Welcome

Thank you for that warm introduction. My name is Clair and I'm part of this graduating class of 2010. Thank you all for being here: friends, parents, relatives, professors, and school administrators. And for those of you who couldn't make it to support us here: don't think we won't remember. And we plan on becoming very rich and powerful, so watch out.

Introduction

One of my favorite quotes of all time is by a man you may have heard of - Thomas Edison. He said that, when working on the lightbulb, he hadn't failed 10,000 times - he just found 10,000 ways that didn't work. In that one quote, I've always found the difference between a winning attitude and a quitting attitude: if you can learn from your failures, and even find them positive in some ways, you will always be way ahead of the curve.

Reflections

I bring up the subject of failure because we've all been there. College is a great simulation of the real world because we get to experience some of these failures without a lot of the sting that might come if we failed to repay a house loan, or messed up in a meeting at work. Sure, it does sting a little when you see that "D" on your midterm paper, but that kind of failure can be a very useful thing. After all, what would Thomas Edison say? He would say that the "D" is a helpful indicator that you don't study hard enough.

The plain and honest truth is not all of us will always be met with success the moment we leave college. A tough job market means we may be sitting at home for months while we wait for news on a job interview - by the way, thanks to all of the parents out there for your shelter and microwave burritos. We really appreciate it.

Today we're celebrating leaving college, and it's going to be a great day full of family, foods, and fun, and we'll all enjoy reveling in our accomplishment. But the Earth will spin around again and we'll be faced with a new day in which relatives aren't handing us checks and no one's tossing hats into the air simply because we walk into the room.

It's the experience we have in college - both the good times, but especially the bad - that should prepare us for the challenges ahead.

Future

If we can learn from our failures - and our successes - like Thomas Edison did, then we put our education to its fullest use. Professors don't give our papers "D" grades because they hate us and want to see us suffer - even if it feels that way. They do it because they'd rather write down an "A." When you're messing up, failure is useful because it shows you that things have had to change.

Well, we know one thing: we're not failures - not one of us in this room. Today, we're college graduates. And since we know we can look at these challenges in the face and overcome them, we're ready for the world, even if it's sometimes not going to be as easy as we might imagine.

Conclusion

With all this talk of overcoming failure, let me leave you on a more luminous note. The idea of challenges and obstacles doesn't have to be a depressing one. We can either take our failures and use them as an autobiography, or we can be like Thomas Edison and say "Good - that's one more way how not to do it."

How well does that attitude work? You may notice that this room isn't lit by kerosene lamps.

Thank you.