Where am I?
Undergraduate Student Commencement Speech
By Greg Zinn
Fontbonne University, December 2010
Good afternoon President Golden, Trustees, Regents, Faculty, Staff, Dr. Csikszentmihalyi, fellow graduates and guests.
What an honor it is to stand before so many individuals who have dedicated so much time and energy to education. Just think about all the hard work and dedication that was required to make it here today. Congratulations to each and every one of you on this accomplishment. Not only did we spend countless hours studying, researching, and writing papers - we could not have done it without help of an absolutely wonderful and dedicated faculty and staff. A lot of hard work went into getting us here and I think it’s important to recognize their efforts as well as our own.
For me, beginning college was a frightening experience at first. Many of you may have had the same feelings. I experienced many different emotions:
- Excitement – excitement to move forward in my education and career, excitement to learn new things and meet new people.
- Anticipation - What to expect of a particular class? How many writing assignments or projects were involved? What is the professor like?
- Fear - Am I able to do this? Am I able to meet the demands of work and school? Am I able to meet the demand of my friends and family? And worse, what if I fail? What if I let myself down or someone else?
Failure was a big fear then and it still is now; just not as much. I think I fear failure less because college and my simultaneous work experience have taught me that you learn much more from your failures than you do your successes. Often times, at work, after a large project or effort, we hold a “lessons learned” meeting or a “post-mortem” as some tend to call it. This is a big session where folks get together and dissect what went well and what didn’t. These meetings tend to focus on what didn’t go well because, at the end of the day, we all learn from those experiences and we try to improve for the future. It’s ok to fail. From failure we will find success. So let us go out into the world and fail! Fail many times over! Learn from our failures and we will continue to succeed!
In spite of fear of failure, it’s important to take on challenges. Challenges are simply opportunities; opportunities for us to demonstrate wise and virtuous characteristics, such as our knowledge or expertise, patience, discipline, and leadership. We’ve all heard the old sports cliché’ of “you’ll never hit a homerun unless you take a big swing.” It’s really true through. You’ll never know your true potential unless you are challenged. And sometimes you may have to take it upon yourself to be challenged. We won’t always have the comfort of our parents, our instructor, or our boss to challenge us. Today is the end of our most recent challenge. We were challenged, we executed when it was most important and we completed this part of our journey. This was a big swing for all of us. We took that big swing and we hit a homerun.
I am lucky to have had many personal and professional mentors in my life who knew my potential before I did. They rewarded me for doing my best and they let me know when I wasn’t living up to my abilities. I’m certain all of us had mentors along the way. As we become managers and leaders it’s important to share that with others. By sharing our knowledge and experiences we can help others grow and develop. Pay it forward. As for our own personal and professional development, we must seek our own mentors. We cannot rely on someone else to take us under their wing and provide guidance. We should take the initiative to recognize great leadership when we see it and engage those persons often for their perspective, advice and wisdom.
I was attending a work-related meeting when I heard and executive say, “When there’s credit, it’s to be given, and when there’s blame, it’s to be taken.” That statement really resonated with me, and I’ve done my best to practice that both professionally and personally. Each of us probably has a special person in our life, an aunt or uncle, parent or grandparent, teacher or friend, who has given us inspiration, hope or discipline. I absolutely could not have accomplished this without the support of my entire family, especially my wife. I pursued an education and a career. She pursued sticky hands and dirty diapers. Her steadfast support and commitment allowed me to achieve my goals. No doubt this moment is ours – this is a huge accomplishment for each of us. But we would be amiss if we failed to give credit to those who helped shape our lives and contributed to our success. Our success will not end. We’ll move on to be managers, leaders and accomplished professionals in our careers. Be sure to share your successes with those along the way. Give credit when it’s due.
I wish each and every one of you all the best as we move forward. For now, let us enjoy this moment, this success and this victory. For when this day ends, tomorrow begins and there is much work to be done to achieve the next victory and overcome the next challenge. Congratulations to the class of 2010.