At The University of Olivet’s 2025 Opening Convocation, students, faculty, and staff gathered around the theme “rise.” Senior Donovan Wilson shared powerful reflections, weaving together personal challenges, athletic discipline, and the importance of lifting others along the way. His message was clear: rising is not just about our own triumphs, but about helping one another stand tall and succeed.
I want you to think for a moment about a time when life knocked you down and you felt at your lowest. Maybe it was a job you didn’t get, you were cut from your high school team, or your crush said no to your prom-posal. In that moment, it can feel like the weight of the world is pressing down on you, and standing back up seems impossible. But the truth is every great story, every great triumph, begins not in the moment of victory, but in the moment when someone was down and chooses to rise.
Rising up is not about pretending we aren’t afraid or pretending it doesn’t hurt. Rising up is about standing tall in spite of the fear and the pain. It’s about saying, “This will not define me – I will define it.”
Think of the seed buried deep in the soil. In the darkness, it could stay hidden forever. But instead, it pushes upward against the weight of the earth until it breaks through the surface and reaches for the sun. That’s what rising up looks like for us: pushing against the heavy soil of doubt, pain, and obstacles, until we break through to something greater.
To my athletes, when we’re in the weight room and doing squats, it would be so much easier when things are too heavy to just give up and let the weight drop, but we’re not taught to just let the weight drop. When you’re squatting, you have to rise to see the results of your hard work; quitting every time will get you nowhere; and you also have a spotter, someone to help you as you rise.
Rising up isn’t only about your personal victories. The real measure of our strength is how we use it to rise others up. None of us climbs alone. Imagine a mountain: when you climb Mount Everest, you are always with a team, a team you can trust. One climber pulls another up, who then helps the next. Before long, the entire team reaches the summit together. Our lives work the same way. When we encourage someone, when we remind them of their worth, when we share our hand, our voice, or even just our belief in them, we are lifting them higher than what they might have if they tried to climb alone.
If we weren’t there spotting them, they might have quit and dropped the weight instead of pushing through and completing their rep.
The world doesn’t need perfect people. The world needs people who know when it’s hard and chose to overcome any challenge, and that same person will reach back to help the next person do the same. That is how change happens. That is how communities grow stronger, that is how Olivet will become stronger.
So when challenges come, and they will, whether it’s on the court, on the field, in the classroom, at work, or at home, don’t be afraid of them. See them as invitations to rise up. Rise with courage. Rise with resilience. Rise with compassion. And as you climb, remember that someone else may be waiting for you to extend a hand.
Because in the end, rising up is not just about standing taller ourselves. It’s about building a world where we all can rise together.
Thank you. Go Comets!
Donovan is a senior sports psychology major from Kalamazoo, Michigan.