Dakota Swank of Byron, Minnesota graduates with a bachelor’s degree in economics and political science. Swank is proud to be graduating after eight years of a very non-traditional college experience. While at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh he has participated in the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation’s business accelerator and incubator programs, where he developed a business plan for the company TapTech Systems. After graduation, the launching of TapTech will be Swank’s full-time focus.

Dakota Swank

The following is the transcript of his remarks as the student speaker at the 2 p.m. ceremony during UW Oshkosh’s 147th spring commencement: 

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Hello, I want to thank the University, all of the amazing faculty, especially in the economics and political science departments, and my amazing family and girlfriend for being behind me.

These speeches are cliche and there isn’t a lot to say that hasn’t been said yet, so bear with me. I’m getting my bachelors degree today, but I’m actually 26. I started here at UWO in 2013, so we’re ah, coming up on a decade here! This technically took me 8 years to accomplish if you count the time, I spent away from school, but it’s okay, I’m getting 2 degrees, so technically we’re averaging a degree every 4 years, so there’s that! That’s what I tell my parents.

Anyway, one day in 2017, I got back from class and I was listening to one of those get rich quick podcasts and just decided, you know what, I’m done with school, and I dropped out. I moved to Austin, Texas a week later and never looked back. There was a long journey following, involving 10 states and 30 plus random jobs, but unfortunately, they only gave me 5 minutes to speak, so I had to consolidate the saga into one impactful, overarching message to address you and that message is change.

How many of you can’t stand change? How many of you just can’t take switching things up, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ type of folks? To borrow from David Foster Wallace, for humans, change rips down the incredibly thin veil that hangs between everything we know, and absolute chaos. We all just spent about 4 years, and I say that lightly, at university; and are now supposed to be able to understand the world and go out and create, as they say, ‘The future?’ Riiight. As true and unavoidable as this is, as heavy the magnitude of these words carry, what this really boils down to is how we, as individuals and as a society, DECIDE, how to react when the veil comes down. What do I mean by this?

Here’s a few of the ways change affected my life. My junior year, in 2017, I was arrested on spring break for being, well, a wreck, and my friends left me there and came back to Wisconsin without me, leaving my Mother to come down to Texas and bail me out. Shout out mom, love you. A few months later, after dropping out, I failed miserably in door-to-door sales down in Austin Texas. At one point, I had no money, was running out of gas and ramen noodles, and there I was sleeping in my car. A few months after that, I got a great job at a logistics company where I was making more money than ever before and becoming an expert in the field, until I was let go. In all of these moments, you could say my life was on fire, or I was at rock bottom. The veil had been ripped down, but to me, it was never anything close to that.

We’ve all heard how a liberal education evolves our thinking in such a way where logic is no longer regarding what to think, rather HOW to think. Through each of these instances, you would expect someone to feel how Wallace describes this, absolute chaos with no idea what comes next. However, in being so impacted by the change that was happening, I realized that these fears are simply emotions that project uncertainty. Let me say that again, emotions that project uncertainty. Each of the instances was an unexpected and high magnitude change, which can happen to any of us and at any time, closing any and all doors of familiarity.

I lost my group of friends, but I moved on to a new phase in my life past the partying and shenanigans that were responsible for my ending up in jail. I now realize that I would have never made the decision to leave school and explore the country, nor had so many opportunities presented to me. I was a major failure in sales, but I narrowed my focus as to what I was willing and able to do and learned how to take chances and rejection as learning opportunities. And, I would likely still be working at the logistics company, had they not let go of me and left me jobless and without purpose. But this was the catalyst that has brought me back to school and is responsible for my graduation and my business that I have started during this tenure back.

Change completely reshaped my world, multiple times over. Each wave of major change brought down that thin veil of order that existed between the world as I knew it and absolute chaos, and I was faced with how to respond.

And how will you address change? Your goal should not JUST be to go get THE job, have a good wage, house, and life. Those things are great, but by electing to go to university, you accepted the responsibility to be a leader and innovator of society and the future. Our job is to force and create our own change in the world that establishes and maintains a more equitable, sustainable, and inclusive world that we want to live in and leave for the next generation. Don’t be afraid of failure or making mistakes, or of things changing outside of your control, each moment in your life dictates other moments in such a manner that cannot immediately be understood. I tell you this not to tell you how to live or feel, simply to urge you that change does happen to us, but we can also make our own change. Don’t just react to change, facilitate and intensify this change in a way that can suit your venture, as well as the world. Run frantically full speed ahead through the veil of uncertainty and find something you never expected!

So, I leave you with this: Our world today is changing quickly and with great intensity, with such magnitude that has been very seldomly seen throughout history. The test of our time will be to find out if we are ready to face the fear of uncertainty head on, or just preserve the way things are. I’m telling you that this life is not about wondering if the grass may be greener on some other side, it’s about KNOWING that when one door slams in our faces, others WILL open in its place.

As of this moment, we are inheriting the earth and all of the responsibilities that come along with it, and it is up to us to decide what to do from there. What changes will we create? How will we see them, and how will their effects last over time? It’s up to us.

Thank you, and congratulations to all the graduates and their families! Here’s to the class of 2021! … Cheers!