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Those words were: “you can’t ***
the willing” – wow.
The person that I love and trust more than
anyone in the world, and they don’t believe
me. If they don’t believe me, who could ever
believe me? I decided at that moment that I
would never tell anyone what happened to
me ever again. But those words also allowed
another part of me to kick in, a part of me I
haven’t talked about yet. I think it’s one of
my better parts. At my core, I’m stubborn.
I can be the first person to tell myself I can’t
do something, but don’t you ever be the
person to tell me I can’t do something
cause then I’m gonna go and do it. My
stubbornness often leads me to be driven,
and I became driven to make some type of
change. I wanted to do my part to make
sure that this didn’t happen to me, or anyone
else ever again. If I couldn’t find the courage
to go through the Criminal Justice system to
ask for help, I could be on the other side of
the system to encourage people like me to
get help. I changed my major to criminal justice
a week later. For a really long time, that $2
haunted me. $2? $2 friggin dollars?! Why
couldn’t you just pay the $2? I remember
telling myself at one point that I would pay
$2 every day I would pay $2 every hour of
every day for the rest of my life if that didn’t
happen to me. But as time went on and I got
a little bit farther removed from the incident,
and closer and closer to today, my mind
started to change. Yes, if I had paid the $2
and gone home with my friends I wouldn’t
have been ***, but if that didn’t happen
to me, I wouldn’t have changed my major
to criminal justice, I wouldn’t have been
driven to make changes in the world, and
I wouldn’t be standing here with you today.
I can almost guarantee that. I can honestly
stand here today and say this to you with
100% sincerity: I wouldn’t pay $2 to undo
what happened to me. I know that probably
sounds crazy, but it’s true. As far as I’m
concerned, it’s the best $2 I never spent.
I wanted to share this story with the world
for a really long time. Because I think that
there are lessons that can be learned from
my experience and I’m a teacher and that’s
what I do. There are the practical lessons
like don’t drink when you’re underage, and
even if you are of age, don’t drink to excess.
Stay with your friends when you are out, and
be concerned about where your friends are.
But underneath those safety tips are the real
lessons that I hope some of you learn.
If your gut tells you something is wrong, trust
your gut. Even if you feel like you’re
being crazy/silly/stupid, if it feels
wrong, from your core, don’t do it.
And if someone tells you something,
no matter what the circumstances are
surrounding the incident, believe them.
Even if you don’t believe them, let them
know that their concerns were heard and
their concerns matter. I feel about a
thousand million times better now that
I just got that out. (Thunderous applause
from the audience) I just want you all…
can’t believe that I went that long and
I was so afraid to tell people. I hope that
some of you learned something from it.
But I didn’t want this to be all sad, I want
this to be more happy than anything else.
So now we’re kind of passed the sad part
right? Now we’re gonna get into the good
parts. So besides school, I think the thing
that was next most important to me when
I was in college was having a boyfriend.
In my opinion, your college years are your
first real dating years. This is when people
meet people who they get married to, and
have kids with. This is time when you
experience intense feelings of love followed
by the world’s worst break-ups. So I’m 29,
I’m single, and I live with two cats but that
doesn’t mean that I haven’t learned a thing
or two about this over the past decade or so.
I’ve been in love, a few times. While I clearly
can’t tell you tips to have a successful or a
long lasting relationship, I can tell you this:
No romantic relationship is worth your
mental health, your physical health, your
education, your career, or your life.
While I’m not the biggest Lady Gaga fan,
I absolutely love this quote: “Some women
choose to follow men, and some women
choose to follow their dreams. If you're
wondering which way to go, remember that
your career will never wake up and tell you
that it doesn't love you anymore.” – Lady Gaga
(Laughter from the audience)
And something else that I know and I think
I learn a little bit more every time I talk to
her is that before I’m ever going to find the
person that I’m gonna love forever, I have
to learn how to love myself first. My biggest
cheerleader with that is Dr. Ellerbee. Where
are you? She is one of those rare one in a
lifetime people. She tells me all the time
that she thinks that God brought us together.
And I truly believe that. She reminds me,
sometimes she reminds me daily, sometimes
she reminds me multiple times a day that I
am a wonderful person, and that I truly
deserve the best. And that as soon as I
learn to fully love myself that everything
else will fall into place. And I don’t know
what I would do without you. You’re
wonderful. So I can’t give you the best
of love advice but I can give you some break up tips.
(Laughter from the audience)
Recently I had a friend who had a cheating
fiancé and they broke up. And she called
me for advice and I had three questions for
her: Did you go to a buffet? Did you go
shopping? Did you get a haircut?” She
said she had done all three things and I
said I have nothing else to help you with!
(Laughter from the audience) No other
tools in the bag! (More laughter from the
audience) Really what do you do after that?
I couldn’t make her feel better but I could
let her know that I had been in her shoes.
Never the cheating fiancé but I have had
the cheating boyfriend. Love is a tricky
thing you know. The person who you love
and trust the most is the person that you
ultimately give the power to hurt you the
most. The person that you’re convinced
God cut from the same cloth as you can
just as quickly cut you out of their life.
Break-ups suck. And I feel like mine have
really sucked. The only people I think
that I feel worse for when I go through
a break up are my friends. My friend
Dawn said something one time that I
wanted to pass on to you. I called her
crying about what I believe was the 10th
breakup with the same boyfriend, and
I told her I said I feel like my heart is
breaking. And all she said to me was
“If your heart was broken you would
be dead.” And she hung up the phone
on me. (Laughter from the audience).
It really put things in perspective you
know. No one likes to hear it but the
other thing I can tell you is the only
thing that makes it better is time.
Well that’s not the ONLY thing.
As my dad so often tell me “You
know why don’t you just go get
yourself a nice little dish of ice cream,
curl up with the kitties on the couch
and watch some tv”. Ah, a dish of ice
cream seems to fix a lot of things in
my family. So I have to thank my dad
for that advice cause I always turn to ice
cream whenever I’m sad. But something else
I think will help you with that is eventually
you have to come to the point where you
surrender to the fact that life is not fair.
We’ve all heard the saying before, “When
life hands you lemons, make lemonade.”
Whenever I hear that, I think of a Stephen
Colbert quote that I like. “When life hands
you lemons, make lemonade….provided life
also hands you a pitcher, ice, and sugar. If
not that advice is just ridiculous”. (Laughter
from the audience). Life isn’t always as easy
as taking a bad situation and making it good.
If you’ve ever taken any classes with me you
know I talk about this is America right? Pick
yourself up by your bootstraps and you make
the best of it. If I did it, you can do it.
But I don’t believe that’s the case. I think
that some people just can’t do that. There
might be exceptions to that rule, but it’s
not always possible to do that. I think that
at the end of the day, all that really matters
is that you did the absolute best that you
can with what you have. You have to realize
that sometimes life will hand you lemons and
you can’t make lemonade. However, did you
know that lemons are an excellent natural
deodorizer? And that dabbing a bit of lemon
juice on age spots for a few consecutive days
will quickly lighten them. Or I thought my
students would really like this, if you write
a message with lemon on a piece of paper
and let it dry, and then apply a hairdryer to
it, you can make your own invisible ink?!
Who knew right? So there might be times
when life hands you lemons but not the tools
to make lemonade, but that doesn’t mean you
can’t make the best invisible ink out there.
Make the best with what you have with
what life has given you. I also if this was
the last time I was gonna talk to you I
would tell you, and I tell my students this
at the end of every semester, that I think
that you should go out into the world and
be kind. I truly believe that on my last day
on Earth in my last moments I won’t think
about how much money I made or didn’t
make, who made me mad, and the things
I didn’t get a chance to do. I think that at
the end of the day, only kindness really
matters. We often connect being kind
with doing something for others. And
that’s true, something like volunteering
through organizations is a way to be kind
to others. But that is just one of many
ways that you can help others out.
I challenge you to try to make service a
part of your everyday life. I’m the kind of
person that if I see an elderly person who
needs a hand putting their groceries in
their trunk, I’ll help them. If I’m standing
in line at the grocery store and someone
is $1 short on their bill, and I have an
extra buck in my pocket I’ll give it to ‘em.
Call someone that you haven’t talked to in
a while just to see how they’re doing. You
don’t know how much that can brighten
somebody’s day. There are so many little
things, little things that you can do in your
everyday life to help other people out, and
when you start looking for them you’ll see
them in so many places that you won’t even
know where to start to make a difference.
I believe in karma. In Research Methods
we talk about survey karma. You should
do surveys when you get them cause you
never know when you’ll need somebody
else to do your survey. But I believe in karma
in other parts of my life, too. And I believe
the kindness I put out in the world will
eventually come back to me. In another
note on kindness….I really wish that my
brother Matthew could be here for this.
We joke sometimes in class. I have two
brothers. They ask well what brother are
you talking about? Are you talking about
the brother that I love or the brother that
I kinda like? My brother Matthew and I
were both middle children and we’d butt
heads. He can make me laugh like nobody
else but I can’t even tell you the level of
arguments that we get into. And I wish,
I hope that when he sees this, he’ll know
I’m talking about him. If you do something
wrong, you should apologize for it.
And If you’ve done something wrong
and someone else has done something
wrong to you, it’s ok to be the first person
to apologize. You don’t have to immediately
apologize, but once you truly feel sorry for
something you should apologize for it.
It’s tempting to get stuck in a position,
especially when we truly feel like we are
right and someone else is wrong.
But you always have to keep this in mind,
your position is probably not more important
than your happiness. My heart was not
designed to harbor bitterness. So apologize
when you are wrong and forgive people
when they apologize to you. And if you
can’t do that, if nothing else, please take
vengeance off of your options list and
how you react to situations. When I look
back in my journal man I wrote some
terrible things that I thought I might
want to happen to a couple of people
or two. I never acted out on that. I
don’t think I ever acted out in revenge
or a sense of vengeance ever in my
whole entire life. It’s just off my list
of options in my life, and I hope that
you can take it off your list of options
too. One of my favorite quotes from
the band Incubus is “When she woke
in the morning, she knew that her life
had past her by. So she called out a
warning, “warning”, don’t ever let life
pass you by. “ If you know you are
capable of doing or being something,
don’t ever let anyone tell you you
can’t do what you know you can do,
or be what you know you can be.
I kept this in mind all throughout
graduate school. Sometimes some
of you will ask me things like “what’s
grad school really like Dr. Lamphere?
Will there be lots of writing? Will I have
to do stats?” The answers to those are
hard, yes, and yes. Graduate school did
have its fun moments, but it’s not designed
to be fun, it’s designed to prepare you so
you can become what you know you’re
capable of being. You have to at some
point realize that getting what you want
is not always fun. In fact, it sometimes
just downright sucks! But if you get to
where you want to be in the end it’ll be
worth it. We all have well thought-out
plans for our future. Some of you want
to finish school and get a job, some of
you want to finish school and get married
and have children, some of you want to
go on to graduate school, and some of you
have no idea what you want to do with
your lives! And that’s completely ok!
Even those of us with the most well thought
out plans don’t really know what’s going
to happen in our lives. And I’m sure some
of you haven’t heard of them, but many of
you have heard of the band Outkast…most
students. “You can plan a pretty picnic but
you can’t predict the weather”. I always
liked that quote. At some point you’re going
to have to recognize that you have no idea
what the future holds. Let me stop, at some
point I’m going to need to recognize that I
have no idea what the future holds. Another
Lamphere needs to keep working on that
moment. But none of us really do, and you
can take comfort in knowing that nobody
knows. If you can’t find comfort in the
unknown you will never be content in this
moment because you’ll always be worrying
about the future. So take a step back and
realize that in the end things usually work
out ok. And if it’s ok, if it’s not ok, then it’s
probably not the end. Dr. Schaeffer asked
me for a quote for this program. And I
immediately thought of this quote by
Harvey MacKay. Not only is it one of my
favorite quotes of all time, but I think it’s
very fitting to what we’ve talked about
today. “Life is too short to wake up with
regrets. So love the people who treat you
right and forget those who don’t. Believe
that everything happens for a reason. If
you get a chance, take it and if it changes
your life, let it. Nobody said life would be
easy, they just promised it would be worth it.”
I sometimes feel like my life has been a series
of chances I’ve taken, but the best chance
that I’ve taken so far in my life was coming
here. If you had asked this NY girl if she
would live in NC, even a few years ago,
the answer would have been a definitive
NOPE! (Laughter from the audience).
But you know what, this chance came
up, I had a good feeling, and I took it.
I knew soon after I got here that it would
pay off, but I guess I didn’t realize that it
would pay off to the extent that it has
for me. I tell you guys this all the time
that I truly do love my students at UNCP.
I think collectively that you truly are the
most wonderful group of people I‘ve
ever had the pleasure of meeting.
When I tell you that coming in to teach
you every day is the best part of my day
it’s because it is. From the pink elephant
in the room to the cat drawings, from
putting square pegs in round holes (or
is it round pegs in square holes) to pancakes
(or crepes) always having two sides (that
was for you Bobby) from teaching me how
to put in my contact lenses to teaching me
how to get farther in the zombie levels on
Call of Duty than I could ever get on my
own, you have made my first year at UNCP
one that I know I will never forget.
I want you to know that no matter where
life takes me, or any of you, I’ll always be
no more than an email away.
So hopefully this isn’t my last lecture at
all; I hope it’s the beginning of a lifetime
of lectures. Today is simply the beginning
of a new page in my book, and the rest…
well that’s just still unwritten. (Applause
from the audience). Well, it’s not quite
over yet (laughter from the audience)…
I have a little special surprise for everyone.
My students kind of knew this was coming
so I’m not sure if you’ve ever seen Watch
What Happens Live. It’s on the Bravo
network every night. Andy Cohen, it’s
pretty funny. He brings on celebrities
and he asks them three questions and
they have to answer two out of the three.
So if they skip the first question, they have
to answer questions two and three. So I
thought, what a better opportunity. We
could do a little Watch What Happens to
Lamphere Live. So a couple of weeks ago
I had some of my students, I just went into
class and I’d say, anything you’ve ever
wanted to ask me or a teacher, write it
down. Just write it down. And then I had
two students go through them to make
sure that they were appropriate for the
event. And those two students, Kelly and
Natalie have the questions and I have no
idea what they are. Dr. Schaeffer knows
what they are but I don’t. So with that
being said, how about we watch what
happens to Lamphere live? Alright, I’m
ready girls when you are. Question 1:
Hello, what is the most outstanding lesson
you’ve learned from a student? Can I
have two question parts to this? One
would be Garick Britt, I don’t know if
you’re in here but like you really changed
my life with this Call of Duty thing.
(Laughter from the audience). My
sister and my dad last night, they like
got in and I was like hey I haven’t
seen you in five months, look at how
far I can get on these zombie levels.
(More laughter from the audience).
So that’s been a pretty big life changer
for me. So, what’s the best thing I’ve
learned from a student? Ummmm…
oh my goodness I learn lots of good
things from my students all the time.
Ummm…this is really hard. I would say
that collectively, what I’ve learned from
students is to be patient, more patient…
sometimes you test my patience a little
bit more than I would like you to, right?
It’s your class I’m just teaching in it. So I
think that patience but I mean you guys
teach me stuff all the time whether it’s
coming into class and telling me about a
current event I didn’t know about or just
giving me a chance to reflect on who I am.
I learn something from my students
every day. I learn as much from them
as they learn from me. I hope that’s
good enough. Sorry about the Call of
Duty thing, it’s really a big deal for me.
(Laughter from the audience). Okay,
so this question is a little bit long so
as such an influential person in most
of your students’ lives, I would love to
know the people in your life who
inspired and influenced everything
from your major point of view such
as those on the death penalty to those
who helped you realize what you wanted
to do in your life. That’s a good question,
too. Ah, I’ve had some really great teachers
along the way. Ah, when I was in high school,
I had two teachers, the McCloskey’s, Ken and
Denise. I went to the same school that my
dad went to and we all took Latin with Mr.
McCloskey. My dad, me, my aunt, my brothers,
and we all failed Latin with Mr. McCloskey.
Mrs. McCloskey was my French teacher. I
was so terrible on a 10th grade field trip,
that I was told that I would never be allowed
to go on another field trip ever again ever
for the rest of my life ever. But at the end
of the day, they pushed me. In NY you can
graduate with a diploma and then there’s a
regence diploma. That’s like a more advanced
level of diploma and I needed to get my
regence diploma in order to get into Oswego.
They told me I would be admitted only if I
passed my French exam. And despite all
the terrible things I did they like always
worked with me to make sure that I got
to where I needed to be and so I could
never thank them enough. You guys
hear me talk about Dr. D, Tim Delaney.
He’s a Sociologist at SUNY Oswego.
He is one of the people that inspired
me to become a professor. I just thought
that he was so interesting. He used to
joke that I minored in him cause I took
like seven of his classes. I like, I just
couldn’t, couldn’t stop soaking up the
information from him. And he pushed
me to go get my Ph.D. And then in
graduate school there’ve been two
people, Dr. Guedo, Rosemary Guedo,
she is the most wonderful human being I
think alive. She is always a professional.
She taught me how to be a professional.
My friends and I would always say WWGD,
what would Guedo do and if I ever get into
a situation that I need to be professional I
just think about what would Guedo do in
this situation. The woman has an ability
to bite her tongue like I’ve never seen
before. And then the department chair at
IUP, Randy Martin. He believed in me the
entire time I went to graduate school even
in times when I didn’t believe in myself and
I’d go to his office and say I’m quitting
school and he’d say, you’re being silly,
you’re not quitting school at all. Go do
your homework. And I’d say okay.
(Laughter from the audience). Where’d
my views about the death penalty come
from? I’m the anti-death penalty. You
guys know an eye for an eye leaves the
whole world blind except for the last
person that has an eye, right? But
then you can always tell them that
the man with one eye is king in the
country of the blind, right? When I
was at Oswego or when I was at IUP,
when I was a masters student, I had
a chance to meet Kurt Bloodsworth.
Kurt Bloodsworth is one of the first
people in the United States of America
that was exonerated from death row
on DNA evidence. Basically he was
accused of sexually assaulting and
murdering a little girl, a little six-year-old
girl named Dawn. There were five
different people that ID’d him at the
scene of the crime and ah, they ended
up, he had a terrible lawyer, and he was
incarcerated on death row for nine years
for a crime that he didn’t commit. It took
him, it just happened to be like around
the end of the seventh year they started
doing DNA testing and um, they tested
the evidence again and they found that
there was no way that he could’ve
committed the crime. And he came to
talk to us about that. And there was
one part where he was talking about
how his mom passed away when he
was incarcerated and obviously he
couldn’t go to her funeral. But he said
it killed him because that was his mom
and he didn’t do anything wrong and
he just wanted to say goodbye to her.
And after the lecture I walked up to him
and I had lost my mom when I was in
undergrad and so I said to him I said
ah, you know I’m really sorry you lost
your mom and I was like I lost my mom,
too, so I know how hard it is. And he,
this man, grabbed me and hugged me
and like teared up on my shoulder and
I mean he’s told the story a million times
but it was just me saying that, we
connected. And after seeing what
happened to him, we just get it wrong
sometimes and I don’t think that we
should have any type of process that
has that finality attached to it like the
death penalty if we’re gonna get it
wrong. The death penalty, you can
completely disagree with me, but you
can’t disagree that when somebody
gets the death penalty on their death certificate
it goes down as a homicide, a state homicide.
Do two wrongs make a right? I don’t think so.
I do think an eye for an eye leaves the
whole world blind. I like tell my students
this sometimes….somebody could come in
here to the GPAC right now and *** me
dead in front of you all and you can tell them
that I said that I don’t want them to get the
death penalty. There might be some of you
that want him or her to get the death penalty
but I don’t want them to get the death penalty
because in addition to my family grieving
there’s just going to be the family of the
person that killed me grieving as well.
When people are gone you can’t get
them back and somebody else dying
doesn’t will never bring somebody back.
So that’s why I feel the way I do about
the death penalty. Good question, touché.
Okay, I haven’t done any skips yet so.
What would you say to someone who
just felt overwhelmed like the world
was against them and feels like giving
up?