Every August, I write a letter to our first-year class with advice on how to get the most from your Denison experience. Last winter, a graduating senior asked if I would bookend it with advice on how to successfully navigate the world when students graduate.
I took the student up on the challenge and organized my Commencement address around five pieces of advice to graduating seniors, as follows:
Use your liberal arts education to guide your everyday life. We give our students an education that we hope will allow them to be the architects of their own lives. A Denison education is anchored by four attributes and a set of values.
- Critical thinking: the ability to use reason, rationality, and data to understand problems and issues in their complexity.
- Creative problem solving: the capacity to move beyond critique to innovate. The world always needs people who can imagine paths forward and see beyond old solutions to find new pathways.
- Effective communication: speaking and writing in ways that others can hear while also knowing how to listen and hear the views of others so we can engage across differences and learn from one another.
- Intellectual humility: walking through life as a lifelong learner who understands we all get things wrong and therefore should always be seeking out alternative views, facts, and experiences.
Beneath this is a set of liberal arts values: a commitment to hard work, ethics, empathy, curiosity, perseverance, humor, and an appreciation that we are part of something larger than ourselves.
Second, develop habits that align with your goals. Denison alum and best-selling author James Clear ’08 writes, “What we repeatedly do, each and every day, ultimately forms the results we enjoy and the goals we achieve. Change your habits, change your systems, and you’ll transform your life, team, and organization.”
Clear often writes that we do not rise to the level of our goals, but rather, we tend to fall to the level of our habits. Our ability to be happy, successful, healthy, and productive is shaped by the habits we have or don’t have. Your habits need to align with your goals for the kind of life you want to lead.
Third, develop healthy relationships. If you get the relationships in your life right, everything else will fall into place. Develop relationships with people who bring out the best in you. Shed toxic people. Surround yourself with people who are curious, grateful, and positive. Our students spend four years on a campus that is defined by relationships. Hopefully, one of the things they learn is what a healthy relationship does and does not look like.
Fourth, be present in every moment and be performance-oriented. Stay focused on the present moment, and focus all your time and attention on enjoying that moment, learning from that moment, and performing at the highest level in that moment toward whatever you are trying to achieve.
Avoid two mental mistakes. The first is being fixated on failure. We all experience failure. Learn from it, use it to grow as a person, and then move on. But don’t ever stay fixated on it. The second is our fear of embarrassment, which too often keeps people from trying the things they most want to try. Here is a simple truth: Life gets much easier when you get over your fear of embarrassment.
Fifth, careers only look linear backward. Find a place to start and take it one step at a time. I am often asked by students, “What is the best first job?” The answer is simple: The best first job is the one you can get. Your first job is merely your first job. Everything is a step toward something. Your career will unfold in unexpected and good ways. One fun piece of advice — make it a habit to ask people at work to share their career journeys with you. People like to talk about themselves. They will be happy to share. You will learn a lot.
I am interested in your views. I plan to do this again next spring. What advice would you give graduating seniors on how to take what they learned from Denison and translate it into the life they want to live? Send me suggestions at president@denison.edu.
As I finish my 11th year at Denison, I am deeply proud and grateful to be a Denisonian. This is a great college and I feel fortunate to serve it. Thank you for all the ways you support the college.