My office is on the top floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences building. Because I’m Chair of IUP’s Department of English, students come to my office if they need help getting into a class or solving a problem. The students who come in always comment about all the superhero stuff I have in there: Comic books and pop figures and toys. I even have a full size Captain America shield that my good friend, Professor John Branscum, gave me one day because I solved a crisis in his classroom and saved a painting from being destroyed, but that’s a story for another day.
People always wonder what it’s like to carry that shield and sometimes, if a person is worthy (or a huge Marvel fan), I’ll take it down and let them try it on. It’s big and it’s heavy (because it’s made of vibranium) and if someone puts it on, they feel for a moment what it must be like to be a hero.
But the truth is, anyone can be a hero. You see you don’t really need an indestructible shield to be a hero. You don’t need a fancy costume or a cool name either. You don’t even need superpowers.
I hope one thing you learn in your time at IUP is that you have what it takes to be a hero. You can keep going to class and reading books and doing assignments and writing papers and completing projects when so many other people just give up. You can even write a dissertation or thesis, which most people never accomplish. And like everybody else, you will have problems along the way that knock you down: financial issues and relationship issues and work issues. But when you get knocked down, you will always get back up. So you will become very well educated and you will earn your degree. You’ll learn to write better than most people, you’ll learn to solved problems better than most people, you’ll learned how to research better than most people, you’ll learn how to teach better than most people, and you will learn how to empathize better than most people. You’ll gain a lot of knowledge and wisdom in your time at IUP. Knowledge is power. And, as Stan Lee once wrote, “with great power comes great responsibility.”
Then, one day, someone will come to you needing your help. On that day, you can say to the person: “It’s not my job.” Or “It’s against the rules. Or “I’m too busy.” Or you can choose to help them. I can tell you this, every time you help somebody in need, you will know what it feels like to be a superhero.
I hope you each learn that valuable lesson during your time at IUP because we are counting on you to save the day and make the world a better place.