Photo by Luke Gronneberg
Kevin Bender (front row on the right) waits to address more than 1,000 classmates at the commencement ceremony Saturday in the Taylor Center.
MANKATO — The Taylor Center was packed Saturday afternoon with tissue-toting moms ready to cry, a big black sea of mortar boards, and just the right mix of pomp and circumstance when Kevin Bender came to the podium.
He'd seen this view before — even if it was, perhaps, a smaller version it. A few years ago, when he and 15 other seniors graduated from their high school in Menno, S.D., (population: 800), Bender — the captain of the football and basketball teams, the class president, member of the choir and band — gave a commencement address where he told his classmates to chase their dreams. That was spring, 2003.
On Saturday, in front of (several hundred) Minnesota State University students, Bender again was at a podium during a ceremony commemorating an academic milestone. Just like in high school, his actions and accomplishments brought him here. (He was among a handful of students asked to give brief commencement speeches during graduation ceremonies.)
Bender's journey hasn't been a typical one. In a room where academic and personal achievement ran rampant — indeed, in a room with a thousand college graduates, there are a thousand stories of people who have overcome adversity — Bender's story, perhaps, may rise a little above many of the others.
The son of a construction worker and a nurse, Bender says he grew up in classic small-town America.
After high school he came to Mankato, a choice he says presented many challenges to a kid who spent 18 years in a town roughly the size of Gage Hall.
He came to campus knowing two people: his high-school buddy roommate, and another guy he met during a campus visit.
Knowing almost no one, though, wasn't a daunting task for someone like Bender, who describes himself as someone who would be the first one to raise his hand at an extroverts convention. Instead, he welcomed the challenge and met it head on, meeting hundreds, maybe thousands of people while here.
"I've met the most interesting people," he says. "Those that are driven, and those that are not so driven."
Without confessing to committing crimes, he says he tasted his share of social life, and regrets nothing.
"I've learned from all different angles," he says, "what college is about."
On the extracurricular activities front, Bender's resume reads like a to-do list for a future politician. He served on the student senate, the MSU Finance Club, Academic Affairs Committee, Policy Consultation and Approval Committee, Student Association Elections Committee, MSU Technology Roundtable.
He managed an overall grade-point average of 3.66, good enough to graduate magna cum laude. In his major, his GPA was 3.77. He made the Dean's List for six consecutive semesters. Two scholarships came his way, as well. (He'll even admit to getting a C in freshman-year Calculus, a class that presented in clear and convincing terms the difference between high school and college work.)
Through it all, he has taken enough credits each semester to graduate ahead of the four-year schedule most students strive for. Why? Because taking a mere full-load of 16 credits wasn't enough of a challenge, he says. Eighteen credits is more like it.
His entire approach to life, it appears, is a bit like that oft-used quote from Thoreau's "Walden": "... I want to live deep and suck all the marrow out of life ..."
Less than a week ago, Bender told the folks at Northwest Airlines what they wanted to hear; that yes, he would come and work for them.
He expects he'll approach the next stage of his journey with the same enthusiasm for confronting challenges that served him so well in higher education. He'll be moving to an even bigger city, with even bigger challenges. Then again, he's used to that.
In his address to students Saturday, he urged them to embrace the same zest for life that he feels as he leaves MSU for whatever's next.
"The challenge you must accept right now is to make yourself better everyday," he said. "The era we live in belongs to people who believe in themselves, but are focused on the needs of others. There has never been such a calling for leadership."
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