Good afternoon. My name is Elijah Borjon, and before I begin, I want to say thank you to the leaders, donors, volunteers, and good-doers in this room. I know that sounds simple, but I mean it deeply. You are the reason students like me get to stand here. Now, let me transport you into my life for a moment.

All my life, I have been asked some version of the same question: what do you want to be when you grow up? Doctor. Executive. Astronaut. Those were normal choices.

But when I was little, I wanted to be a gold prospector. Yes, I yearned for the mines.

And yes, if you are picturing Yosemite Sam right now, you are probably not far off.

So congratulations: you have awarded a prospective prospector a thirty-thousand-dollar scholarship. But what I mean by “prospector” has changed over the years.

Unfortunately, I could not build my life off of a prospect. I had to think about something much more serious: what I could do, what I could become, and whether I would have the choice to become it. For much of my family's history, choice was not something people had the luxury to discuss. My family did not always have the choice to access healthcare. Many in my family did not have the choice to continue their education past middle school. They did not have the choice to work jobs they loved, because survival came first.

So when I say I am grateful for this scholarship, I mean something much deeper than "college is expensive," although it absolutely is. I mean that the Elks have given me the freedom to choose. To study. To think. To explore. To become. To say yes to opportunities without every decision being dictated by fear or money or survival.

This fall, I will attend the University of Puget Sound, where I hope to create my own major in human biology and medical anthropology, enter the Honors Program, and pursue a minor in Creativity, Consciousness, and Meaning. I know that sounds like a lot, because it is.

My friends would probably make fun of me here and remind me that I am also the same "Most Valuable Student" who plays Minecraft , won an annual pumpkin pie eating competition, or interrupted a physics teacher one too many times.

That is one of the funny things about being called a "Most Valuable Student." People expect the title to come with a certain seriousness, like I should suddenly become a scholarship robot who only reads textbooks and speaks in leadership quotes. But one of the biggest lessons I learned from the Elks Leadership Weekend in Chicago was that great leaders are not robots. In fact, they cannot be.

One of the most lasting images in my mind is the rotunda at the Elks National Memorial and Headquarters. It was genuinely stunning. Standing there, I felt the weight of the organization behind the award. The Elks were not just a logo on a form. They were people, buildings, traditions, volunteers, stories, and generations of members who decided that supporting young people was worth their time and money.

Still, the moment when I really thought, "I am actually one of these people," did not happen in the rotunda. It happened during our second night, during an activity where each scholar told their life story in three or four minutes. Before that, it would have been easy to see everyone as a walking résumé. National finalists. Harvard, Brown, Princeton, Columbia. Perfect students, future doctors, lawyers, scientists, public servants, leaders. But then people started talking. And suddenly, everyone became human again.

I loved that none of us were robots. I loved that the same people who could speak about service, sacrifice, and responsibility could also dance badly and sing loudly and become fully alive in the moment. It gave me hope. Not just hope for us, but hope for the kind of leadership the world needs: ambitious, yes, but also humble; serious, yes, but also joyful; capable, yes, but never detached from ordinary human life.

On the flight home from Chicago, I wrote in my journal that I felt like color was slowly seeping back into my life. It had been some of the hardest months I had ever lived through. Not because one single task was impossible, but because the tasks kept coming, from a class trip to China to schoolwork, writing scholarship essays, my family responsibilities, everything stacked on top of everything else.

I had been burning out in layers.

Even during moments I knew were beautiful, I sometimes felt like I was watching them in black and white. But flying home, sipping jasmine tea I had brought from China, exhausted and proud and grateful, something shifted. I realized I had accomplished something. I realized I needed to slow down long enough to acknowledge it. Ambition is powerful, but if I never pause to be proud, then I miss the life I am working so hard to build.

I only get one shot to become the person I want to be, but I also only get one shot to enjoy becoming him. That is what the Elks scholarship gives me: not just support, but space. Space to study at the University of Puget Sound. Space to explore medicine, biology, anthropology, public health, and communication. Space to tutor younger students and keep giving back. Space to make mistakes, change my mind, ask better questions, and become a leader my community can be proud of. Space to continue my hobbies, to control my schedule.

I am just a normal kid with a drive to change the world. A kid who tutors, overthinks, studies, jokes around, gets sick, dances at prom, plays video games when he probably should be working, and still deeply believes that education can change the direction of a family. W

hat I mean by “prospector” has changed. It is not so much that I want to be a prospector anymore, but that I want to do what prospectors do. I want to look closely at the world and believe there is something valuable waiting to be found. And what I have learned from the Elks is that good leaders are prospectors, too.

You see compassion, kindness, empathy, and possibility in other people, sometimes before they can fully see it in themselves. Then you help bring those things to the surface. Those are the real gems to be discovered in this world. Not gold. Not awards. Not titles. People. Their potential. Their dignity. Their future. I want to be that kind of leader.

I want to help others the way you have helped me with this scholarship.

So I would like to say: thank you. Thank you for seeing value in students. Thank you for believing that young people are worth investing in. Thank you for giving me a choice. I promise I will not take that choice lightly.

Elijah is a 2026 Top 20 Most Valuable Student scholar. He will receive a $30,000 scholarship to help him attend the University of Puget sound. To learn more about the MVS scholarship, visit enf.elks.org/mvs. To learn more about the MVS Leadership Weekend, click here.