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Uh This is Mark Siegel uh class of 77 Will Rice. Um Yeah. As far as a Rice tradition, that's most meaningful. Can't really name anything specific. My entire Rice experience was very new. Um I was living in the New York, New Jersey area um prior to

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coming to uh Rice and it never left the northeast or traveled very far. So everything in Texas was new and very interesting. So everything about the area was a positive experience. Um What I would give it as for advice for the next generation of owls is

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this is a very unique experience that you're going to have. This, you're away from your parents for most of you for the first time. Um And there's a lot of experimenting um with your independence and having fun. And before full responsibility actually um comes upon you

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in life, um Rice will prepare you for. Well, I af after Rice, I had gone to medical school and I always tell people that rice was harder than going through medical school. The difference being in medical school, we just had this huge volume of information that

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we had to learn, which is what we've done our entire life going through school because to get into Rice, you basically need to excel and be tops in your class. Um going to Rice was different. It was learning how to apply whatever you learned to a

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different situation that it's never been experienced before. Um So you have to learn how to think out of the box and how to come up with new ideas and apply what you learn to problems that there are no answers to at this moment in time. And,

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and that is what Rice is all about Rice is looking for. Well, this is, you know, s since I let me backtrack, since I left Rice, I've actually been an alumni interviewer and in a class of 77 you can imagine, I've been doing this for a

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long time. Um I've interviewed hundreds of, of students looking to apply to go to Rice. I've gotten quite a few and um my son, one of three children, he actually graduated from Rice. Um, and everything after Rice is actually easier as far as the workload, you

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are set as for or prepared. I should say you are prepared for anything because even if it's something that you haven't done before, you know, you can learn and succeed. Actually, once, once you've come to Rice, you basically know that you are going to succeed and,

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and it's good to know no matter how hard things are. And there are a lot of smart people here at rice and there are a lot of smart people out in the world. Um You're not the smartest and that's pretty much what you learn at Rice.

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There is always someone who's going to be smarter. It's always going to be someone who excels at something more than you do, even at something that you excel at. Um I learned that very quickly because II I excelled quite a bit in the sciences. Chemistry, in

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particular, I remember taking the chemistry, chemistry achievement test and thought it was one of the easiest tests as I made an 800 on it a year after I had taken this the um class in high school. Um And my first class was organic chemistry at Rice.

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It was with Dr. Lewis who was the son of the Lewis and Clark Structure. Look, Dr. Lewis. And I thought so much of myself, I spent five hours at the gym rather than studying before the test. It was the first time I ever got a C+

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on a on an exam, let alone a B of any type in chemistry. Um So I learned very quickly on my first test that things can always be made harder and that's pretty much what you're going to expect at Rice. I learned that in the sciences,

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when you grade on a curve, everything can be made harder than you can learn. I always tell the students that I interviewed, I remembered in biochemistry. When we spent the whole section learning about glycolysis and you walk in and the test was on photosynthesis. So you

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can learn how to apply what you learned in one situation to something that you've never seen before. So that, that, so my advice is take it seriously, work hard but also explore and have fun and do a lot of other things um because real life starts

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after Rice. Um But it's a great place to, to live, learn mature, get to make some friends. Um It's actually quite interesting that I found that unless you make a major effort, you will not keep in touch with most of your friends that you make at

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Rice and it's not like high school and where you grow up with people for quite a few years, but you go out into the real world afterwards, but Rice is great. I come back often to visit. I, I, I do like keeping my association but it's

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amazing how much Rice has changed since I've been here through all the buildings and all the changes that are here, but all for the positive. Um But I had a great time here. Um sort of jealous of everyone because it looks so much nicer now. The

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facilities are much better. Um So it's a great place. So go rice. Um All right. Thank you.