Law Schools

The Best Lessons To Draw From Years Of Commencement Addresses

Robert Smith offered a tremendous gift to the graduating Morehouse class and teaches a valuable lesson.

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“I live the life I deserve, blessed / F*ck a vacay, I feel better at work / I mean, whatever it’s worth, I give whatever I’m worth / For my brothers who gone to hell and back for me / I’m going to give them heaven on earth / Or a hell of a check, yeah, whichever comes first / Blessings on blessings on blessings / Look at my life, man, that’s lessons on lessons on lessons.” — Big Sean

Billionaire investor Robert F. Smith ’85 left the 2019 Morehouse Class speechless last week during his commencement address to the College.

He began his address by congratulating the graduates and reminding them that they’ve had a lot of help along the way — “we are all the product of a community, a village, a team and many of those who’ve made contributions for you to arrive at this very moment today are with us. So first and foremost, I’m going to ask you one more time to stand up, turn around, and celebrate all these people, our community, and our family who are here to celebrate you.”

Near the end of his address, he stunned the nearly 400 graduating students when he announced that he planned to pay off their student debts. “On behalf of the eight generations of my family who have been in this country, we’re going to put a little fuel in your bus. I’ve got the alumni over here. And this is a challenge to alumni. This is my class, 2019. And my family is making a grant to eliminate their student loans,” Smith said. After excited “MVP” chants emanated from the crowd, he closed his speech with the following words:

I know my class will make sure to pay this forward. And I want my class to look at these alumni, these beautiful Morehouse brothers — and let’s make sure every class has the same opportunity going forward. Because we are enough to take care of our own community. We are enough to ensure we have all the opportunities of the American dream. And we will show it to each other through our actions, through our words, and through our deeds. So Class of 2019 may the sun always shine upon you, may the wind always be at your back, and may God always hold you in the cradle of her hand.

According to the LA Times: “The student debt for the class of 2019 is estimated to be as much as $40 million, though no immediate total had been calculated.”

I’ve seen many commencement speeches in my day, but I’ve never witnessed anything like what Smith announced two Sundays ago. He truly seems cut from a different cloth. His reverent words and accompanying works remind me of James 2:14 – 26:

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What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,’ but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, ‘You have faith, and I have works’. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works…. For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.

A few years ago, Vault’s Associate Law Editor Kristina Rudic published a curated list of commencement speeches in hopes of inspiring the 2016 graduating class. Over the past few years, Time, USA Today, CNBC, Seventeen, and Business Insider have also compiled lists of their favorite commencement speeches to inspire their respective audiences. As Time has stated, “Commencement speeches are one of the great collegiate traditions — and the last lesson students get before entering the real world.”

In the spirit of this time-honored tradition, here are a dozen quotes from some of our favorite speeches to inspire this year’s graduating law class:

There will be times when you shouldn’t compromise your core values, your integrity, and you will have the responsibility to speak up in the face of injustice. But listen. Engage. If the other side has a point, learn from them. If they’re wrong, rebut them. Teach them. Beat them on the battlefield of ideas. And you might as well start practicing now, because one thing I can guarantee you – you will have to deal with ignorance, hatred, racism, foolishness, trifling folks. I promise you, you will have to deal with all that at every stage of your life. That may not seem fair, but life has never been completely fair. Nobody promised you a crystal stair. And if you want to make life fair, then you’ve got to start with the world as it is.

– Barack Obama, Howard University, 2016

There is no straight path from your seat today to where you are going…. Careers are not ladders, those days are long gone, but jungle gyms. Don’t just move up and down, don’t just look up, look backwards, sideways around corners. Your career and your life will have starts and stops and zigs and zags. Don’t stress out about the white space – the path you can’t draw – because there in lies both the surprises and the opportunities.

– Sheryl Sandberg, Harvard University, 2014

Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer. Maybe you know exactly what it is you dream of being, or maybe you’re paralyzed because you have no idea what your passion is. The truth is, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know. You just have to keep moving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, staying open to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life. Perfect is boring and dreams are not real. Just … do. So you think, ‘I wish I could travel.’ Great. Sell your crappy car, buy a ticket to Bangkok, and go…. You don’t have a job? Get one. Any job. Don’t sit at home waiting for the magical opportunity. Who are you? Prince William? No. Get a job. Go to work. Do something until you can do something else.

– Shonda Rhimes, Dartmouth College, 2014

You’ll meet a lot of people who, to put it simply, don’t know what they’re talking about…. Develop your own compass, and trust it. Take risks, dare to fail, remember the first person through the wall always gets hurt.

– Aaron Sorkin, Syracuse University, 2012

Scientists have given a new name to the deaths that occur in surgery after something goes wrong—whether it is an infection or some bizarre twist of the stomach. They call them a ‘Failure to Rescue.’ More than anything, this is what distinguished the great from the mediocre. They didn’t fail less. They rescued more…. You will have failures. But it’s what happens afterwards that is defining. A failure often does not have to be a failure at all. However, you have to be ready for it – Will you admit when things go wrong? Will you take steps to set them right? – Because the difference between triumph and defeat, you’ll find, isn’t about willingness to take risks. It’s about mastery of rescue.

– Atul Gawande, Williams College, 2012

My case illustrates how success is always rationalized. People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck — especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don’t want to acknowledge the role played by accident in their lives. There is a reason for this: the world does not want to acknowledge it either…. Life’s outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them. Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck – and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky.

– Michael Lewis, Princeton University, 2012

In 2000, I told graduates ‘Don’t be afraid to fail.’  Well now I’m here to tell you that, though you should not fear failure, you should do your very best to avoid it.   Nietzsche famously said ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’  But what he failed to stress is that IT ALMOST KILLS YOU. Disappointment stings and, for driven, successful people like yourselves it is disorienting.  What Nietzsche should have said is ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you, makes you watch a lot of Cartoon Network and drink mid-price Chardonnay at 11 in the morning.’

– Conan O’Brien, Dartmouth College, 2011

In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it…. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives…. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world’s deepest inequities, on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.

– Bill Gates, Harvard University, 2007

Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary…. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

– Steve Jobs, Stanford University, 2005

You are your own stories and therefore free to imagine and experience what it means to be human without wealth. What it feels like to be human without domination over others, without reckless arrogance, without fear of others unlike you, without rotating, rehearsing and reinventing the hatreds you learned in the sandbox.

– Toni Morrison, Wellesley College, 2004

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you’ll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders. Respect your elders.

–  Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune, 1997

The work itself is the reward, and if I choose challenging work, it’ll pay me back with interest. At least I’ll be interested, even if nobody else is.

– Meryl Streep, Vassar College, 1983

You’ve all heard these maxims a million times before — “genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration,” “the best way to predict the future is to create it,” “the harder I work, the luckier I get,” “life’s a journey,” and “some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers.”

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They’re all true, a successful career is created by elements of passion, hard work, talent, luck, blessings, and opportunity. But a successful life should also be measured by what you were able to give back to the community, how you were able to lift others, and your faith through your works.

Whether you strive to be the next Robert Smith, Elon Musk, Stephen Curry, Michelle Roberts, Sheryl Sandberg or Michelle Obama, one trait is consistent in all their respective careers: grit – passion and perseverance. So may your life experiences help you develop grit and your grit help you develop life experiences. May your failures become stepping stones to success.

And at the end of the day, when we are fighting for a seat at the head of the table, let’s make sure to pull up a seat for others whenever we have a chance and are fortunate enough to be put in such a position.

Renwei Chung is the Diversity Columnist at Above the Law. You can contact Renwei by email at projectrenwei@gmail.com, follow him on Twitter (@renweichung), or connect with him on LinkedIn.

 

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