My address if I was asked to give one to my graduates.
Today each graduate steps from the halls of academia into the world around them. Unlike other school commencements many of you have already been living in the world, working, suffering, prioritizing and making sacrifices to attain a college degree. Whether that degree was an undergraduate degrees or a graduate degree the effort was a shared task.
We don’t get to graduate without a little help from our families, our mentors, our sponsor, our supporters, and if those were fewer we are not poorer but richer for knowing who truly supported us. Today as we graduate another class we say thank you to all of the people who supported our students. In this we are simply united as a university, and as a society.
Though the skies darken in clouds of economic fear, terrorism, and other storms that chasten our happiness. Though there is as always the unknown to mar the known and give pause. Though the world as we know it is filled with change and chance. This is where we say thank you and appreciate the gift of knowledge. It is not if our graduates are prepared for society, but if society is prepared for our graduates.
Whether the path for matriculating students was from despair to hope. Whether the road of ascendance from poverty to riches. Whether education is a check mark on the speed ticket of life. An education is something that you can carry through life in a way that nothing else will follow. An education is yours. It can’t be taken away by fiat, and you own it as much as you own your soul. What you do with this shiny tool of knowledge is up to you. How you change the world is up to you. How you live your life is up to you.
An education is no ticket to a job. There will come a point in the days moving forward where you will look back on the simplicity if difficulty of higher education. There will be a point where the challenges of life seem turbulent. This is normal. The life we live is what we make of it. I you take this new degree and build a life around the knowledge it embodies your will find a challenging and rewarding life. This is the task you have.
Life and career are not the same thing. We change jobs, we change careers, but we have only one life to live. Some would say they have squandered a life while serving society as an underpaid teacher. The rewards and fruits of their labors not seen in their lifetime as subsequent generations of students move through their classroom. Those of us in university share the toil while having the benefit of seeing our adult students make an immediate impact. Some will be that toiling teacher and some will become titans of industry. Worthy and important tasks for any individual. With that one life we have many choices to make. We all won’t make the same choices. That is the principle of choice in action.
There is much you might like to know. Will you make the right choices? Will the life you choose lead be a success? How will the world adapt, evolve, and change in the face of your life? How will you know you’ve done right? The education you have been given helps you with today. The education you have been given will help you plan for tomorrow. The wisdom to understand the results of your action is found in the fusion of your education and lessons you have learned. They call those lessons the school of hard knocks.
Finally, though I’m loathe to say it. There is hope. There is hope in a world that you make as you matriculate. There is hope in the world that you can change. Unlike other Universities many of you aren’t 20-something straight from high school students wondering what I’m talking about. Some of you chose the hard road early and are now traveling down a harder road. An education as an adult is a much more difficult task in the face of looming mortgages and children. Consider the challenges where ever you have come from and know you can stand to the ones from the future.
I will look forward to seeing the preeminence of my students rise in the challenging turbulent days of the future. I will look for the rising stars because like the schoolteacher my success is not my own but found in the lives we have changed and the people who have matriculated into the world. Thank you for the chance to help and the hope for the future.