FROM THE OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Congratulations Graduates!  Thank you for welcoming me back to Mynderse Academy.  Twenty-nine years and four days ago, I sat where you are sitting today.  I don’t know why it has taken you four more days to graduate than it took us in the Class of 1974—maybe we were in a hurry, or maybe we just had fewer snow days.

As I say, I sat where you are, so I know that I am on borrowed time.  I have some recent experience with graduations.  My daughter, Cindy, graduated just last week from Chantilly High School, in northern Virginia.  There were present for her graduation just shy of 600 students, some 13 beach balls, and one inflatable floating ring—but the ring didn’t toss around as well as the beach balls.

Today is a day of celebration.  So rather than give a long speech, let me celebrate with you, and help us all understand what we celebrate.

First of all, we are celebrating your achievement.  Whether you got to this point on your own steam, or with a lot of pushing, pulling, coaxing and coercion—and I suspect that a combination of all of that brought you here—you are here today, here as graduates.  You will receive a diploma that has your name on it, because you met the standards, you earned it.  It took you thirteen years—maybe some of you more than thirteen years.  But you finished, and we recognize that, and we salute you for it.

But who are you, and what do you represent?  Here I find something else to celebrate.  As I prepared for today, it struck me that I might be speaking to the sons and daughters of some of my classmates who joined me in that procession nearly 30 years ago.  Some of the last names on the list of graduates are very familiar.  But there are new names, names that were not found on the list of the Class of 1974.  Last week, as those 600 graduates at Chantilly walked up and received their diplomas, I was impressed by the names, and the story behind the names.  There were names like Andrews, Baxter, Cohen, and Davenport, Eslinger, Falletti, Larson, and O’Connor.  They were joined by classmates with names like Abawi, El-Oyoun, Borkowski, and Gonzalez, Katebi, Kim, Nguyen, and Zafar, names from all parts of the world.  They and their parents had all come to America, because all around the world, America means opportunity, after nearly 400 years, it still means opportunity.  And they had seized that opportunity, and all were there, together, each and all graduating from high school in America, where else but in America.  I see that here today.  And that is something to celebrate.

Now, a third great thing to celebrate today:  you are graduating from Mynderse Academy!  You join the ranks of a great tradition.  In Washington alone, I have known graduates from Mynderse Academy working in senior counsels of the White House, in the halls of Congress, in public policy organizations, major national newspapers, and two of us from the Class of 1974 have now served as Assistant Secretaries of the Treasury.  Sometimes in conversation the subject of high school comes up.  “Where did you go to high school?”  Someone replies, “Well, I went to Springfield High School,” or “East High School,” or “Millard Fillmore High School.”  “Where did you go to high school?” they ask.  I went to Mynderse Academy.  I am proud to say it still. 

I am proud to say it, because it sounds great:  Mynderse Academy.  But I am proudest to say it because of what it means to me, because of what I picked up at Mynderse Academy.  You have picked up a lot of things during your time at Mynderse, much of which will be of value, some things that may not.

For the remaining few minutes that I have with you this evening, let me share with you some of the things that I picked up, that I brought away with me from Mynderse Academy, things that have worked for me.

Number one, you can date the girls from Waterloo.  In fact, I married one of the girls from Waterloo, in fact the Valedictorian of the Waterloo High School Class of 1978.  I have often told her that as Valedictorian at Waterloo, she probably would have done well at Mynderse, probably graduated in the top ten.  I really believe that.

Something else that I picked up at Mynderse was the knowledge that, while your real failures are all your own, your successes involve a lot of helping hands.  In a recent magazine interview I was asked the following question:  you spent more than twenty years working for the United States Senate; what would you say was your greatest achievement?  I replied that I couldn’t name one, not because I was not involved in a lot of successes over that time.  I was involved in many.  I said that I couldn’t name one, because accomplishing anything in the Congress requires the participation of many people, 51 Senators to begin with.  No achievement was mine alone.  Success comes in working together with a lot of people.

Sometimes you are a leader, sometimes an effective assistant, but always you are working together.  A team won’t succeed without its members, but there is always a team.  Your success here today is yours, but don’t forget the team.  And something else that I have learned since:  there’s no limit to the good you can do if you don’t worry about who gets the credit.

The next of my acquisitions from Mynderse is closely related:  your failures, your real failures, come when you stop trying.  No one from the Class of 1974 will remember me as an athlete.  I usually got picked last for football, basketball, even dodge ball—and I was pretty good at dodge ball:  hard to hit a small target.  But one year, I got gymnastics into my blood, not that I was good at it, I wasn’t.  It is that fact that I was so poor at it that is the point.  I wanted to do a hand spring.  I couldn’t do a handspring.  I tried and tried and couldn’t do it.  Some might say that wisdom is knowing when to quit.  I didn’t quit.  I kept at it.  For study halls, I went to the gym and practiced; after school, I went to the gym and practiced.  At last I did it.  It wasn’t pretty, but it was a hand spring.  Then I quit.  But first I succeeded.  I learned from that to keep at it.  One of those successes in the Senate that I participated in was a major change to our banking laws that Congress had been working on for 20 years.  You keep at it, and you will succeed.

Another gem that I picked up at Mynderse:  In the end, it does not matter how hard you try, it is what you produce.  A 100 on the Chemistry Regents Exam is a 100, whether it was easy or hard, and a 60 won’t pass.  Why is that?  Why isn’t it good enough just to do your best?  There are two reasons.  First of all, when you are paying the bill, you aren’t interested in how hard the man tries, but whether he gets the job done.  You are not going to be happy if the dentist says, “I didn’t finish filling the cavity, but I did my best.  That’ll be $100 dollars.  Try not to chew on that side.  Have a nice day.”  You are not going to have a nice day, whether the dentist did his best or not.

The second reason why what you do is more important than how hard you try, is because it makes you try harder.  I have achieved many things in my life that I couldn’t do, or at least that I did not know that I could do.  If my standard was just do my best, I might never have done those things.  But the standard for the hard things in life—and most of the worthwhile things are the hard things—is get them done.  And doing them brings out the real “best that I can do.”  When you think about it, every great accomplishment was once an impossible task.

This December, people will gather together on a sand dune on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, celebrating the one-hundredth anniversary of the flight of the Wright Brothers.  One hundred years ago today, and for thousands of years before that, it was impossible for man to fly.  Today and every day, millions will fly.  The Wright Brothers didn’t settle for doing their best.  They kept at it until they flew.  What might you achieve that will be celebrated for a hundred years to come if you aren’t satisfied with just doing your  best?

The next gold nugget I will share with you came from a Mynderse Social Studies teacher.  He taught, you’ll never get rich working for your money; you have to get your money to work for you.  As Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, I spend a great deal of time teaching that same rule to people all over the country.  Today as you graduate from high school, I feel very certain that you are not thinking much about retiring.  You are thinking more of your first paycheck than you are of your last.

Do you know what Albert Einstein called “the greatest mathematical discovery of all time”?  Compound interest.  Why would Einstein say something like that, and why should you be interested?  Oh, please be interested—it will be worth your while.  I was asked to be inspirational in my speech, and this is the inspirational part, so pay close attention.  When you earn money, don’t spend it all.  Save some, invest some.  And what you save and invest will earn interest.  Save that, too.  Over time, good times and bad, an investment in the stock market will earn you about 7% a year.  If you let that ride, and earn interest on your interest, in about 10 years, you will double your money.  That means—and here is the power—$1,000 that you invest today, at age 18, will be worth $32,000 when you retire at about age 68.  If you wait until you are 28 to invest that $1,000, it will only be worth $16,000 when you retire.  It doubles every 10 years, but you can’t add years at the end, only at the beginning.

There is much more that I brought with me from Mynderse Academy.  My basket was full.  These are a few.  Let me finish by talking about finishing.

A great American religious leader, Thomas S. Monson, noted a small sign in the sales window of a furniture store as one day he walked the streets of his home town, Salt Lake City.  The sign said, “Finishers Wanted”.  In the furniture business, a finisher is the person who puts the final touches on a piece of furniture to get it ready for sale, to make it attractive and useful to customers.  Bishop Monson thought how that sign is in the window of every business, of every walk of life.  The world has many starters, but it’s the finishers who are in demand.  Without them, nothing is ever quite done.

Today, there will be tears in you parents’ eyes, even your dad’s (though he may try to hide it).  Your parents today are finishers.  They look on you today with pride, with pride for your achievement, for what you have finished, but also with some pride or satisfaction for what they have finished.  You see, it is no big deal to START a family.  In fact, one of the curses in our country is the person who merely starts a family with no goal or plans in mind about finishing one, about raising the children and seeing them through into strong, honorable, productive adulthood.  Today, with regard to you, your parents have finished something, an important something that they started and to which they have devoted great effort and time and perseverance.

And you join them today as finishers.  You are all finishers here today.  You all can look with satisfaction upon what you have finished.  And it is that finishing that qualifies you now for a beginning in the next stage of your life.

But remember, being a graduating Senior only qualifies you for becoming a Freshman in the Fall, but at a newer, a higher level.  So let today also be a beginning, a beginning of something new.  Let it be something worthwhile, something that you might not think you can do but that needs to be done.  Go forward from here, don’t settle for just your best.  Continue on until it is finished.