Daniels College of Business Professor Corey Ciocchetti spoke last week on how students should get in the habit of practicing patience and balance to achieve success in life.
Ciocchetti teaches business ethics and legal studies at DCB.
At the start of his motivational speech, he showed a clip from the movie “Any Given Sunday” in which a coach motivates his football team to fight to gain every inch of the football field during a game.
“That’s really what it’s all about,” said Ciocchetti. “Life is about inches. It’s like climbing a mountain. We want to get to the top, but we don’t want to pay the price. We want to jump and be at the top right now. Life doesn’t work that way.”
Ciocchetti addressed trends of youthful impatience, citing the immediacy of the Internet, the gratification of text-messaging and other forms of electronic conveniences as some of the contributing factors.
Ciocchetti impressed upon the audience the importance of contentment and making life worthwhile.
“Life is a journey,” he said. “You don’t race through it, and suddenly you’re at the end and it was worthwhile.”
When discussing life in college specifically, Ciocchetti’s main message was that students should practice balance.
“You can work too hard and burn out really fast, or you can never do any work and be lazy and flunk out,” said Ciocchetti. “The trick is to balance the two. Until you do, you won’t be content.”
Being a teacher, Ciocchetti also discussed his views on grades. He stressed balancing the development of one’s academic character rather than focusing solely on GPA.
“You need to be able to think,” said Ciocchetti.
Ciocchetti ended his speech with a few personal stories explaining how he had come to the conclusions which he had shared with the audience.
“When I was young, my parents got divorced,” said Ciocchetti. “My dad was in and out of jail and that was rough on me. My high school counselor told me she didn’t think college was for me.”
He went on to tell of how he had attended both college and law school, despite being told that he couldn’t make it.
“Just because somebody says you can’t do something doesn’t mean you can’t,” said Ciocchetti.
After the speech, the audience was visibly moved.
“It was a really inspired, heartfelt talk,” said Brit Ullrich, a junior who helped plan the event. “To feel like someone cares about you, even if they’ve only seen you in lecture hall is a really good feeling. That’s what I get from professor Ciocchetti.”
