With the new year come new aspirations. You may decide to walk more, eat better or learn something new, like painting or drawing. Setting life goals is very 2025.
Steve Huffman, a 2005 University of Virginia graduate who co-founded Reddit with his college roommate Alexis Ohanian that year, has a saying he has followed every day since then.
He shared it with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman on his podcast, “Masters of Scale,” last year. “You aren’t who you are. You are what you do,” he said. “So, if you want to be somebody who works really hard, you have to actually work really hard.”
It’s simple and to the point. UVA Today reached out to a collection of administrators, faculty and staff members, and an alumna to ask what sayings or truisms they lean on to flourish in their personal and professional lives.
Be curious, not judgmental.
President Jim Ryan
Ryan’s mantra is also straightforward. You may have heard it before: “Be curious, not judgmental.” It’s something he’s said to nearly every incoming class since he became president in 2018.
“It sounds so simple, but I promise it is the way to get past the surface of things and to the heart and truth of things, including the truth and reality of other people who might seem very different from you, unless and until you get to know them,” Ryan told the Class of 2028 in August.
I try as much as I can every day to remember to put myself in others’ shoes and meet them where they are.
Senior Dean of Academic and Student Services Theresa Carroll, School of Nursing
Carroll’s truism is less a mantra and more a philosophy.
“I try as much as I can every day to remember to put myself in others’ shoes and meet them where they are,” she said.
It’s a basic tenet of student development theory and one she says she’s tried to follow all her career. It means committing to keeping up with the changing needs and issues of our students. “It means taking the time to get to know a student and ask how I can help instead of making assumptions or trying to solve their problems for them," she said. “It means keeping my door open, spending time in the lobby of our office between classes, stopping on the sidewalk to catch up or giving them my phone number so they can text me.”
A man learns in two ways, by reading and by association with smarter people.
Interim Senior Associate Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Cedric Rucker
“I am a positivist, a glass-half-full sort of person, finding that life has been made so much more fulfilling as a consequence of wonderful human engagements,” he said. “I have learned so much from others, from opening myself up to ‘unforecasted’ opportunities to experience life from those with different perspectives and ways of engaging the world.”
Rucker said he loves Will Rogers’ take on human engagement and always refers to a few of his great lines.
They are:
- “A man learns in two ways, by reading and by association with smarter people.”
- “Never miss a good chance to shut up.”
- “A stranger is just a friend I haven’t met yet.”
So much to do, so much to be.
1993 Graduate and Businessperson Beth Buccini
Buccini’s life story inspired readers in October. She’s a driven businessperson who parlayed her love of fashion into a successful business. Her youngest daughter, Virginia, was the first person in the United States diagnosed with a rare genetic disease called “DDX3X syndrome.” Ten years ago she co-founded a foundation to raise awareness and money for medical research.
We asked her if there were any sayings she returns to. “I have quite a few :),” she emailed.
One of her high school yearbook quotes comes from Winnie the Pooh: “So much to do, so much to be.”
“Little did I know how much that would continue to ring true in my life,” she said. She has this saying on the family bulletin board: “Wake up. Be amazing. Go to sleep.”
“But my husband and I always say our family motto is, ‘To whom much is given, much is expected,’” Buccini said.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Director for the Rotunda and University Events Sheri Winston
“Life is filled with challenges, whether with your job, people or situations,” Winston said. “No matter what, I am committed to not allowing difficult encounters make me come outside of who I know I am.”
She quoted a passage from the Epistle to the Galatians, the ninth book of the New Testament: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
