The University Commencement Ceremony Speaker

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University of Tennessee at Knoxville Commencement
Governor Phil Bredesen
12 May 2006

Graduates ... President Petersen ... Chancellor Crabtree ... Members of the Administration and Faculty ... Friends ... Loved ones ... and Honored Guests. Welcome to the 2006 commencement of the University of Tennessee. We are here to share a very special day in the life of each of today's graduates.

First of all, to each of you graduating today, please let me offer my simple congratulations. You've accomplished something that is significant and all too rare. Today marks a milestone in your lives.

Andrea and I attended the graduation of our own son not so long ago, and to the parents and loved ones of the graduates who are here, I have a very personal understanding of the pride and love that you are feeling right now. This is a milestone in your lives as well.

Graduates, today also weaves together your own destiny and that of the University of Tennessee for the rest of your lives. You are today at the beginning of a lifelong partnership. Whether it is the announcement of a promotion, or your marriage, or your obituary, the fact that you are a 2006 graduate of the University of Tennessee will be right up there near the top.

Just as the university has nurtured and supported you, you now undertake an obligation to nurture and support it in the years ahead. Speak well of it, help it recruit good students and faculty, support it financially.

One of my dreams as governor is to help nurture this University to continue its growth as a first rate teaching and research university. Today's private universities are becoming more dependent on the public sector with each year. And today's great public universities, like this one, increasingly depend on the private sector for their support and growth. I'll do my part as governor to support the University of Tennessee for the few years that I am here in this job. You have many years ahead of you, and I ask you today to make a commitment to this university, to your university, to nurture and support it through those years.

And most of all, I ask you today to bring credit on the University of Tennessee by bringing credit upon yourselves.

Commencement speakers by longstanding tradition are supposed to offer advice to graduates and then to exhort them to "go forth" and build the new world. They are also by tradition expected to be brief.

Today, I'd like to honor that longstanding tradition. With regard to the requirement to pass on advice, I'd like to accomplish that primarily by passing on a few pieces of advice I received about a year ago from a very important group of people. I'm not talking about politicians or business leaders or celebrities. The advice I want to pass on to you today was given to me by a group of first graders from right here in Tennessee.

I received their advice about a year ago when I visited their school. I was greeted at the door by the school's principal, two student 'ambassadors' and a yellow-trimmed poster reading "Many Varied & Unusual Things A Governor Needs To Know." The teacher had asked them in class about what a governor needs to know and had documented these first graders' answers on a poster. It's some of that advice I'd like to pass on to you today as you complete one chapter of your lives and begin turning the page to the next.

But before I get to the serious stuff, let me first start with five interesting suggestions from the kids' list that I do see as basic to doing my job well.

No. 9, "A Governor must know how to tie his shoes." I think I have that one covered.

No. 15, "A Governor must know how to spend lots of money." The taxpayers have always suspected that, but here we have confirmation from six-year-olds.

No. 17, "A Governor must know how to not get arrested." I'd say that is important.

No. 6, "A Governor must know how to be cool for the girls." That's my personal favorite, although I have to be honest and tell you that Andrea wasn't as enthusiastic. I also told the first graders that I hoped sometime before long we'd have a lady governor who had to know how to be cool for the boys! One young lady in that class told me that would be her.

And No. 8, A suggestion that at first I didn't know what to make of, but after I thought about it realized I knew exactly what they meant: "A Governor must know how to cut meat." In my family, saying grace and then having the roast or the turkey on special occasions placed in front of you to cut was the responsibility of the grown-up man of the house. My uncle Ozzie always did it when I was younger, and my big coming of age event happened at Thanksgiving dinner as a sophomore in college, when I got to carve the turkey. I suspect the young author of "A Governor must know how to cut meat" has had the similar tradition in his or her household, and it's obvious that if you are to be a governor, this is something you have to be able to do.

So ... those are the basics, the funny ones. But, as is always the case when you talk to children, there are some other nuggets of insight that... through their sheer honesty and simplicity ... really hit the nail on the head. Whether you're governor or a new graduate or a grandparent, it's advice all of us can use, out of the mouths of innocents.

First—it was number 16 on the kids' list: "A Governor needs to know how to work seriously hard."

I know you've spent these past years of school feeling like you've worked seriously hard. Today, celebrate the results of all that hard work. Tomorrow you start over with a clean slate ... and a whole new world of "seriously hard" work awaits.

I'm sure you hear about working hard all the time; there's lots of advice on the subject— Edison: "Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."

I want to underline for you today that it is really true that it is hard work that makes the difference.

In the world of business and entrepreneurship, for every hundred people who have a good idea, there is maybe one who actually makes something happen, and that one is not the person who is smartest or got the best grades or went to the best school or had the most advantages; it is almost always the person who rolls their sleeves up, who focuses, and who does the hard work that it takes to make something happen.

I used to tell young people who worked for me in business that you earn your salary 8 to 5, and you earn your advancement outside of those hours. I feel sure I broke some U.S. Department of Labor law in saying that, but it is as true as it can be.

I graduated from college 40 years ago, and went back to my very first reunion last fall. Some of the summa cum laude students I remembered with their 4.0 averages were pottering around in nothing jobs, and some of those who I feel sure were a despair to their professors have moved the world. When you talked with them, it was focus and hard work that told the tale.

I've always been a "techie" at heart, an early adopter of almost every new technological thing, and someone asked me once in a group what was the piece of technology that had been most important in my life. I thought for a second, and gave him a completely honest answer: the most important technology has to be the alarm clock.

There is no doubt in my mind that you have the tools it takes to succeed in life. Now, I encourage you to seize this moment, decide what you really want in life, and then set the alarm.

So that's the first thought.

And the second, number 13 on the kids' list: "A Governor needs to know how to do important stuff." Remember that one; everyone needs to know how to do important stuff.

Graduation is a milestone, and those milestones are times when we pause for a moment and think about the road ahead. When you think about the future, you naturally think about what you want out of life. Some of these things are commonplace: a nice home, family vacations, security. These ambitions are common and perfectly proper.

But this is also a time to think about what a well-spent life really is—what is the important stuff that you need to do? Beyond obvious and conventional goals, what do you believe will really give your life meaning? Is it doing something lasting for your community or your country? Is it creating a loving family? Is it something else you've dreamt but haven't shared with anybody up to now?

I'd put it this way: When you wake up some morning years from now, and it's your 80th birthday, how do you tell if you did good or not? How do you tell if you did the important stuff?

Here's what I want you to do. Some evening as it is getting dark, when you're driving across Tennessee, or your plane is descending to land, I want you to scrunch up your eyes a little. I want you to imagine the lights and the planted fields disappearing, and let time slip back hundreds of years to when the forests lay on the land as far as you could see. Imagine our land as the first pioneers saw it, young and fresh and the stuff of dreams.

I want you to imagine, and to recapture the sense of awe and wonder and humility that they must have felt in the presence of what God had given them on which to build their own lives and, in the process, a new nation. I want you to capture that feeling and remember it.

And then, when you confront decisions in your own lives in the years ahead, I want you to call up that remembering. You're those first eyes to see that land: What are your dreams for it? What are your dreams for yourself and your family? What is truly important?

And you know, you don't even really have to take your mind back hundreds of years, because America is still that land of opportunity and possibility, with many chapters yet to be written in its story. In a world of too much noise and too much living for today, we just have to reach inside and remember that first of all, America was the land of limitless dreams.

A couple of years ago I had the occasion to write down what I wanted to say to future generations. I was having built a desk for my time as governor that I would leave to posterity, and I wanted to set down a personal thought for the future, and translate it into Cherokee and carve it into the wood around the top.

What I chose to memorialize for the future was my belief in that world of limitless possibility—limitless possibility for our nation and limitless possibility for each individual soul living in it. What I wrote is what I want to offer you today as my advice:

"Remember the land of undiscovered shores, where the world is young and dreams are new, and the night wind brings visions of great deeds."

I'm deeply honored to be here today: To celebrate with you this fine occasion, and to offer a few thoughts at this milestone in your own lives. As you leave here and begin to write your own stories on that land, may God bless the life of each and every one of you, and may He give you the wisdom and purpose to be a credit to your families, to your communities, and to our great nation of limitless dreams. Godspeed to each of you.