By now, you are no doubt tired of people telling you to make the most of your college years because they will be the best years of your life. However, if you can tolerate one more piece of advice, let me suggest that you listen to those people.

The endeavor which you are about to undertake here at Northern Illinois University offers the potential for more learning and more personal growth than you may have experienced in all of your life until now. Notice, however, that I say potential, for it is up to you to decide what you will make of it.

You join a long line of NIU students, numbering more than 150,000 and stretching back more than 100 years, each of whom came to this campus facing many of the same questions you are sorting out, each trying to map out a course for their future.

For all of them, NIU provided a solid foundation on which they could build their lives, and some used that foundation to help them attain spectacular heights.

U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert built upon his NIU education degree to become the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Paul Sereno, a biological sciences major, used his NIU degree to launch a career that has seen him become one of the most prominent paleontologists of his generation.

Art grad Dan Castellaneta went on to become the voice of Homer Simpson. Theater Arts major Joan Allen has won three Academy Award nominations.

The names of those NIU alumni might be the most recognizable to you, but if you are from Chicagoland you have been surrounded and influenced by Northern graduates all of your life.

Our College of Education can claim as graduates more than 16,000 teachers currently working in Illinois and one quarter of the state’s school administrators. One third of the city managers working in the state graduated from our world-renowned public administration program; our business graduates are recruited heavily by the leading accounting firms, banks and corporations. Our College of Law counts as alumni nearly 30 sitting judges.

The success stories go on and on, and each story began at the crossroads where you now find yourself. How your own story will be written will be shaped by the choices you make now, so I urge you to consider those decisions carefully and to challenge yourself at each step along the way. Rather than merely completing your requirements, seek out challenges, expose yourself to new ideas and learn how to think for yourself.

You have my pledge that the university, all of its faculty and staff, will do everything within their power to help make your experience here at NIU happy and productive.

Your time here at NIU can indeed be the best time of your life, but ultimately, the quality and the value of that experience will be up to you.

E-mail NIU President John Peters at [email protected]