I was thrilled to get a call from Leslie Murauckas recently, asking if I would be the speaker at the Adult Education Graduation in Bucksport. I considered it a real honor, I can't think of too many things as important as continuing education. Adult Ed programs understand that life gets in the way sometimes, and they work hard to find creative ways to help people learn. I feel very strongly that education is the only thing that can change the world. I'm not talking about just Algebra II here, I'm talking about changing peoples lives with knowledge.
Leslie is retiring from Adult Ed this year. No one I know has done more to promote continuing education then Leslie. She certainly has been a positive influence in my life, and for that I will always be grateful.
If you missed the graduation this year, no worries. There will be another one next year. Do you fancy yourself someone who supports your community? Ask yourself this...have you done anything to support Adult Education in your community? Shame on you (unless you have then THANK YOU!). Think about doing something...this is about making positive changes in the world. You can still save the whales and the spotted owls. Just take a minute to support people in your community who want to learn and improve. Help them learn to fish (with the proper license of course).
So with no further ado, here's my speech, from the 2016 Graduation. Congratulations to all the Graduates!
Graduation Speech
By Kevin Doyle - June 2016
Good evening everyone, and thank you Ms Murauckas for inviting me to speak. Tonight I have three things to share with you.
- Why this day is important.
- Why it’s good to Fail Fast. I know that sounds a little weird but I will explain.
- Why Relationships are important.
Before I get to these points I want to say Congratulations to all of you for your accomplishments today.
So, why do I think this day is so important? I’m positive I didn’t understand how important it was when I sat where you are in 1992. Lots of people told me it was great…but honestly…. I probably wasn’t’ listening. I thought it was great my family threw a party, and there was cake. Who doesn’t love cake right? I also thought my diploma was simply an indicator that I had achieved a certain skill level. Of course that’s true, but what I didn’t see at the time was the bigger picture; the more important accomplishment it represents. Which is the acknowledgment that I was able to set a goal, and navigate through a difficult set of tasks until I reached success.
Being here today means you have proven that you have what it takes to navigate a complex path of study to achieve success. Along the way I’m sure you encountered the support and encouragement of the dedicated adult ed staff. I’m also sure they will agree with me when I say, the credit for reaching this goal is entirely yours. You made the choice to take this path. You and you alone stayed the course and completed this goal. You should leave here tonight with confidence that you have what it takes to succeed. So again, why do I think this day so important? Because It marks a point in time where you have proven you understand the recipe for success. Whether you go from here to college, or to a new job, or continue on in your current work, you have proven you can succeed. So now you simply define a new goal, navigate the barriers, celebrate and repeat.
Now to my second point, why I think it’s good to fail fast? Fail Fast is a term I learned working in the software development world. Here’s the catch, when I say Fail Fast I’m not talking about failure. I’m talking about rapidly identifying things that don’t work, and being flexible enough to change direction quickly, to avoid failure. Traditionally developing software can take months or even years, and it’s not uncommon in the end to find major flaws costing thousands of dollars that could take months, even years to fix. A recent example we are probably all familiar with … Healthcare.gov.
Modern development methods attempt to break work up into small manageable pieces that can be completed quickly. If one of the small pieces doesn’t work, you can quickly change without a huge impact to the entire project.
I think this theory applies to many things in my life. Things are constantly changing around us all the time. Things that worked yesterday, don’t necessarily work today. It’s important to quickly recognize when things are changing, and adjust as needed to ensure success in whatever you do.
James Yourke, a distinguished professor from the University of Maryland, summarized it well when he said; “The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.”
For my third and final point I’ll talk about relationships and why I think they are so important. No one makes it through this life without a few failures. If you have taken the time to treat people well and build strong relationships it won’t matter. People will understand and help, and your failures will be small and insignificant. If you haven’t taken the time to build strong relationships people will be standing in line to snap pictures and post them on Instagram, where they will remain forever!
In the end these things really won’t matter. Relationships will.
I have one final thought to share. As I prepared for speaking today I spent countless hours reading, in an attempt to find just the right message. I studied about Janus, the Roman god of beginnings. I read gobs of graduation speeches by famous people like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Alan Alda, President Obama. As it turns out the perfect message was sitting right under my nose. It didn’t come from someone rich, or someone famous. It came from my 3-year-old granddaughter, Paige Ann. When asked by her Mom; “What do you want to be when you grow up?” her response was; “Taller, big enough to reach things!”. At first I laughed and thought, how cute is that. It took a while for it to sink in that there was a really good message in her words. It was the message I had been looking for. So in closing, Congratulations to all of you, and I encourage you to remember Paigeys advice….continue to grow, so you can reach things.
Thank you, and good night.
