Public speaking is everyone’s nightmare, but giving a commencement address whether at Harvard or your granddaughter’s pre-k, is a special form of torture. Yes, I know it’s an honor and all that, but you know, in your heart of hearts, it’s a no win situation. First of all, no one is really interested in what you might choose to say. And if you come up with something really clever, I can assure you, it’s already been done. The best you can do is to make them laugh a couple of times and stay in their seats until it’s over.
For some obscure reason, those of us who are asked to risk this form of public humiliation take our task seriously. We want to put our particular stamp of history, of wisdom, of insight on the crowd of attendees who only want to get their diploma and be gone. I, for instance, did hours of research for great examples of commencement addresses that were clever, original and made a difference. I could find none. Well, almost none. It turns out that one of the more prolific deliverers of commencement addresses is Dave Berry. You know Dave…the mostly tongue-in-cheek columnist for the Miami Herald and now a prolific (and funny) author of books that appeal, evidently, to all age groups.
In what was, perhaps, his first commencement address, Dave opined that it was his duty to offer advice on the single thing that would most positively affect the future lives of those in the audience. His advice was, “don’t forget to floss every day”. This may seem a bit trite as you read this now, as it did to me then, but upon reflection he was right. I’m pretty sure that no one in the audience has forgotten this bit of insight, and, what’s more, he’s probably right. Regular flossing most likely will make for happier mealtimes and keep you out of the dentist office. I admit it. I was highly tempted to steal Dave’s line. After all, who would know.
As you will see from my remarks captured below, I did not, and worse yet, I had no such piercing insight of my own to offer, but I did my best. Some ten years after I gave this address, a not-so-young-any-more young man approached me at the local supermarket and said that he had been in the audience when I spoke. Wow. I was impressed….with myself. I must have said something that stuck. I asked him what was the most important thing he took away from my speech. He grimaced, scrunched his eyebrows and replied, “I dunno for sure, but it may have been something about a bus.” I should have stuck to flossing.
The Commencement Address
Texas A&M Commerce University
May 10, 2003
Thank you Dr. McFarland, Dean Kaminski, parents, and especially all of the graduates here today for allowing me to share this special occasion with you. I’ve been told by those that have done this before that my job today is to say something memorable (hopefully in an entertaining way). But as I dug through my now failing memory for memorable thoughts from the twenty or so commencements of all types that I’ve attended over the last fifty years, I realized that I couldn’t recall a single thing, not one memorable thought that was said at any of them, nor could I remember who the illustrious speakers were. Wow….was I relieved. I figured I was off the hook. I can pretty much say anything I want to and there’s little chance that twenty or thirty years from now you’ll be trying to look me up to blame me for the bum advice that I might give here today.
By the way, if you’re looking for some real wisdom, something that will really rock your boat in the next few minutes, forget it. You’ve been at this learning business for the last sixteen years or so, and I doubt that the next ten minutes is going to be an academic or philosophical epiphany.
I realize as I look at this audience that many of you are so called “non-traditional students” and are already well into this business of living, but I do, however, want to address a question that is common to this and most every other graduating class. You might put it to me this way, “Gary, now that you guys have pretty much screwed up the world, and gotten the economy so that there aren’t many jobs for anyone, and you’ve already made yours, what’s left for me, what am I going to do. What kind of job can I get now that will allow me to live the “American Dream”.
Is that about right? I’ll bet that it’s pretty close.
Well rest easy. You’re not alone. Few of us came from our mother’s womb knowing that we want to be an astrophysicist or a tax attorney or a taxi driver for that matter. But let me start to answer this hypothetical question by revealing a little about myself.
I was a first generation college graduate. Something that this school works pretty hard at nurturing. My mother was the youngest in a family of thirteen and my father likewise the youngest in a family of seven. As far as I know, they were the first to graduate from high school in their families and certainly had no chance to go to college. Not exactly an academic legacy for me to live up to. Yes, they wanted me to go to college, but I’m not sure they really “expected” me to. Let me tell you why I did and what ensued.
I was fortunate to get an academic scholarship that I could use pretty much anywhere, but I still had some serious, although unspecific doubts, or maybe better said, I didn’t exactly have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, much less a genetic legacy of higher education that caused me to pursue a university degree. Let me tell you why I went to college.
I got a job on a sheep ranch in west Texas the summer I graduated high school. Of course, I was the greenhorn and got the jobs that no one else wanted. I learned that there are quite a few of those on a shearing crew. I was the dauber. Now I know that this isn’t sheep country and not many would know what that job entailed. The dauber is the guy that daubs hot pine tar on the cuts and nicks that sheep get in the shearing process. Some here might know or at least imagine that all sheep have a uniform and instantaneous reaction to being daubed by hot pine tar, and as a result of that reaction I got to stand ten hours a day in increasingly large and smelly piles of sheep—well, you get the idea. After just a few days of being up close and personal with sheep, my unspecific doubts about college evaporated. In fact, you never saw a more highly motivated college bound student.
I chose East Texas State because it was far enough away from home that I wouldn’t have to go home on weekends. Not that I didn’t love my family, but I thought if I was going away to college, I really wanted to go away. I’d never heard of, and certainly never seen, the school except in a college placement book, but it seemed to be what I was looking for. I arrived in Commerce from San Angelo on a Continental Trailways bus and was dropped off at the filling station that then served as the bus terminal. I asked the proprietor (at least he had fairly clean overalls) if he would be so kind as to call a taxi for me. He looked up from changing a tire and said, “son, this ain’t Dallas”. I thought, but didn’t say, sir, I can certainly tell that. He gave me a ride in the back of his pick-up to campus, and as he dropped me off grumbled in a not-unkindly east Texas twang, “you know, I thought about going to this school onct.” You’re pretty lucky to be here, do your best.”
And I was lucky, although I didn’t know why then, but I clearly didn’t live up to his admonition to do my best, at least not a first. After one semester of scholastic probation, several other semesters of fairly lackluster academic work, lots of parties, and changing majors three times, I had the really good fortune that every male in the audience should aspire to…I married really well. A smart (graduating in three years compared to my four and a half), well grounded (east Texas farm background), focused (got a job before she graduated), highly motivated (pushed me when I needed pushing), and beautiful woman, who is with me hear today after almost exactly thirty-nine years of marriage.
My Bachelor of Arts degree in Broad Field Social Sciences (basically history and economics) that I ultimately got from Baylor University didn’t exactly prepare me for anything. I sure as the devil had no idea what kind of job I could get, what kind of career I was prepared for and certainly not the faintest notion of what my destiny was to be.
The statistics say that each of you will have 8.2 jobs before you retire from your primary career. The statistics also say that it’s highly unlikely that your first job will have any relationship to your last job. Although I spent my entire business career with a single company, I would be hard pressed to find any common thread that held my career together. Certainly it wasn’t my college major, nor was it a notion of what I wanted to do imprinted in me from birth. Virtually all of the jobs I had within that company over thirty years were doing things that I could not have even imagined during my college years, and further, virtually all of the skills I needed to do those jobs I either had and didn’t know I had, or I acquired along the way.
In addition to my short stint as a dauber of sheep, I’ve been a soldier, a computer programmer, a salesman, a technical project manager, I’ve bought and sold companies, been a contract negotiator, a business executive, and ultimately retired as vice-chairman of one of the largest multinational companies in the world, and after my first retirement I founded an private equity firm, became CEO of an internet company, started a horse breeding farm, served on several public company boards, been a consultant to Wall Street firms, and started a commercial real estate company with my sons, and finally, a farmer. And I don’t think I’m finished. You tell me what kind of long-term career plan would have guided me along that path? What college major, what course of study, would have prepared me for this journey?
Early in my career with my company, I was talking with Ross Perot, our company’s founder, about my concern that I didn’t have a definite career plan. I didn’t know what to do first. Ross responded by saying, “A business career (as well as life in general) is a little like standing at a bus stop watching the buses go by. Each bus represents an opportunity. You don’t have to take the first bus that comes by, and one bus might lead you to another and you might have to change buses several times, but you gotta get on a bus.” Believe me after that advice from Ross, I was out the door looking for a bus. Now I can see this… years later I’m going to run in to one of you (obviously not the class valedictorian) and you’re going to say that ten years ago you told me to get on a bus….
I don’t know what your particular bus will be like. It might not be the perfect bus. It probably won’t be the bus that you’ve imagined for yourself, mine wasn’t. But of this I’m fairly certain, you will find your bus. The fact that you are here today, that you have worked hard and long to achieve a significant goal, is all the evidence I need to reach that conclusion.
One might surmise from my remarks that I believe college does little to prepare you for a job, a career, or your destiny, but I don’t mean to suggest that at all, for as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The things taught in school are not an education but the means of education.” These then are some of the means you have acquired.
You’ve learned that you have to work hard for what you want.
You’ve learned tolerance for people who are different from you and have different points of view.
You’ve learned independence and self-motivation
You’ve learned that you can finish a difficult task
And you’ve learned some of your capabilities and even more importantly, you’ve learned a little about your limitations.
I’ve often thought of a career objective as being like the apex of a pyramid. The higher you want your personal apex to be, the broader and stronger the base must be. The experiences you’ve had, in college and before are a vital part of your foundation, but they aren’t the entire foundation. There is more to be done, there is much more to be learned.
If you got the post graduation job you’ve always dreamed of, great. If you didn’t, you’ll get another. If there is no other right now, work towards the graduate degree you’ve thought about, or find out some more about the world through travel, or start your own business, or play in a band, or help out your family or community for awhile, or move to NYC, or perhaps, look for another bus altogether.
I don’t want to get maudlin here at the end of my remarks, but I can’t help but leave this occasion with a great sense of pride in your accomplishments and a sense of optimism for the future. Pride because I know of the hard work and sacrifice that it took for you to get here, and optimism because I know that our community, our country and our world will be a better place with people like you in it.
