THESE VITAL SPEECHES

42
CICERO SPEECHWRITING AWARDS
WINNER: COMMENCEMENT/CONVOCATION ADDRESS
“I Didn’t Follow a Dream”
By Aaron Hoover for Kent Fuchs,
President, University of Florida
Delivered at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center,
University of Florida, Gainesville, Fla., Aug. 7, 2015
Graduates, we have now reached
the part of the program known as
the commencement address. The cartoonist
Garry Trudeau has remarked
that the commencement address was
“invented largely in the belief that
outgoing college students should never
be released in the world until they have
been properly sedated.”
If you’ve been to other commencements,
you know that too many speakers
dispense advice you’ve heard before
to … learn from your failures … listen
to your inner voice … and follow your
passion and dreams.
All are fine ideas, and all worth trying
to live by.
But what if your failures just seem
like failures? What if, when you listen
to your inner voice, you don’t hear
anything? What if … despite having
just spent years earning your valuable
UF degree … you’re still not quite sure
about your passion … or your dreams
keep changing?
If this describes your predicament
right now… just an hour or so from
leaving the comfort of the UF campus
and entering the uncertain world … let
me be the first to tell you: It’s going to
be OK. More than OK. In fact, it may
even be preferable not to be hearing
voices or having dreams!
Uncertainty, in our lives and in
our careers is good, whether we work
in science, the arts … and yes, even
higher education leadership. The
important thing is not to have needless
anxiety about uncertainty and not to
let uncertainty paralyze you.
Instead, choose action. Start down
any one of the several good paths
before you, and let your journey reveal
your direction and shape your dreams.
Ride your uncertainty, discover your
new course, and enjoy your developing
and maybe surprising new dreams.
I come to this advice from my own
personal experience. I went to high
school in Miami, at Miami Killian
High School. There, I had a spectacularly
good physics teacher. He inspired
me to enter college with a dream of
becoming a scientist, and I started as a
physics major at Duke University.
It didn’t last. By my sophomore
year, my physics classes were difficult,
and my roommate convinced me electrical
engineering would be easier. So,
I changed my major, hoping college
would become a little more fun. I know
none of you ever did anything like that!
For me, an even bigger transformation
came when I began attending a
church that was popular with college
students. My time at this church proved
so powerfully enriching that when it
came time for graduation, I didn’t want
to be a scientist anymore. I had earned
a degree in engineering, but I didn’t
want to be an engineer. My new dream
was to become a minister.
I pursued this dream by enrolling in
a three-year Masters of Divinity degree
at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
in Chicago. There, I took a homiletics
class on the art of writing and preaching
sermons. It didn’t go so well.
What I learned was this: I was not
very good at stirring people’s emotions
and reaching their hearts … but that I
could reach their minds. I was a better
teacher than I was a preacher.
So, my dream changed yet again. I
didn’t want to be a scientist or engineer.
I didn’t want to be pastor. I
wanted to be a college teacher.
Off I went from Divinity School in
Chicago to the University of Illinois
in Urbana-Champaign, where I spent
another five and half years earning a
doctorate in electrical and computer
engineering and then eleven years as a
professor.
During my years as a professor, I
knew for certain that I did not want to
ever become a university administrator.
I only wanted to teach students and
work in my lab with students. I rejected
suggestions that I become a department
chair, and I told my friends and
family that I would never be a dean or
provost … and certainly not a university
president!
I have found over the 30 years of
my career that the uncertainty in the
future has been the best part of my
life’s path. I didn’t have a dream that I
have been following since I graduated
from college. Rather, my dreams and
passion developed and grew with my
opportunities and circumstances.
I didn’t follow a dream or a passion.
My passions and dreams followed
me, emerging and developing
based on my actions.
I have the utmost respect and
admiration for those whose life path
is straight and sure. But I bet your
parents and other loved ones in the audience
today would agree with me that
first zigging this way, and then zagging
that way, is the more common path—
and often the zigging and zagging is
the better path.
Certainly that was true for the
woman who spent years trying to be
a writer, and then worked in advertising
and did research for the military,
before discovering a love for French
cuisine in her late 30s. We can all toast
Julia Child’s late arrival to her success
in popularizing gourmet cooking in
the home.
It’s a very good thing for science and
humanity that a young man named
Charles Darwin gave up on his pursuit
of a medical degree, much to his family’s
deep disappointment.
Millions of readers should count
themselves fortunate that John Grisham
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