President Chabotar, Bruce B. Stewart and Seniors Deliver Remarks During 171st Commencement

President Kent Chabotar, Bruce B. Stewart and graduating seniors delivered remarks during Guilford's 171st commencement exercises Saturday, May 10. Following is the text of the remarks by the students, President Chabotar and Bruce B. Stewart as prepared for delivery.

Remarks by Garrett FitzGerald '08

Garrett FitzGerald Greetings. Let me begin by welcoming all to this auspicious occasion. As the first order of business, I would like to address our fans. To the assembled parents, siblings, friends, mentors and other relatives…congratulations. You did it. It is unthinkable that my classmates would be here before you today without the countless hours of support and love you have shown us over the last four years. Thank you.

And now to my friends, my distinguished colleagues, my family with whom I have been privileged to share the last four years of my life, congratulations. Your classmates seated around you are a testament to the enduring spirit and vitality of this institution with which we have all become so well-acquainted over the last four years, and from which we are now preparing to depart.

We are now participating in what Salman Rushdie called “the rite of passage by which [we] are released from this life of preparation, into that life for which [we] are now as prepared as anyone ever is.” And as we cross this stage, shake Kent’s hand and slowly begin to accept the reality of this ‘release,’ let us take some time to reflect upon the preparation for life which Guilford has provided us. Mark Vonnegut, son of late author Kurt, joked in his memoirs that his four years in college had given him nothing but the tools of an excellent conversationalist.

But beyond the facts, the figures and the theories which our professors have spent the last four years beating into our heads, I would like to think that Guilford has imbued each one of us with something more fundamental than conversational skills. I believe that our collective time at Guilford has nurtured within each of us a profound sense of principle and purpose. And in deference to the principle, let us focus now on our purpose. In obtaining these degrees, we have been given a privilege shared by only one percent of the world’s population. If you think your education here has been anything less than exceptional, in that sense you could not be more mistaken.

With regards to our purpose, let me frame our education this way. Guilford is defined by the core values to which we adhere: community, diversity, equality, excellence, integrity, justice and stewardship. And stewardship. The last and possibly the least understood core value is where I want to focus our attentions today.

Stewardship, according to my good friends Merriam and Webster, is a noun which means “the conducting, supervising or managing of something; especially:the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care.” In light of this understanding, allow me to pose a question to you: Do we own the education we have spent the last four years pursuing? Perhaps. Four years of Guilford tuition seems like a steep price for something you don’t get to own. But rather than owners, I say we have instead become stewards of knowledge, and the failure to properly manage this knowledge would be a lapse of our duty as responsible stewards and a slight to the world into which we are now prepared to depart.

No, we do not own the educations we have received. This knowledge is a privilege with which we have been entrusted. And as the responsible stewards into which Guilford has molded us, it is our duty to wield our educations responsibly. Your teachers have not been joking all the times over your life that they’ve told you that ‘knowledge is power’. As surely as we now possess that knowledge, so too are we the stewards of that power. But with power, with knowledge, comes responsibility.

Henry David Thoreau tells us that it is not our duty as individuals to save the world. But,

If [we] devote ourselves to other pursuits and contemplations,
[we] must first see, at least,
that [we] do not pursue them sitting upon the shoulders of others.

We need look no further than our assembled family and friends to recognize that, if it weren’t for our ability to stand on the shoulders of those close to us, we would never have reached this point.

But with the knowledge and skills we have accumulated over the last four years, we have become uniquely adapted to making this world a better place. As the stewards of exceptional learning, let us allow our collective shoulders to become the foundation upon which we can build a new and better tomorrow. And every day that we wake up knowing that there is a difference in this world between what is and what could be, is a day on which we know that our work as stewards is not yet done.

In Quakerism, we talk of a concept of the “Inner Light,” of that of God which dwells within each one of us and informs our moral sensibilities. I charge each and every one of you, with our assembled family and friends as my witnesses, to leave this place today as stewards of knowledge, guided by the light that shines within all of us. Leave here today holding this light aloft like a torch, and as we go our separate ways, with our lives as examples we will brighten even the darkest corners of our world.

I am not asking you to change the world, but I am asking you to be the change you wish to see in this world. I am asking you, in your purpose, to be true to the idea, the principle that Guilford has nurtured in each of our hearts. As Victor Hugo once wrote, “There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

To my friends, my distinguished colleagues, my family for the last four years and for all the years ahead of us: to the Guilford College Graduating Class of 2008. Congratulations. Our time has surely come.

Remarks by Cynthia Bowen '08

Cynthia Bowen Good Morning!

I am honored to have been chosen to speak to you this morning. I am sure we all share some of the same feelings of excitement and anticipation whether you are a CCE student or a traditional student. Whether you are 23 or 83 years old, or somewhere in between, we are all relieved that we have made it to this day and achieved one of our many goals in life.

Now that we have reached this milestone, we need to celebrate! But then what? What is our next step? Some of us will go on to post-graduate studies, while some will get a job or pursue a new career. There is one thing I feel confident in saying about the graduating class of 2008:

Sharing our college experience means we now share the core values of Guilford College:

Community

Diversity

Equality

Excellence

Integrity

Justice

Stewardship

These values shaped the framework for our learning experiences and contributed to the philosophy of life and sense of unity within our graduating class. Even those of us with more life experience coming into Guilford College have been touched, shaped and even transformed by the Guilford College values and experiences.

I want to emphasize the value of COMMUNITY. I don’t think there is anyone in this graduating class that can say “I did it all by myself”. I can’t say it. It has taken the support of family, friends, classmates, professors, colleagues, support staff and even strangers in the community to carry me through to this day. It’s taken COMMUNITY, a common unity, to carry us this far along our life paths. It will take all of us working hard, together, to make a difference in our families, schools, churches, workplaces and neighborhoods.

Values are essential to our being. They are who we are. Embracing our values will make us want to be good stewards of our world and the people in it and of ourselves as we continue to grow and learn. We’ll demonstrate our values by;

what we say and how we say it,

what we do, and how well we do it.

On the outside, we share receiving a diploma with Guilford College written on it. This document tells the world that we have successfully met the learning objectives required by our degree programs. What the diploma does not make obvious, but what we know because we are COMMUNITY, is that we have been changed right down to our core by our experiences here at Guilford College.

We are stronger for pushing toward our goals. We are stronger for working through the barriers and hard times. We are stronger for celebrating the successes.

Class of 2008: We are strong. We are Community. We will make a difference.

Congratulations!

Remarks by Bruce B. Stewart '61, Invited Speaker

Bruce Stewart Good morning, F(f)riends! It is wonderful to be here with you today to celebrate your graduation from Guilford College, an institution for which I have profound respect, deep admiration and lasting gratitude. To each student, my very best wishes and congratulations as you make this important life transition, and to your parents, my acclaim for being free at last, free at last – or, at least for the moment, free from daunting tuition payments!

This August will mark 51 years since I first set foot on the Guilford College campus as a freshman. It is good to be home again at a place that truly transformed my education, values, moral and spiritual beliefs, career and entire life. I studied here for four years, served on the faculty and in the administration for 14 years and have been a Trustee, Board Chair and Trustee Emeritus for a combined period of over 20 years. It has been my privilege to know personally five of Guilford’s eight Presidents, and I will never forget a single one of them. Nor can I ever forget Charlie Hendricks’ grace in admitting me to the college, or Ed Burrows as my undergraduate advisor, or Dr. Vicki as my Department Chair in Economics, or Professor Mildred Marlette who encouraged me to go to graduate school and to become a teacher. Further, I am forever indebted to my Guilford College colleagues Jerry Godard, Cyril Harvey, Jim Newlin, J.R. Boyd, Paul Zopf, Darryl Kent and Pete Moore for their profound shaping of my career path as an educator. They were - to a person - skilled, apt, visionary and inspiring in all that they modeled and in everything that they so generously shared with me as mentors. Finally, I want to publicly thank Seth Macon, probably the college’s most competent, committed and caring Trustee, now or at any time in the institution’s long history. He personifies service, generosity and compassion better than any governance servant I have ever known or ever expect to know.

This morning, I want to begin my message to you by sharing a personal story. My father was born in Springburn, Scotland, on the River Clyde, and my grandfather was a welder in the shipyards of nearby Glasgow. Because of limited job and educational opportunities in Scotland, my grandparents constantly dreamed of bringing their four children to North America. To achieve that goal, my grandfather began to raise canaries, which detect the presence of dangerous gases, to sell for use in the mines of the British Isles. (He later taught me a life lesson that I have never forgotten: Laddie, don’t ever put a gas mask on your canary! It’s amazing, isn’t it, how many of us inadvertently emasculate the very security systems that we so carefully construct in the first place!!) With the proceeds, he brought his family first to Nova Scotia and then to America to Bath, Maine. It was there that he and many other Scots built ships during the First World War. At the end of that conflict, he was forced to move south to Massachusetts because far fewer laborers were needed.

That is how I happened to grow up in Boston, and how I happened to be so strongly directed by my father to get a good education. He was only able to go through the 3rd grade, and he was determined that I would be among the first in the Stewart family to graduate from high school. There were no ands, ifs or buts! I would do well, or I would suffer the consequences. When I graduated from Lynn English High School, I aspired to go to Bowdoin College with my two best friends. Though I was admitted, there was no possibility of attendance because of the cost and the absence, in those days, of significant financial aid.

The disappointment was profound, but that event would markedly impact my life. In late May of my senior year, I met a man in a local grocery store while listening to a Red Sox game on the radio. We started chatting about sports, civil rights and politics, and I soon learned that Mr. Pete Moore was a graduate student studying religion at Boston University with a classmate named Martin Luther King, Jr. Mr. Moore shared with me the fact that he was a professor on leave from Guilford College, and that I should think about going to school there. I hurried home and recounted the story to my mother. She immediately called a relative in Ohio who was in college at the time to ask his advice and opinion. He said he had never heard of Guilford, but that he would check and call back. In less than a minute he was on the phone again and yelled out, “Send him Aunt Ev, it’s a Quaker college!” That was the first time I had ever heard the word Quaker, and yet that word would ultimately become central to my life. I obtained an alumni scholarship from my high school, a loan from the Masons’ Fund in Boston and financial aid from Guilford College. Aggregately, that allowed me to head to North Carolina. It was the first time I had ever been south of Massachusetts, and I was fortunate to share a ride in an old Studebaker with a transfer student from Boston University who was also a Pete Moore recruit.

I will never forget coming into North Carolina for the first time and seeing signs restricting access by race to restaurants, water fountains, restrooms and the like. What an eye-opening experience for a sheltered New Englander to suddenly encounter. Then, I would meet my advisor, Dr. Edward Burrows, and discover that he was a conscientious objector who had spent four years in federal prison in opposition to war. Another impactful event! Later, I would go to his home in the evening with other carefully selected students to meet covertly with Black faculty and students from both North Carolina A&T and Bennett College. That was my first introduction to the civil rights movement, and it was an astonishing experience. Only two and a half years later in early 1960, I would be standing across from Woolworth’s in downtown Greensboro witnessing first-hand the making of history. That event, and the concomitant influence of so many Guilford faculty and peers, changed the direction of my life entirely. I promptly decided to enroll in summer school so that I could take the courses I needed to become a public school teacher, and thus be prepared to do my practice teaching during my senior year. While it was too late to change my major from economics, it was not too late to give up my freshman aspiration of becoming a wealthy businessman. Instead, I would get certified as a teacher of social studies.

When I completed my undergraduate work, I was advised to continue my studies and get a graduate degree in education. I did so at Chapel Hill. During that year, I was contacted by the Greensboro City Schools inviting me to return to Walter Hines Page High School – the place where I had done my practice teaching – to help with the integration of the city school system prompted by the momentous events at Woolworth’s lunch counter. (Parenthetically, two of the students I worked with as a first-year teacher are back in North Carolina today, one an attorney and judge and the other a college chaplain.) That salient teaching experience ultimately directed me to a career in Quaker education, first at this college and then as Head of two exceptional independent Friends day schools - one in Philadelphia and one in Washington, D.C.

What a coincidental journey, but how eternally grateful I am to this institution for five decades of profoundly meaningful professional experience. My unforeseen travels south as 17-year-old to the “goodliest land under the cope of heaven” were to change me more than I could or would ever have dared imagine. And as I prepared this message for you a few days ago, a quote that I have treasured for years – and which I believe came from the lips of Albert Einstein - reverberated again and again in my mind’s eye: “When the world unleashed the power of the atom, it changed everything except for the way we think.” The blessing for you and for me, however, is what rests at the core of this extraordinary Quaker liberal arts institution. It is a place that persistently helps to challenge and change the way that one thinks, causing each of us to unequivocally value and revisit the idea of “continuing revelation” throughout our lives. As a Guilford graduate, you never believe that you have the final truth, but you are eternally committed to the seeking of it.

Having spoken to this point primarily about micro-level issues of a largely personal and institutional nature, I would now like to speak with you about the more macro issues that I believe are increasingly defining our nation and world, and your collective lives and futures. These are matters that are nothing if not compelling, and I urge you to think carefully and deeply about the roles you may now be choosing or those that you may ultimately be drawn into irrespective of choice or preference. I recently heard a very engaging speech in Washington, D.C. that described America as rapidly becoming our globe’s wealthiest third world nation. Perhaps you have heard supporting evidence of that observation referenced in the current political rhetoric, which calls to our attention that we are a nation with two economic systems, two justice systems, two educational systems, two health care systems, two or more housing systems and a political and military system that increasingly seem to be defined by class and socio-economic standing.

To quickly illustrate some of the above points, in 2006 about 6% of U.S. citizens earned roughly 33% of all the country’s income. And, national income inequality - which had been decreasing from shortly after World War II until the 1970’s - has since that time been on the rise. In short, those who have, have more and more; and those who have not, have less and less. In 2005, about 20% of our households enjoyed incomes exceeding $100,000, while the bottom fifth earned only $20,000. Comparing men and women from 1967 to 2005, the data shows an income increase of 35% for males but only 20% for females. Today, median household income by race ranges from $57,000 for Asians and $49,000 for Whites to $34,000 for Hispanics and $30,000 for Blacks. These disparities should give every one of us concern about equity of opportunity. After all, we each arrive in our place in life more by the finger of fate than by any measure of personal choice.

When considering the justice system, there is obviously a correlation between resources and ability to mount an effective defense. Many court-appointed attorneys lack the sophistication of lawyers from prestigious legal firms, and many court-assigned defenders have huge caseloads and only nominal resources. American incarceration rates, as studied by Human Rights Watch, reflect alarming data. In four major states, over 70% of those sentenced to prison are minorities, and a minority, nation-wide, is over 8 times more likely to be assigned to prison than a person of majority background. Further, there are more than 10 states where that rate is 13 times greater, and in my own District of Columbia the incarceration rate of minorities is 34 times larger. Our national rates of incarceration now exceed those of all other countries in the world, and the United States remains one of the few western nations to retain the death penalty. Additionally, numerous legal scholars are rightly concerned about American treatment of those identified as terrorists, who they believe are being detained at Guantanamo without what they consider to be appropriate legal representation. Clearly, civil rights and civil liberties are fundamental to our great nation, and the story of their nurturing – as recounted by Doris Kearns Goodwin in her work about Abraham Lincoln, Team of Rivals - rightly celebrates that great part of our national fabric. Today, in our place and time, we must give that same care to justice and liberty for all!

In my field of education, the facts are nothing short of catastrophic! For example, a 2004 report from the National Center for Education Statistics in Washington indicates that the percent of incoming 9th graders who will graduate within four years from our nation’s high schools is a dire 68% - meaning that nearly one in three Americans will not be high school educated. The numbers for men are lower than for women; the numbers for urbanites are lower than for suburbanites; the numbers for Native Americans, Blacks and Hispanics are 20% lower than for Whites, who are 15% below Asians. Is this the equity we seek? Let me tell you how one sage observer sees this boding for our future: in less time than this Commencement service will take, about 60 babies will be born in the U.S., 244 babies in China and 351 babies in India. That will mean, ultimately, that the 25% of the population in China – or 28% in India - with the highest IQ’s (and let me say, as one who educates many talented Asian students, those high IQ’s are often truly very high) will equate to more than the total population of all of North America. Very soon, China will be the largest English-speaking nation in the world and, very soon after that, India will supplant China. The U.S. will then drop to 3rd. Now, a little test: can you name this country? Richest in the world, largest military, center of global business and finance, strongest education system, pinnacle of innovation and invention, highest standard of living, and its currency the world’s standard of value. Many would immediately say the U.S., but the answer is actually England in the early 1900’s. Where did that country go in only a single century? If we asked similar questions in contemporary terms, would the answer then be the United States??? And, if so, where will the U.S. be in 100 years? Think about that, friends, and please think about it carefully.*

In a global world community, what will be the consequence of such differentials for our workers, for our economy and for you? Is this the time for our state and national governments to be decreasing their financial support for higher education and for student aid and scholarships? Are we doing all that can be done to train and attract the best teachers for our classrooms? Recent data suggests that more and more teachers are coming from lower-ranked colleges and universities, and they from the lower ranks of those institutions’ graduating classes. It also appears that information technology - and the impact of the related devices and tools - has already begun to transform the minds and work habits of many young people. Can we afford to have a teaching force that isn’t at the cutting-edge of this realm? The solutions to many current and future health, environmental, educational, economic, agricultural and other core national challenges almost certainly rest, in significant measure, with those most comfortable in employing the world’s rapidly evolving technologies. One very astute observer, Clarence Fisher, a teacher in Manitoba, has recently offered the following admonition:

“While we teach whatever we teach at school, the kids go home and learn the skills they need to survive and prosper in an interconnected global economy.

Incrementally changing our teaching methods, slowly bringing people up to speed…worked fine when ideas of literacy and education were not rapidly changing; but they are.

We need to be able to leapfrog in our understandings, in our methods, and in our tools, allowing us to move to where the kids are.

If we do not become leaders to our students, we will be followers seen as irrelevant, and left to cry in our books while the kids are off setting the agenda.”

His view is more optimistic than mine. I fear that when schools and education fail, the agenda that kids set may well not be the most desirable for them, for us or for our world!

The list of concerns I mentioned earlier is long yet certainly not all-inclusive. I have addressed a few in some detail, but the remaining beg the need for any great elaboration. Virtually all of us gathered know that we are the only nation of wealth without a national health care program. We are aware of the extreme differences in the medical care received and understand that it too often depends upon race, class and even gender. The quality of our food, medicines and water is even in question, and housing scarcely needs to be referenced. You read the daily papers and listen to the news. The rate of foreclosure is tragic for all too many, and there is real danger of serious economic instability as a result. We know, for example, that the equity in our homes is often the basis for important loans for education or business ventures and a key source of support for our retirement years. Are we painting a picture in which we can take any justifiable pride? And in our world of politics, do we like talking about ourselves as “red-staters” or “blue-staters,” or as arch conservatives or raging liberals? Do those kinds of labels bring harmony and unity, or do they fracture and divide? And, finally, in regard to national service, is the burden of caring for our country being shared in any kind of equitable manner? I can say that very few or no students from schools in affluent communities are headed into the armed forces. Should we reconsider the draft and/or require some form of national service like Teach for America or the Peace Corps? I watch with a heavy heart those that are coming home after great service to their nation to hospitals and barracks only to find dilapidated facilities and poor levels of essential services. How can we leave these people without sufficient medical care, necessary counseling or the means to financially support their families?

I implore you, as the coming generation of leadership for America, to engage your minds, hearts and resources to address these and other powerful matters of common concern. We are a “planet in peril,” but optimism must prevail. I see in you great promise for America and for the world. You have the blessing of supportive friends and loved ones, an extraordinary grounding in the liberal arts and the truly immeasurable virtue of having studied in a Quaker institution. You know that education at its best is one human being humbly exploring with other human beings the true meaning of being human. I am confident that you, like George Fox, the founder of Quakerism, will “walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.” I also know that you will, like him, “let your lives speak.” Your generation, as can be seen in our recent presidential primaries, is raising its head and its voice and is doing that, quite thankfully, for the collective good. As columnist Thomas Friedman recently wrote in The New York Times, our young people and nation need a president who will tell us that we are not now who we perceive ourselves to be, and that “We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes.” We need a president who will, among other things, fix education and health care, seek sources of renewable energy, direct the repair of national infrastructure, reconstitute the economy and redefine our place in the world community.

Those of you sitting before me in caps and gowns can and must lead the way, and you are aptly prepared to do that. In your years at Guilford College you have grasped the spirit of noted Quaker educator Stephen Cary’s observation that “There is no curriculum for values. They gradually emerge over time through students’ interactions with their fellows and through the impact of their environment and their experience, until the values become part of them and they feel them in their bones.” You have the values of this blessed place in the very fabric of your soul, and I am confident that as you leave this community you will live in such a spirit of civility, care and service that you will inevitably bring America back to its fullest and dearest sense of promise, a land unequivocally dedicated to liberty, justice and opportunity for all. Go forward today in good humor and good faith, and take profound pride in your accomplishments and promise. And please remember the extraordinary admonition of Horace Mann, the founding spirit behind free, public and universal education in America: “Be ashamed to die until you have achieved some great victory for humanity.”

Congratulations, once again, and may God’s grace be with you now and for always.

* The commentary in this paragraph is drawn, in significant measure, from Shift Happens.

President Chabotar's Charge to the Class of 2008

Kent Chabotar Now it’s my turn to give a charge to the Class of 2008. I graduated from college forty years ago this month. To paraphrase King Henry II in the play A Lion in Winter, I am the oldest person I know. I must have learned something. How else could I be a college president, 61, and alive all at the same time?

Three lessons: Visualize success, don’t sweat the small stuff, live your passion.

Remember Davidson College and its miracle run at the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship? Their star player Stephen Curry wrote in black marker at the bottom of his shoes, "I can do all things." That’s our first lesson: visualize success.

Of course, everyone fails sometime at something. I get that. But I cannot comprehend not trying. Fear is an illusion. You do not have to be a Nelson Mandela or George Patton or Fannie Lou Hamer to quit whining and get on with it. You may not have heard of Fannie Lou Hamer. Because she tried to register to vote in Mississippi, Hamer was evicted from her home, shot at, beaten and jailed. She later reflected after she eventually got to vote that "The only thing they could do to me was to kill me, and it seemed like they'd been trying to do that a little bit at a time ever since I could remember."

Like Fannie Lou Hamer, the most successful people do not succumb to their fears and dwell on problems. They find opportunities even in the most hopeless situations.

Don’t give up on the child who apparently cannot learn. Find a more effective way to teach.
Don’t give up on the job you want. Keep knocking on doors even if your knuckles bleed. Network with people who can help you even if your smile freezes and your feet hurt. Getting a “No” simply sets you up to find someone else who will say “Yes.”
Don’t give up on being a force for social change. Don’t buy the status quo in environmental protection, health care, housing for the homeless, and paramount issues of war and peace. We can do better. Yes we can.

This year’s presidential race has allowed parents around the world to point to Obama, Clinton, and McCain and say to their sons and daughters, “There, you see? You can be anything you want to be.”

Whoever coined the phrase, “Don’t sweat the small stuff” probably never played for Dean Smith at Carolina or worked for Jack Welch at GE. Nevertheless, our second lesson is that most of what stresses us out does not really matter.

Traffic on I-95.
A long line in the caf.
A screaming kid or cell phone loser on an airplane.
Forgetting to TiVo “American Idol.”
Getting a non-fat latte when you ordered a decaf cappuccino.

Who cares? Keep your eye on the important issues in your personal and professional life:

Don’t get diverted by small things you want to do or like to do. Save time for big things you have to do.
Don’t obsess when someone ticks you off or does something stupid but minor. Deal with it. Get over it. It’s easy to hate. It’s far harder to forgive.
Celebrate your colleagues and friends for who they are and what they can do instead of focusing on what they aren’t and can’t.

During the Civil War, or what some of you call the War of Northern Aggression, General Grant won many battles including Fort Donelson and Shiloh after a string of Union losses by incompetent commanders. Nevertheless, Grant’s heavy drinking drew serious criticism and calls for his dismissal. President Lincoln put it all in perspective when he responded, “I cannot spare this man; he fights. If I knew what brand of whiskey he drinks I would send a barrel or so to my other generals.”

Another story I like is about Pope John XXIII who was once asked how many people work at the Vatican? Without missing a beat, he replied, “About half.”

Finally, the third lesson is live your passion. Life is too short not to be doing what you love. Listen to your heart. Half my friends hate their jobs. I love mine. My days are spent helping students learn, faculty teach, administrators manage, and trustees govern In ancient times, many felt that the highest accolade was Civis Romanus Sum, I am a citizen of Rome. I say with even more pride, I am an educator. I am a teacher.

For me, the alarm clock test is fundamental. When you have a job and every day when the alarm clock rings, how do you feel about getting up?

If you’re psyched about going to work, you’ve passed the test.
If you’re miserable day after day, perhaps it’s time for a change. And one day, you’ll get up and, like Howard Beale in the film Network, think to yourself or say out loud, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Have the life you want. Allow your creativity to lead you to becoming an architect, artist or an actor. Follow your feelings to start a relationship or even a family. Capitalize on the leadership skills you learned here to build a business, become a president or director, or motivate others to achievements they would never do on their own.

In addition, remember that there are second chances. George Eliot wrote, "It is never too late to be what you might have been." For, at your end of days, whether you have taken one path or twenty, what you seek is that singular serenity of knowing that your life has been well spent, and that it mattered.

There you have it: three lessons for a Saturday morning. Please pack those thoughts in your suitcase, duffel bag, or car as you prepare to leave.

Saying good-bye is tough. While we are smiling now, the faculty and staff also have feelings of sadness mixed with pride. Our whole purpose has been to prepare you for today so you can soar like eagles into all your tomorrows. If you stay here, we have failed. So take off now; but please come back. A part of you will always be here amidst the Quad, Founders and Frank, lake and woods and meadows, and the women and men whose lives you touched. Thus, I cannot bring myself to say “good-bye.” I’ll just say, “See you later.”

May 10, 2008