While I shared this link across my social media, I thought it would be good to post it for posterity to my blog, mostly to make it easier for me to find again.

This is the “official” video from my address at the 2019 New Student Convocation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Text by E. Todd Wilson from the Provost’s office and me; delivery is all me. The video was taken and provided to me by the media team at the State Farm Center, but it hasn’t yet been posted anywhere on the University’s site officially yet as far as I can tell.

In retrospect, I think it is fundamentally a letter to 17-year-old me, of all the things I wish I had known then.

And I’m okay with that.