Marv Levy: Outlier and FYS Speaker

Part of the First Year Experience is reading a book over the summer before you begin your first semester at Coe.  The book I had to read was Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.  It's a good book and Gladwell discusses success and how certain people are more successful than others.  What I like about this summer reading is that it gives you some small talk when you meet other first years because you all had to read the book.  And if you don't decide to use it as small talk there will be plenty of other times to talk about it: we had multiple book discussions and I had to write a paper on the book.

The reason I'm bringing up Outliers is because every year the FYS committee tries to bring in a speaker that relates to the book.  In prior years the actual author of the book has come in and if the author isn't able to make it, Coe tries to chose someone who embodies the theme of the book.  This year our speaker was Marv Levy, popularly known as the Buffalo Bills coach from 1986-1997.  Levy is a Coe alumni and also coached football at Coe at the beginning of his career.  Since it was Homecoming week it was a perfect time for Levy to be on campus and talk to us first years!  






He was a great speaker.  Levy told a lot of jokes and made us feel at ease.  He talked about his career and related his speech back to Gladwell's message of success.  The quote Levy kept saying rang true to me was this: Where else would you rather be than right here, right now.  And it's true, enjoy the moment you're living in right now.  At the end of his speech he gave us a few words of wisdom and here is just a few of his words o'wisdom: idealism, being a friend and having friends that are trustworthy and patience.  I left the speech feeling energized and inspired.