Frank H. T. Rhodes
President Emeritus, Cornell University
Is There Life after College?
Commencement, May 11, 2002

President Sullivan, members of the Board of Trustees, members of the faculty, honored guests, College of Saint Rose graduates, whose special day this is, family and friends of the graduates, ladies and gentlemen:

Today is a great day for us all. They say that a #2 pencil and a
dream can take you anywhere, and they have taken the graduates from 18 states and 14 foreign countries to the College of Saint Rose and the Empire State Plaza this morning. Members of the Class of 2002, we congratulate you and salute you for a job well done.

I know it has not been easy. There is a slogan that was popular with students in the Sixties: "Be realistic. Demand the impossible." The College of Saint Rose has demanded that of you. Although it has provided support and encouragement at every turn -- and a wealth of opportunities on campus and beyond -- it has also held you to high standards, which you have worked hard to achieve.

It even demands, after all you've been through, that you sit through a final lecture on commencement day—just in case you missed something along the way. Let me assure you that commencement addresses have much to recommend them. Some people arise from them greatly inspired; others awake from them greatly refreshed. Just the same, you'll be relieved to know that I have promised to be brief—no matter how long it takes.

As you know, Saint Rose is a distinctive college, rooted in the Roman Catholic spiritual tradition, but welcoming men and women of all faiths, and you have gained enormously from the time you have spent at here, whether you have been a traditional student or an adult learner.

You have been students who finish what you start, and we celebrate your success today. I note with interest that Saint Rose graduates do remarkably well in their chosen professions. For example:

• 98 percent of recent business administration and accounting graduates from Saint Rose found employment in their fields soon after graduation.
• 100 percent of the graphic design graduates in the School of Arts and Humanities find employment in their field after graduation.
• Some 99 percent of Saint Rose education graduates pass the New York State teacher certification exam.
  Those are astounding success rates -- and they are due, in large measure, to the high-quality education you have received at the College of Saint Rose.

Saint Rose is a relatively small college—with about 2,700 undergraduates and 1,500 graduate students all told—but it has large expectations for its students. In close collaboration with a dedicated faculty, whose members are both distinguished scholars and committed teachers, you have had the opportunity to gain a broad-based liberal education as well as the practical knowledge necessary for life in the "real world." The College of Saint Rose is known for the degree to which internships and field studies complement more traditional classroom work. As students here, you have had a wealth of opportunities to utilize your knowledge in the corporate world and in other settings in which you expect to work -- from school classrooms, to government offices, to non-profit organizations like the United Way. Many of you have had first-hand experience in research, in fields from molecular and cell biology to psychology, and some of you have accompanied your professors to professional research meetings in those fields. This productive interplay of liberal and practical education will continue to serve you well in your life after Saint Rose.

Perhaps most important of all, you have gained enormously at Saint Rose from close association with professors who not only have superb mastery of their subject areas, but who also possess a high degree of personal integrity and commitment to their students. Your professors view teaching as a moral vocation -- not simply as a necessary distraction from their research and scholarly work. They have been your coaches, your guides and your role models during your time here. They have encouraged you and prepared you for the challenges ahead -- instilling confidence in your ability and skills, guiding you through the territory of knowledge while encouraging you to explore on your own. And, by their personal example, they have shown you how to perform according to the canons of their discipline and the standards of their profession with excellence and integrity. Only 5 percent of the nation's colleges have been recognized by the Templeton Foundation for the teaching of character education -- and the College of Saint Rose is one of them. The commitment of the faculty to teaching as a moral vocation is "the Saint Rose difference," and it has given you a way of looking at the world—and acting in the world—that will be invaluable to you, no matter what career you have chosen to pursue.

Yet, for all its challenges and all its opportunities, life at Saint Rose is scarcely typical of the real world. Here you have had clear objectives and specific tasks, distribution requirements and course sequences that have given you a road map to help you reach your goal. Here you have had a ready-made community of friends and a wealth of services to buoy you up and give you the support and encouragement you may have needed. Here you have had hope that your efforts would lead not only to a degree, but also to a challenging career and a rewarding life, to which a degree will provide entry. Saint Rose has been a supportive community, and you have prospered here. You have earned the accolades and good wishes that are yours to claim today.

But now you leave this placid pool of scholarly inconclusiveness for a threatening ocean of demanding choices. No wonder Bob Hope told a graduating class some years ago, "For those of you who are going out into the world and want my advice, here it is: Don't go."

But it's too late now for that advice. Unless you bolt quickly, you're about to graduate. No longer can you follow a road map or drift with the current and assume that you will reach your goal. Decisions must be made. Questions loom. And a single question looms above the rest: "Is there life after Saint Rose?" My answer is, "Yes, but only if you consciously build it."

"Get a life," you tell a parent who has failed to notice that you no longer need quite as much oversight as you did when you were four. "Get a life," you tell the friend who worries more about your lifestyle and schedule than about her own. But what does getting a life require? What is it I am asking you to build? A successful life, it has been said, will have at least three parts:

• Something to do.
• Someone to love.
• Something to hope for.

Most of you, certainly, will find something to do. Despite the depressing newspaper articles on corporate restructuring and the plight of workers caught in the Enron collapse, many of you have succeeded in your job searches. Many of you will be going on to graduate or professional school, to service opportunities, and other worthwhile activities. You've worked hard for these degrees, and the world owes you a chance to use them. My guess is that it will give you not one chance, but several chances, all life long. But how are you to choose?

The author Robert Bella describes three types of work: First, there's the job, where the goal is simply earning a living and supporting your family. Then there's the career, where you trace your progress through various appointments and achievements. Finally, there's the calling, the ideal blending of activity and character that makes work inseparable from life.

Of course, some jobs become careers, and some careers become callings, but whichever you find, change is inevitable. Whenever anyone comes up with a better mousetrap, someone immediately comes up with a better mouse. So welcome change. Embrace challenges. Dream dreams, but pencil in deadlines beside them. Never stop learning. Keep in mind some larger goals. And soon you will have a true calling: something satisfying and meaningful to do.

Second, getting a life means finding someone to love. "Ah, that's easy," you say. "I adore my friends on the Golden Knights soccer team, and the classmates I've worked with on "The Chronicle." My boyfriend and I are serious—we've talked about marriage and starting a family."

But the reality is not quite so easy. Friendships are forgotten over the years, the casualties of distance and time. Marriages entered into with the promise of springtime wither and fade if not constantly nurtured and renewed. Most of you here have parents. Most will also have children. And both groups will need your help, your support and your love. Our nation is falling apart because our families are falling apart. No matter how many or how few members your family embraces, I hope you'll take time to burnish the love that is so vital to its strength and yours.

But families are places, not only for refuge, but also for nurture. By loving those closest to us, we can learn to love more broadly, and that, too, is vital. We are, for all our differences, citizens, not just of one nation, but of one planet. Amidst the clamor of our single-issue politics and single-interest groups, and in the face of terror that has made the world a more dangerous place, we must restore a larger sense of common citizenship, of wider friendship—across the years, across the races and religious traditions, across the oceans, across the classes. That can redeem life from separatism and self-interest, from triviality and abstraction, from torpor and loneliness. Our hearts require friendship and love as surely as our bodies require food. Cherish those connections, especially to those closest to you today. Michael Novak once said, "The family is the only Department of Health and Human Services that works." How wonderful if all here today would pledge yourselves to be champions of strong, stable, loving, nurturing families.

Finally, getting a life means building into your life after Saint Rose something to hope for. If life requires hope, then some will say that we have been born at the wrong time, for this is an age in which hope and heroes have died. Some say that yours is the first generation that cannot aspire to a life better than your parents enjoyed. Can we really hope for new worlds to conquer, or is there only turf to defend?

For all the gloomy prognoses, you enter a world that offers at least some encouragement. It is, in fact, far better than the one your parents inherited when they crossed the threshold to adulthood. And there are at least three grounds for hope:

First, with your graduation today, the world is renewed. We are neither captives nor automata nor victims of a predetermined fate. The late tennis champion Arthur Ashe once said, "True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost." With all your skills, you, the world's newest college graduates, can provide new solutions, new zest, new boldness, new insight. Many of you have made community service a part of your life at Saint Rose. Through your continued service to your communities and to the causes you believe in, you can make a difference wherever you will now make your home. With your graduation today, the world is reborn.

There is a second reason for hope: knowledge, hard-won and humanely used, can improve the human condition, not immediately, but slowly, haltingly and over time. But there are conditions: it is not knowledge applied in thoughtless abstraction that improves the human condition. It is not technology, imposed without reflection, untempered by the experience of history, that will enrich our existence. I hope Saint Rose has given you a healthy skepticism of untested generalities, of unbending ideology, of simplistic solutions casually applied. These are the things that weaken our society. But understanding patiently sought, reason carefully cultivated, and knowledge humanely applied -- these are the things that improve the lot of humankind. And that, too, is a source of hope.

There is a third reason for hope: humanity, for all its lethargy, selfishness, and arrogance, can be transformed by idealism. William Carey, who served some years ago as head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, once offered three postulates of democracy: "Not that man is good, but that he is capable of good; not that he is free of corruption, but that he is desperately sick of it; and not that he has made the good society, but that he has caught an unforgettable glimpse of it."

Lives of emptiness and self-absorption can be transformed by that unforgettable glimpse of the good. This is the message of every religion and of every true humanist. This is the hope that undergirds all the rest. This is the hope that brings change, that mobilizes support, and that encourages effort, galvanizes creativity, and inspires commitment.

So is there life after the College of Saint Rose? Yes, there is, if—and only if—you will make it. So get a life. Determine before you leave this familiar campus to commit yourself to:

• Something to do.
• Someone to love.
• Something to hope for.

These are the pieces from which you may craft a life after Saint Rose.

By tomorrow morning this convention hall will be empty. You will have left the Saint Rose campus, with its modern buildings and stately Victorian homes, and departed for every corner of the earth. By then, if not before, you will have forgotten most of the words I have said. But if you remember nothing else, please take with you these three simple words: Work. Love. Hope. For with them you can build a life of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment. With them there is life—abundant life—after you leave Saint Rose.

There is an old Gaelic blessing with which I should like to send you into the life that exists after college, and it seems particularly appropriate this morning, for its message is one of work, love, and hope:

May the sun shine gently on your face.
May the rain fall soft upon your fields.
May the wind be at your back.
May the road rise to meet you.
May the Lord hold you in the hollow of his hand,
Until we meet again.

Graduates of the wonderful class of 2002:
Good success. God speed.

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