How to Live a Fulfilling Life: CWU Music Graduate Commencement Speech, 2025

It's graduation season, and in my day job, I teach in the Music Department at Central Washington University. Last night we had a ceremony for the music graduates, and I gave a talk on how to live a fulfilling life. Maybe you need to hear something from this talk as well. Here it is:

How to Live a Fulfilling Life: CWU Music Graduate Commencement Speech, 2025

Dr. Mark Samples

June 9, 2025, 7 p.m.

Welcome to this special evening—to my fellow faculty members, music staff, parents, family, friends, and most of all, the distinguished music graduates of 2025.

It is June 9th, in the year 2025, in the State of Washington, in the city of Ellensburg. On the campus of Central Washington University, in the Jerylin S. McIntyre Music Building, and joined by the virtual presence of all who are with us viewing online, we are gathered in the recital hall to honor and celebrate you, the graduates.

I know what some of you are thinking. You’re looking around at your friends, your loved ones, your professors, and thinking—I should probably be practicing right now.

That thought is so ingrained, you might find it jumping to your mind unbidden in the weeks and months ahead, long after you’ve graduated.

But over the next few moments we have together tonight, I want to talk with you about something even more important than your next practice session. I want to talk about how to build a life that is fulfilling. A life where you keep growing, and where you contribute to something greater than yourself.

A life that makes all of the practices worthwhile.

And that is the secret: to have a life that is fulfilling, you must do at least two things. You must grow, and you must contribute.

Say it with me gradutates: you must grow and you must contribute.

You’ve already started building that kind of life — right here.

Think about how you’ve grown during your time as a music major at Central.

Through long nights in the practice rooms, when the building seemed almost asleep, you working the same phrase again and again, or having long talks with a friend about music, life, and Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Through early winter mornings when your hands were still thawing but you were determined to get one more session in before theory class.

Through the mid mornings when the faint sound of a trombone warm up reminded you that all was right in the world.

You’ve made music together. You’ve laughed and commiserated and studied on the red chairs. You’ve shared stolen glances and inside jokes. You’ve eaten lunch in class — and probably dinner and probably breakfast —more than once.

You’ve set four alarms for that dreaded 8:00 a.m. final.

You’ve faced setbacks, weathered rejections, endured critiques, celebrated breakthroughs.

Cried tears of heartache and tears of deep accomplishment and joy.

And of course, some of those tears were because you couldn’t find a practice room ten minutes before your jury.

Or because you somehow managed to schedule your recital on the very night that your final project was due at 11:59 p.m.

Yet through it all, you’ve grown.

Because—and you already know this—we don’t grow when things are easy. We grow when we choose the hard path, the path of excellence, that stretches us.

And your growth has contributed to this community of musicians in ways you may not fully realize yet.

You may not fully realize how you have contributed to this department, just as those who came before you likely didn't either.

Yet they shaped the legacy you inherit today.

For more than 125 years—almost as long as Washington has been a state in the U.S.—music students at Central have built that legacy. In 2015, our Jazz Band won the opportunity to play at the Monterey Jazz Festival, one of the world’s most prestigious jazz stages.

In 1958, a young drummer named John Moawad played in the bands here, and then returned to teach for 28 years, known to generations of Central students as “Coach.”

In 1946, Stan Krebs became the first Central alum to win a spot in the Seattle Symphony.

To reach the recital hall tonight, you walked past the Wayne S. Hertz Concert Hall. Wayne Hertz became chairman of the music department in 1938 and helped guide extraordinary growth during his 36 years until his retirement in 1974. He oversaw the move out of our original home in Barge Hall, into the Edison building, and eventually into Hertz Hall, which was the department’s home for 40 years, until we moved into this building.

And for over a century, nearly every music education graduate from this program who wanted one has gotten placed in a job, inspiring new generations of musicians across the state. In 1923, 88% of Central grads were placed in teaching positions. In 1955, 100% of Central grads got teaching jobs after graduation. It’s very likely that you, or someone next to you, learned to love music in part from a music educator who was trained right here.

How do I know all of this about our music department’s past? Because another alum of the program, Norm Wallen, has dedicated countless hours to writing the history of this department. You may know him as Professor Wallen, and you may have taken a class from him in the past few years.

It’s because of Professor Wallen’s contribution that you and I can discover that our first music department chair, in 1898, was a woman named Annette Bruce. She left Central in 1904 to join the opera company at the world famous La scala in Milan, and according to Professor Wallen’s research she partied with Puccini while he was revising Madama Butterfly.

It’s because of Professor Wallen’s contribution that we know that one of our faculty members, Hall Macklin, was present at the famous, riotous, Parisian premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in 1914. Macklin, whose father was Stravinsky’s good friend, was eight years old at the time, and the rioters broke his arm during a fight on the street after the performance.

Professor Wallen has written a history of the Central music department. It’s freely available on our library website, and you should read it.

Professor Wallen’s account of the department’s history ends in 2022. What lines will you write in the history of the next era?

And so I leave you with one final assignment. It has two parts: Grow. And contribute.

Here at Central, we as faculty have pushed you to grow. Your parents and families have pushed you to grow. You have pushed yourselves as well. Now we hand that responsibility fully over to you. From this point forward, your growth is yours to guide. No more syllabi. No more juries. No more practice-room roulette. Now you must choose to keep growing. Every day. Even when no one is watching. Even when no one is listening.

So read books. Journal and reflect. Study history. And for goodness sake, meet new people. If someone asks you to join a jam session, say “yes.”

And as you grow, contribute. Contribute to something greater than yourself. You’ve already contributed here, to this department, to your fellow musicians, to the tradition more than 125 years in the making.

Now the world needs you to keep contributing. To your communities. To your audiences. To your students. And to the music that only you can make. There are people out there who need what you have to give. You may never know their names, but your contribution will matter.

And as you do, bring your creativity to the work. If you can be as creative in your careers and lives as you have been in your music, you will not only survive—you will thrive. And you will honor both the gifts you have been given, and the long line of musicians who walked this path before you.

So go. Grow. Contribute. The next chapter is yours to write.