Deonta Baily

Graduated from Pershing: 2008
Current Major: Business Management
Expected to Graduate from MSU in 2012

With the honors of being a recipient of the 2008 Steve Smith scholarship I have been extremely blessed. The scholarship has helped alleviate a portion of the financial burden that college bears upon most students such as myself. The scholarship has also motivated me in several ways. First, it has motivated me to seek other scholarship opportunities and resources to continue to help the financial burdens of college. It has also motivated me to excel within my studies and not settle for less or, “do enough just to get by.” Lastly, it has also motivated me to become a more determined individual to do whatever steps are necessary to fulfill my aspirations as an entrepreneur. My beliefs are simple: I will walk in a business as an employee but walk out as the owner, simply because that is how determined I am to outwork other employees. Without Steve Smith and his scholarships opportunity I know that I would not have the mind state that I currently have. Therefore, I would like to thank Steve Smith and the many others who are involved with making the Steve Smith Scholarship possible.

“We find greatest joy, not in getting, but in expressing what we are…Men do not really live for honors or for pay; their gladness is not the taking and holding, but in doing, the striving, the building, the living. It is a higher joy to teach than to be taught. It is good to get justice, but better to do it; fun to have things but more to make them. The happy man is he who lives the life of love, not for the honors it may bring, but for the life itself.” ~R. J. Baughan.