WVU Potomac State College Convocation Speaker Carita Mills said the keys to success can be boiled down to the numbers one, seven, three, and eight.
During the 2026 exercises, Mills challenged the new students in attendance to focus on those numbers.
Mills is PSC’s athletic trainer and in March was tapped as a Best Athletic Trainer in the nation.
She shared her personal account about being a student at PSC and being “one of those students” who did not adapt easily in the transition from high school to college life.
“Do you think I was the first student these professors came across who had attendance issues? Or that used procrastination more than my laptop? I wasn’t the first to use my grandma as an excuse for not turning in an assignment, and I wasn’t the last,” she said. “I was just a kid who was scared of where I might end up with average grades and a bad attitude.”
“What actually got me here wasn’t the big picture; it started smaller than that. It was numbers. Specific, unglamorous, forgettable numbers that turned out to matter more than any slogan ever did. Instead of giving you inspiration in the abstract, I'm going to give you four numbers to remember. My hope is that after today, every time you hear these numbers out in the wild, you’ll remember my words. “
Mills then encouraged the students to remember three numbers as the keys to their success story that will ultimately unfold at PSC.
One
“That’s all it took to get every single one of you into this room today. Somewhere in the last year, maybe it was a conversation with a parent, or a coach, possibly one of our incredible admissions counselors, a moment alone in your room scrolling through college websites at 1 a.m., you made one decision,” she said. “You decided to show up. I promise you nobody in this building cares where you started or how you made that decision. Your GPA in high school? Not as important as you thought. Your zip code? Most barely know their own. I came here with average grades and an attitude problem, and not one person on this campus treated me like that was the end of my story. They treated it like page one.”
Seven
1) “Office hours are not punishment. They are a cheat code. I did not understand this as a student. I thought office hours were where you went when you were in trouble. It took me embarrassingly long to realize that the professors sitting in those empty offices during office hours weren't there hoping nobody showed up; they were there hoping somebody would. Go. Introduce yourself before you need something. That relationship will outlast the class.”
2) “Your first C is not a crisis. It is data. I got my first college C in a class I was sure I understood. It felt like the floor dropped out. It wasn't the floor. It was information about how I was studying, who I was studying with, if I was showing up, and whether I was actually doing the reading or just skimming it. Treat your grades like data, not verdicts, and you'll adjust instead of spiral.”
3) “The library is built for learning, and it is quieter than your dorm room, your apartment, or wherever you're currently planning to ‘study’ this week. Use that space, and the librarians. They are the nicest people on campus, and I stand by that statement.”
4) “The person sitting next to you today might be your co-founder, your best man, your maid of honor, or the person who hires you in ten years. I am not exaggerating for effect. I have watched countless student-athletes leave here and start companies with each other, start families with each other, and some who still come back and visit with their professors that they met in office hours.”
5) “You are going to have to navigate a freedom that you may not be prepared for. Nobody is going to make you go to class, or do your assignments, or go to bed at a certain time. That is the whole game now. In high school, someone calls home if you're absent. There’s usually someone organizing your life on the sidelines to help you succeed. Here, the only phone call is the one you have with yourself, and it's usually a lot quieter and a lot more honest. Utilize the tools given to you, because you are learning the skill of balancing freedom and discipline. “
6) “Show up. Get involved. Join a club, a team, a study group: build a community. This world is missing connection, and this campus is no different. The students who struggle most are rarely the ones who struggle academically at first; they are the ones who never let anyone in close enough to notice. Go find your people.”
7) “You are allowed to change your major. Twice. Maybe three times. I know that because I watched it happen — to classmates, to students I've mentored, and yes, to me, in a smaller way, as my own path bent and rerouted more than once between the person who arrived here in 2007 and the one standing in front of you now. Changing direction is not failure. It is called finding out who you actually are, especially when things are tough and the road ahead isn’t paved or even cleared yet.”
“I’d write those seven truths down if I were you - not because you’ll forget them today, but because you will absolutely forget them by October, and October is exactly when you'll need them.”
Three
“I’m not going to stand up here and ask you to promise me a 4.0. Some of you will get one. Some of you, like me, will not, and you'll go on to build a whole career anyway. What I'm asking for instead is three commitments — small ones, that add up to something big if you actually keep them.”
1) Show up, even on the hard days. Not just to class — though yes, to class — but to the version of your life you came here to build. There will be mornings this semester when showing up feels impossible. A breakup, a bad grade, homesickness, a family emergency back home that pulls at you every time your phone buzzes. Show up anyway, even if showing up looks like sitting in the back row half-present. Half-present beats absent, every single time.
2) Ask for help before you’re drowning, not after. This one took me years to learn, and honestly, I’m still learning it. I built a reputation over the last decade for handling things myself, being a closet perfectionist will do that to you. I want to tell you plainly, from the other side of that: doing it all yourself is not strength. It is just a slower way of struggling. The people in this building — your professors, your advisors, your athletic trainers if you’re an athlete, your coaches, the counseling center — we are not here to judge you for needing help. We are here because we expected you would. And we’re trained in first-time college problems. In fact, if that was a major, every faculty and staff member here would have doctorates.
3) Represent this campus like it already believes in you, because it does. This is a small school. Word travels here fast — good and bad. But I’ve also watched this place bet on students that bigger schools would have written off, and win. It bet on me. Represent that. Not because anyone’s watching, but because someday, some version of you, standing where I’m standing, is going to want to point back at this exact convocation and say, “That’s where it started.”
Eight
“The next eight weeks will decide more than you think.”
“Here’s something nobody tells you at Convocation, and I wish someone had told me: the first eight weeks of the semester predict more about your outcome than the other eight weeks combined. Not because the material gets easier after week eight — it usually doesn't — but because the habits you build in these first eight weeks are the habits that carry you, or the habits that sink you, for the rest of the year, and possibly the rest of your college career.
When do you actually study, versus when do you tell yourself you're going to study? Who do you sit with in the dining hall, and does that person make you better or worse? Do you go to the 8 a.m. (class), even the third week in a row when it stops feeling like a novelty and starts feeling like a mistake you made in July when you were sitting comfortably in a home where the bills were paid and you had the dewy-eyed hope of a high school senior with the world at their fingertips?
I have watched hundreds of students come through this campus in my time here — as a student myself, as an athletic trainer on the sidelines, as faculty in the classroom. The students who thrive are not always the ones who arrive the most prepared. They are almost always the ones who get the first eight weeks right. Not perfection, just consistently establishing good habits.
Eight weeks. Mark it on your calendar, right now, mentally, if nothing else. Check back in with yourself when you get there, or one of your professors. Ask yourself honestly: did I build the habits, or did I build excuses? You’ll still have time to fix it either way. But you’ll have a lot less runway than you have today.”
Convocation Matters
“I told you at the start of this speech that I wasn’t up here because I had it all figured out — I was up here because this place did. That’s still true. But I’ll add one more thing, because it’s Convocation, and I’m apparently allowed exactly one cheesy line. The girl who walked in here in 2007 with average grades and a bad attitude had no idea that the seat she was sitting in, steps from where you are right now, was actually the beginning of everything.”
Carita Mills can be reached by email at carita.mills@mail.wvu.edu, by phone at 304-788-6800 or in person inside the Athletic Trainer’s office at the lower level of the Lough Gymnasium Complex.