The Newest Ball State Alumna

Ball State's popularity is most likely due to all the references David Letterman makes on his show regarding his alma mater. Prior to hearing him talk about it, I had never even heard of it. He's probably the most famous alumnus to have walked its halls. I remember recently they dedicated an entire Media and Communications center after him and he proudly spoke about this on "Late Night".

Now when Ball State is mentioned, I no longer think about David Letterman as we have our very own Ball State alumna in our family.....my niece Tracy who graduated from there last week. And before my brother Bobby begins critiquing my use of the masculine and feminine versions of the word, I will hence use the word alumni when referring to a graduate as this is the common noun now being used by most coeducational colleges when referring to its graduates. Here's a picture of Tracy with her Mom and Dad, my brother Kelly and my sister-in-law Barbara.

Getting back to Tracy. She is now an alumni of Ball State University and enters the real world. All her life she has been a huge Chicago Black Hawk hockey fan. Her AOL screename even has the word Hawkfan in it. Knowing all of this, it's amazing that she was able to get a job with the Chicago Black Hawks. Since her major was in marketing, she will be working there in some form of marketing capacity. I know they asked her to start earlier than she had anticipated because their season tickets were going on sale and they needed her to help with that. So much for any summer vacation for Tracy. But can you just imagine getting a dream job with your dream team. It's almost too much to fathom.

So I want to wish my darling niece Tracy the best of everything the world has to offer her. She's certainly getting a great start with this new job. Now she's the second most popular person to have graduated from Ball State University. Who knows, perhaps in years to come, they'll be forgetting that David Letterman went there and will be dedicating a building to Tracy Cunningham.

So whether it's alumna, alumnus, alumnae or alumni, the fact of the matter is that you have now graduated from college. You've made us all very proud Tracy.