Thursday, May 22, 1997 Remarks by
William R. Brody, President
The Johns Hopkins University Good morning, graduates! Welcome to the first day of the
rest of your life. Or at least, the first day of your real
life. Good morning also to the friends, and relatives, children,
spouses and significant others, grandparents and associates
of our graduates. Thank you for joining us today. You have
every reason to be very proud of your loved one's
achievements. We share your pride, and your optimism for
their future. And good morning, especially, to the parents of our
graduates. You who have been to the pinnacles of exaltation
and through the darkest vales of tears with these students
have special cause to celebrate. These fine men and women
who are leaving us today have demonstrated great fortitude
and determination to arrive here this morning. You have
schooled them well: teaching them the value of hard work
and perseverance, encouraging them to honor the
accomplishments of the mind, instructing them in compassion
and commitment and conscience. You gave them your best, and hoped and prayed for the best
in return. You taught them to think for themselves, and, in
doing so, reminded them the best possible way to do that
was to first think of others. You even, somewhere in the
past, gave them the means of doing so. You said they must
always remember three magic words: "please" and "thank
you." And yet, still you worried, and fretted that perhaps you
had not done enough. Today, you may set your worries aside
at last. Today, you know the answer: your loved ones did
not disappoint. They have achieved great things. And, in
token of their gratitude, today they have three magic words
of their own they can now offer to you: "No more tuition."
... Well, at least, for some of you. I wish to welcome also our faculty and staff who have come
here today to acknowledge and celebrate the achievements of
our graduates; and to the members of our Board of Trustees,
who volunteer so much of their time and expertise to guide
this great institution, and have still made time to be here
on this day. I would also like to welcome Baltimore City
mayor Kurt Schmoke, an alumnus of Yale, it's true, but for
many years now a true friend and supporter of the Johns
Hopkins University. It is my great pleasure and honor and privilege as the
president of Johns Hopkins University to welcome you all. I stand before you today in a somewhat unique situation.
Today, I am the commencement speaker. A week and a half
from now, my wife and I will be sitting in the audience at
Dartmouth, watching our daughter, Ingrid, graduate. I am
keenly aware that what miseries of speaking too long, or to
no general purpose, that I inflict upon you today may be
returned, several times over, to me next week. And so I
will offer the three magic words that should be the motto
of every commencement speaker: "I'll be brief." Knowing that I will soon be sitting where you are, I have
been thinking a lot about what words I might offer to my
own daughter at this wonderful and exhilarating juncture in
her life. Eventually, I came up with three things I thought
I should tell her, three ideas that may help smooth the way
a bit as she ventures through adulthood. It is axiomatic for parents that giving advice to your
children is like shoveling sands into the desert with a
spoon; therefore, I have decided to take a different tack.
I thought, for the parents in the audience today, I would
offer this advice to your children instead. I ask only one small favor in return. If, next week, any of
you are planning on being at Dartmouth, and you see my
daughter, perhaps you would consider passing some of this
on. Just don't tell her where it came from. There was a "Peanuts" cartoon many years ago where the
doctor — in this case, Lucy the psychiatrist — was in. A
despondent Charlie Brown sat before her, asking why life
was so full of adversity. "Why that's simple, Charlie
Brown," said Lucy. "Adversity builds character!" "And why do we need character?" asked Charlie Brown. "To prepare for more adversity!" came Lucy's immediate
reply. Sometimes I think it's frightening how true this
fundamental paradox can be. And so, one of those lessons in life I would offer our
graduates today is, on the surface, a deceptively simple
corollary to Lucy's Law of Adversity. And that is, it takes
real wisdom to avoid making painful mistakes. To which our
graduates, will immediately respond, "But how may we gain
that wisdom, to avoid those painful mistakes?" I must confess that, most often, wisdom comes by making
other mistakes — and sometimes making them repeatedly.
There is no shortcut of which I am aware. Because at some point on this journey, each of us has to
learn an essential truth: It is rarely the size or the
nature of the mistakes we make, but rather the readiness we
demonstrate to learn from them, that marks who we are and
what we accomplish. Graduates, it is, unfortunately, the
reality that we usually learn far more from our failures
than from our successes. Mistakes happen. With any luck, we learn from them. The
most rewarding response to failure comes from getting back
up, dusting yourself off, and getting on with things.
Thomas Edison conducted literally hundreds of unsuccessful
attempts to make the electric light bulb. Each failing
experiment pointed the way towards ultimate success. Our own Baltimorean, Babe Ruth, is known as the best home
run hitter ever. For decades, he held the record for the
largest number of home runs hit in a single season. You may
not know that he also held the record for the largest
number of strikeouts in a single season. People will
remember your successes long after they have forgotten your
failures — yet it is your failures, or mistakes, that pave
the path to success. I only hope my daughter figures that out faster than I did. The second idea I'd like to suggest is the need to maintain
balance. Our students are very bright, very motivated and
very ambitious. They fit in well at a place like Hopkins. How then can we communicate that, while a career is
important, it is not the only thing — perhaps it is not
even the major thing — that matters in this brief life? There are family and children, friends and the community
and a hundred worthy activities that will demand your time.
Not all those demands can be met. You will need to make
choices. It's important to remember that not everything of
worth has a dollar sign affixed to it. In fact, many of the
most valuable things — the priceless ones — do not. At the beginning of this year, at our freshman convocation,
I had the pleasure of introducing someone to our entering
students who had something to say in this regard. Her name
is Ruth Davidon, and she is a some-time student in the
School of Medicine. I say "some-time student" not because
Ruth only attends classes infrequently, or is less than
devoted to her studies. Quite the contrary. It's just Ruth
has a special extracurricular ability: she's one of the
fastest single-scull rowers alive. In fact, she is so fast that she decided to take a little
time off from her medical studies to compete in last
summer's Olympics. She made the finals — a remarkable
feat. We were all disappointed that she didn't win a medal.
But she did do something unique. She took the time to step
outside her career and gave her all to something she truly
loved. The secret I would suggest to you today is to try to
remember there is no age limit on this type of activity.
Our careers will always make great demands on us; we need
occasionally to say no, and go rowing. Even though Ruth Davidon didn't win her Olympic race, she
had a fabulous experience and gained tremendously from it.
She struck that balance, and in the long run, I'd say not
only is she a clear winner, but she will be a far better
physician for it. So this is some of what I'd tell my daughter: I'd tell her
to be accepting of her mistakes, and to try to keep her
life in balance. Finally, I would let her in on one of the
great secrets of the waning days of the 20th century.
Today, I'm pleased to share it with you. "Career planning" is a misnomer. In fact, it's probably a contradiction in terms. Certainly, it's great to have dreams and goals and
ambitions. They're important and, I think, even necessary.
And my daughter, just like all the graduates sitting in
this audience today, has a good share of all of those
things. But even the brightest dreams, the loftiest goals
and the sharpest ambitions can't assure the future. Let me quote from Al Ries' and Jack Trout's book, "Horse
Sense," a quick read I would heartily recommend to all who
are going to find themselves sitting on a beach or
stretching out in a hammock in the next couple of weeks,
wondering about how to plan for the future: "If your goal was to be chief executive of a computer
company," they wrote, "would you have spent the first 16
years of your working life with a cola company? Probably
not. Yet that's what former Apple Computer chairman and CEO
John Sculley did ... . "If you wanted to own a pizza chain, would you have started
out in computers, eventually taking the job of vice
president of management information services at Pillsbury?
That's what Herman Cain, president of Godfather's Pizza,
did." Perhaps a bit closer to home: If you wanted to be the most
successful media entrepreneur of our time, would you go to
Johns Hopkins, study engineering and then spend the first
15 years of your working career as a bond trader on wall
street? There's someone who was rumored to do that also. I won't
identify him, but you can read all about his career in the
recently published book, "Bloomberg by Bloomberg." Pablo Picasso once said: "If you always know exactly what
you want, that will be the most you'll ever find." The point, of course, is not that you can't have goals, or
that you shouldn't plan; what they are suggesting is that
we all need to be open to opportunities we aren't
anticipating, we need to be ready to follow the paths we
didn't expect. Bill Gates knew he had a future in software, but he hardly
could have guessed how successful he would be. At age 40,
he is the wealthiest man in the world. George Bernard Shaw
didn't begin writing plays until he was 30; Ray Kroc, the
highly successful chairman and CEO of McDonald's, was 51
before he ever saw his first Big Mac; and Grandma Moses
didn't take to painting until she was 78 years of age. It's not a question of mapping out your future and then
following from point A to point B; the reality of life in
the closing days of the 20th Century is that we can expect
the unexpected. It will be more of the same — only much,
much different. In the coming century, it is the career following a single
trajectory that will probably be unusual. Many of you
graduating today will have not one career, or two, but
several — perhaps even dozens. We're living longer, we're
working longer, and new careers are being defined every
day. But our graduates know that. My daughter knows it too. Last year, she was working in
Singapore, designing web pages. What is a web page
designer? I'm not exactly sure. Nobody ever taught me about
that in my college days, nor even three years ago. The
important point is: don't be concerned if you aren't sure
exactly what you are going to do in the future: It's truly
impossible to plan for a career that doesn't yet exist. But we can at least be prepared to seize opportunity when
it knocks. We can be ready to expect the unexpected, and be
willing to view these discontinuities not as challenges,
but as opportunities. I'm pleased to say, I think all of the graduates in this
audience are prepared, ready, and willing to accept the
challenges. Your Johns Hopkins education is an ideal
preparation for a world laced with uncertainty and change. This morning's ceremony is rich in the kind of pageantry
and ritual and tradition we associate with momentous
occasions — and well it should be. The robes and hoods, the processional music, the formal
invocations and high seriousness of it all are meant to
reinforce the significance of this event. I hope you have
enjoyed them. You have certainly earned them. But now comes the hard part. All of what came before was but preparation. The real tasks
lie ahead. No doubt, you will need every skill you have so
far mastered — and many more you have not yet begun to
possess. And while I cannot stand here this morning and predict
which of you will blaze like stars, and which will go
quietly and competently about your business with little
fanfare but no less success, I can say, at least, with
considerable confidence, that each of you is capable and
motivated and exceptionally well prepared. In fact, I will venture to suggest there is not another
group of graduates of any university anywhere that has the
vision and imagination and talents of this group seated
here today. Though I suspect next week, when I'm at Dartmouth, I'll be
hearing someone else say very much the same thing. No
doubt, like the parents here today, I'll be nodding my head
in complete agreement. And like all parents everywhere, when it comes right down
to it, I probably won't know exactly what to say to my new
graduate. Other than: I'm proud of you, I wish you well,
and I have every reason to believe the best is all before
you. Members of the class of 1997: Today is a wonderful day,
memorable for us all. Let me again offer my congratulations
to those of you who receive degrees today, and my good
wishes to your families and friends who have stood beside
you and supported you throughout your studies. Your
university is proud to call you alumni and alumnae; as
members of the Hopkins family, you will always be welcomed
here. May all of you fare well on the journey ahead. Thank you. | 
