life: my Papa and my Pop-Pop (my maternal and paternal grandfathers, respectively), both of them proud veterans of World War II.

This past week, on the final two days of our class, we were instructed to present a 3-5 minute speech in which we shared our life stories, our values, and what we wanted our legacies to be for the future, all in a way that “provided a strong message and encouraged deep thought/reflection” amongst our classmates. Over those final two days, my classmates and I made each other laugh, cry, and engage in some of the most profound introspective reflections I think we have ever engaged in. We all shared incredibly intense stories of tragedy, triumph, and the journeys about finding the values that make us all who we are today and what we want our legacies to be in the future. The amount of trust and respect that my classmates and I gained for each other over the course of these two weeks of class, culminating in these Lifetime Speeches was—for lack of a better word—powerful. I have shared my speech with everyone for today, but with that being done, I wish everyone also has the chance to hear the truly brilliant speeches of all twenty of my classmates as well. My speech was as follows:

“According to neither Webster’s, Bouvier’s, nor the Oxford English Dictionary, but rather Urban Dictionary, a Derp is, and I quote, ‘a foolish or clumsy individual; one who is blissfully ignorant or unaware of their surroundings.’ As if I have not made that perfectly clear over the course of these past two weeks, I am a Derp in the fullest sense of the word, but it wasn’t always like that for me. In preschool, elementary school and middle school I was ‘Domino Margarita’, as they called me. I was ‘that kid’ who read maps and atlases cover-to-cover in his spare time, who taught himself to memorize and recite entire speeches of JFK and Winston Churchill just for fun, and who once sprained his foot just by tripping over his own dog who was laying in the foyer. I was not one of the ‘cool kids’ who had ever set foot on a skateboard nor snowboard, had owned a single Pokemon card, nor had ever watched a single minute of both Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. It was because of this that I experienced a lot of  social exclusion and even outright bullying in the physical, verbal, and cyber sense, and it was (in part) because of those traumatic experiences that I elected to go to boarding school for high school. However, high school was not that much better for me in that regard. In high school I was ‘Dawkward’ (literally just combining ‘Dom’ with ‘awkward’—both incredibly creative and hilarious I know) as they called me. I was ‘that kid’ who co-captained the History Bowl team, who owned and frequently wore a Honey Smacks cycling jersey to social events, and who dressed up in a lion costume in front of the entire school as part of an elaborate plot just to ask a girl to Senior Prom (which she later politely declined). I was not one of the ‘cool kids’. I was not a smooth-talking, jock athlete who could use his immense wealth to buy anything he ever wanted, which included academic success and leadership positions at our high school, and admission into Ivy League universities.

Fast forward now to February of my freshman year at William & Mary. Up to that point my year was actually pretty successful in the social sense, as I had already developed very strong and special bonds with my dorm (Dinwiddie Hall), my friends in the International Relations Club and Catholic Campus Ministry, and my brothers in the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. With that being said, however, internally I was very much still struggling to find myself , to find what exactly that it was that I wanted to get out of college, and to find an identity for myself that was different from ‘Domino Margarita’ and ‘Dawkward’. Finally, at this one International Relations Club party in February, my friend Melanie (without even being prompted necessarily) looked me right in the eyes and said, ‘you know, Dom, you are just an adorkable little Derp!’ Never before in my life had I ever heard those words, and yet somehow I knew exactly what they meant.

It was in that exact moment that I was no longer ashamed of the qualities that in the past that had defined me as not being a ‘cool kid’. It was in that exact moment that I began to embrace those same qualities that make me who I am (namely, a Derp), and openly put them out there for everyone to see—seriously,  if you’re ever playing ‘Never Have I Ever’ with a group of William & Mary students and you say that you’ve never seen a Star Wars or Lord of the Rings movie (which I can and do regularly say with 100% honesty), you will get literally everyone else in the room to put their finger down, it’s magnificent! And it was in that exact moment that I had realized something incredibly important: while I had been made fun of for my time at William & Mary for doing goofy and awkward things, I was never made fun of for being inherently goofy and awkward. And in fact, for the first time in my life, I was actually appreciated for being the inherently goofy and awkward person—a derp—that I am, and that could not be a bigger testament to the genuine maturity and friendliness of all William & Mary students that I have been fortunate enough to interact with, especially the twenty of you in this room with me today.

So, with all of that said, what does being a Derp mean in the context of this class, for my future, and for my legacy?

Well, first and foremost, a Derp is not afraid to make mistakes, as he will first laugh at himself, then shrug it off, and then eventually learn from those mistakes that he does make (and believe me, he makes a lot of them). It is from these mistakes that a Derp develops a profound sense of empathy, as he can completely open up from the bottom of his heart to others and truly show that he genuinely feels for the mistakes that they have made. It is from this empathy that a Derp also develops a great sense of trust—both himself in others, and others in him. Finally, above all else a Derp wakes up every morning and loves life, loves what he is doing, and loves why he is doing it. As a wise Derp and male model named Hansel once said, ‘Do I know what I’m doing today? No! Do I know what product I’m selling? No! But I’m here, and I’m gunna give it my best shot!’ To be clear, I am not saying that all of the above-mentioned leadership qualities are strictly exclusive to Derps, but rather that Derps embody those qualities exceptionally well.

So no matter what places I end up at or what titles I hold for the rest of my life, if no one can look me in the eyes and say that I am an adorkable little Derp then I have failed. I have allowed someone or something to weigh me down to the point where I have forgotten how to take leaps of faith, forgotten how to laugh at myself and how to make you all laugh without even trying, and forgotten how to just love life in the way that I do now. All of you in part have created an environment for me here at William & Mary where I can embrace being that kid who wore a belt AND suspenders to his ATO Spring Formal thinking that it was both completely necessary and fashionable, where I can be that kid who drops more Spongebob quotes and takes more Selfies per day than almost anyone else you know, and where I can be that kid who almost got in serious trouble with the Capitol Police by having two bottles of liquid in his backpack for almost a month without even knowing it…#OOPS =P.

And so, my friends, if there is but one thing that you take away one thing from this speech let it be this, embrace who you are. I will gladly do the same for you.

Thank You, God Bless, and Rap Air Horn.”

I hope you all enjoyed reading this and stay tuned for next week’s blog!

Happy Memorial Day!

-Dom