Brown and White Vol. 132 no. 24

              The Brown and White
Vol. 132 No. 24
Tuesday, May 9, 2017 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
So long,
class of 2017
Q&A: Stephanie Ruhle, commencement speaker
MSNBC Live anchor and NBC
News correspondent Stephanie Ruhle,
‘97, will serve as the class of 2017’s
commencement speaker. Ruhle spoke
with The Brown and White about her
career, leaving Lehigh and entering
the real world and what she’s most
looking forward to about returning to
her alma mater 20 years later.
Q: Despite being a reporter
now, you weren’t a journalism
major at Lehigh, you studied
international business. Do you
have any advice for people who
aren’t exactly sure what career
path to take or what they want to
do with their major?
Stephanie Ruhle: It doesn’t mat-ter
what it is that you’re doing. It
matters that you’re doing your abso-lute
best at it.
My advice is focus less on this
long-term goal and what you want
your title to be and what company
you want to work at. If you do this
junky thing today, you’ll get to do this
incredible thing in six months. Stop
focusing on the climb and networking
and who you’re meeting and be really
good at what you do.
We give young people really bad
advice these days, pressing them on
the importance of getting yourself out
there and meeting people and going
to networking events.
Do not rush out of work at 5 p.m. to
go to a Lehigh alumni cocktail mixer
where you might meet somebody who
works at a company that you want to
work at.
What you need to be first is excellent
at the job at hand. So the job that you
are being assigned today — whether
it’s getting coffee, whether it’s writ-ing
an advertising pitch, whether it’s
working on an electric car — if you
are not excellent at the task at hand
you will have no opportunity to do the
next thing. Everything is about basic
fundamentals and building blocks. If
you rush through the building blocks
now, you’ll be cheating yourself for
the rest of your life.
Q: You’ve worked for some of
the best in the business and are
at the top now, but it wasn’t
always that way. What were
struggles or obstacles you faced
after graduation, and how did
you overcome them?
SR: My natural resting place is the
convergence of absolute insecurity
and an insatiable will and drive. The
combination of the two has propelled
me forward, but I’ve got a lot of inse-curity,
and one of the things that’s
special about Lehigh — but that’s
scary about it — is that you’re very
protected there on that hill. You are
among many students who are from
the same part of the country that
you are. You are nestled away in the
Lehigh Valley snuggled into this hill
among members of your tribe, people
you’ve gone to school with for four
years and, in many cases, they sound
like you, and they look like you, and
after living with them for four years,
you finish each other’s sentences like
a family.
The funny thing about Lehigh
being on a hill is that for many stu-dents
when you leave, in a figurative
sense, you feel like you are king of the
hill, and that really can give you a
false sense of security. On one hand,
it can give you this confidence saying,
By MADISON GOUVEIA
Managing Editor
News anchor and class of 1997 alumn returns to
Lehigh to address class of 2017
See RUHLE Page 2
Roshan Giyanani/B&W Staff
The Brown and White presents
special graduation content for the
149th commencement exercises
Stories with writen by graduating seniors