Editor’s Note: The Independent is republishing the following editorial on former NEIU student Rebecca Makridis. The editorial was nominated for, and won, 1st place at the 2007 Illinois College Press Association Convention last weekend.
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There is no better example of what Northeastern Illinois University embodies than Rebecca Makridis Georgakis. She represents the fundamental truth that underlies the mission of this university, which is to educate and give access to those who strive for an education no matter what challenges are placed before them.
Rebecca Makridis Georgakis died Oct. 31 after a three-year battle with brain cancer, but the example she sets casts a long shadow over all of the students who will ever call themselves graduates of this university.
Despite rounds of chemotherapy and a constant battle to just make it to class, Rebecca graduated with cum laude honors in 2005. She graduated with the support and love of her family, who saw to it that she made it to school every day despite her weakened state, and who watched as Rebecca defied every expectation and refused to surrender to her illness.
The lives of students seem filled with crises and challenges, from family to work to professors to the obstacle course that is life. Some students will point to such challenges as the reason they fail.
Rebecca would not accept that false truth that says that our circumstances define us. She carried on, despite a situation that would have broken a lesser person. She succeeded because she refused to accept that her dreams were impossible.
The character of our lives is determined by our reaction to our circumstances, and Rebecca Makridis Georgakis rose to the occasion in a way that many of us cannot help but be humbled by. She took what life gave her and made it her own. In defying death and fulfilling her goals, she truly lived. Many of us wish we could say the same about our lives, academic or otherwise.
The way in which Rebecca lived her life is a personification of how students should approach the gift that is our education: with passion and with strength, knowing that each day is not promised, and that the chance to earn a degree should not be taken for granted. She was defined by her dreams, not by her reality, and she chased her dreams knowing the odds were against her.
Before we sell ourselves short as we near the finish line at NEIU, before we go gentle into that good night, we must ask ourselves if we are truly doing everything we can to become educated. We have to be able to say that every day, every class, every moment, is filled with a tenth of the determination that Rebecca had to have just to get out of bed every morning.
Even if we fall short of the lives we envision, it should not be because of a lack of effort or desire. We owe it to Rebecca to treat the lives we live as a gift.
We owe it to Rebecca to try.