On November 10th, Coach Ken Carter came to speak to the students at Radford University. I am a huge fan of the movie “Coach Carter”, and was very excited to see him in person and hear what he had to say. I was very impressed, to say the least.
He started off his presentation by running down the aisles blowing a whistle. It startled me at first, but I thought it was an extremely creative opener. Since I was thoroughly involved in theatre back in high school, I couldn’t help but notice how Samuel L. Jackson captured Ken’s persona so perfectly. His demeanor and charismatic charm reminded me so much of the movie!
Ken talked about several different things, but the main theme of his speech was to work hard and see it pay off. He brought up several valid points that I will definitely remember. One thing that he talked about that was important was to “look the part”. In my fraternity, we are always working hard to obtain a business casual attire when we conduct professional interviews, and I am also required to dress this way when I go to my internship. He brought up the fact that if you look the part, people will take you seriously.
The best part of the presentation, in my opinion, was when he asked a young lady to come up to the front of the audience. He gave her a $20 bill. She respectfully took it. He then pulled out a $1 bill and autographed it. He then asked her which one she would rather have and she immediately pulled out the autographed $1 bill. He connected it to real life by saying what you do is more valuable than what you say you are going to do. The $1 bill had less numerical value than the $20 bill, but it meant more because a man that has done a tremendous amount for mankind signed it.
Overall, I’m very impressed with R-Space for getting Ken Carter to come speak at Radford. Often times, I feel that we have a lot of people come to Radford that don’t connect well with the students, and Ken definitely connected with us.