Commencement address: Texas A&M University

August 12, 2005; 2 p.m.
College Station, Texas

Howdy.  Congratulations.  What an exciting day! Congratulations not only to you graduates, but to your parents, grandparents, wives and husbands, significant others, and all others who care for and have supported you.

Thank you President Gates for inviting me to be a part of this celebration.  I’m honored.   But I’m also realistic. I’m realistic because I’ll admit I don’t remember who spoke at my graduation, or what was said, if anything. You graduates are in transition. I do remember how that feels. How exhilarating it is.

Dr. Gates referred to my 36-year career at the Fed. That was 12 years in Richmond; 11 years in Baltimore; and almost 14 years in Dallas. The best of those years, by far, was the first year in each new job and each new place, when everything was new and most options were still open.

Similarly, today is the first day of your first year, as well as the first day of the rest of your life. I envy you. I’m eight months into my first year here. Everything is new and different and exciting.

Next door to my “Lonesome Dove Hotel” is a Livestock Pavilion. I hadn’t been inside. So, last Sunday I rode my bike down there and watched a sheep judging. I’d never been to a sheep judging before. Did you know that, when sheep are undressed, they all look alike?

Next to the livestock pavilion is the Horse Center, with pastures up to my backyard.
Nikki manages the horse center, and sometimes she lets me watch her work. I now know more about the birds and bees, as applied to horses, than I ever thought I would know.
Most of the mares now have colts by their sides, and I know how they got there.

A while back I asked Nikki to call me if a colt was about to be born before my 11 p.m. bedtime.  One night, I got a knock on the door at 10:50.  She had lost my phone number, come quick!

I missed the birth, which is probably a good thing, but I watched the newcomer try to stand up until about midnight. Early the next morning, he was walking around like he’d been doing so all his life, which he almost had, seven hours out of eight.

One night I was browsing on the Yahoo News page and learned that A&M’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences had cloned a horse. They had named him Paris Texas, because they had done it for a French firm.  Which reminds me, did you know that Texas is bigger than France?

I learned that the horse was the sixth species to be cloned by A&M, the most of any university in the world. I swelled with pride, as if I’d had something to do with it. I knew about CC the cat (Copy Cat), but not about the others.  86 Squared, the black Angus bull, that nobody wants to get too close to. Also the deer, the goat, and the hogs. I met them all the next day.  What a day!

All were cute, except the hogs. They say you can put lipstick on a hog, but it’s still a hog.
Well, these hogs didn’t even have lipstick on. I was reminded of those hogs when Gene Stallings was recently installed as one of our new Regents. He said when he got a new player who didn’t work out, he didn’t blame the player. He blamed the recruiter. Well, I don’t blame those hogs for their looks, but I do have to wonder about whoever chose the hog to clone.

Not all my new experiences have been barnyard experiences, however. Herb Richardson let me watch a crash test conducted by the Texas Transportation Institute—one of our Aggie agencies. Lelve Gayle talked me through his successful diagnosis of mad cow disease at our Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory. I’ve toured Disaster City at the Texas Engineering Extension Service, where first responders are trained, near where volunteer fire persons are trained.  So, I felt special pride when the head of the London Fire Brigade spoke on CNN following the London bombing and proudly said his guys benefited from their training at Texas A&M.

On the cultural front, I went down to our Corpus Christi campus to help our colleagues there inaugurate a new music hall and hear  Freddie Fender sing about wasted days and wasted nights and how he’ll be there before the next teardrop falls. These are some of the memories I’m making this year. But they will pale next to yours as you move into what they call the “real world.”  Either into a job or graduate or professional school.

I guess “real world” is an appropriate way to contrast what’s out there to what’s in here.
Aggieland truly is “unreal” in many respects. What’s been on my mind about that lately is that I’ve been here eight months now and I have never seen or heard a single Aggie being rude. No cross words. No rude remarks.  No evil eyes. Always friendly.  Plenty of Howdys. Always helpful to a guy who seems to be lost most of the time, or who runs out of gas on a busy street. Don’t get me wrong. I like friendly.  I like it a lot. But I keep wondering how long it will last. It’s a lot like getting the first ding on your new car. You don’t want it to happen, but, when it does, there’s a certain relief that it’s over with.

You probably haven’t given much thought to how important your first real-world decisions will be. Many of them will literally change the rest of your life, for better or for worse. What job you take and where you decide to live will determine who your future friends will be.

I hope most of you have picked out your lifelong mate while here—where the pickings are so good. But, if not, consider this:   Who you marry will determine who your children will be.   What they will look like. Their personality. Their I.Q.Whether they will get a basketball scholarship. Unfortunately, knowing how important your early decisions are doesn’t help much in making them.  It’s like the gamblers advice in the song:  You’ve got to know when to hold them and know when to fold them. Of course, but when do you hold and when do you fold?

Fortunately, I can give you some broad guidelines that may improve your odds of making the correct decision.  For example, in the world of work, Sitting-down jobs generally pay more than standing-up jobs. The pay and promotional opportunities are usually better at headquarters than in the field offices. And better in large cities than in small towns.

An ideal career path might be to start off in NYC, where the opportunities and the stress are the greatest. Then, over the years, work your way south and west as you get older and more nervous. And finally end up back here in Aggie Retirement Land, pulling for the fightin’ Texas Aggies, and keeping an eye on your grand-kiddo Aggies.

But, you may not want to start out in a big company in NYC. I can understand that.
Besides, people never get rich working for a salary, even a good salary. According to The Millionaire Next Door, most millionaires in this country are small business owners who drive older cars, live in modest houses, have holes in their shoes, and don’t take much vacation time. But, the problem there is, What’s the point?

Which reminds me . . . did you know that a new state employee gets no vacation days for 6 months, and then gets only 6 days?  

My advice is to go into a field you love whatever it pays and build your wealth on the side through savvy investing. Will Rogers had the investment thing figured out:  He said, you buy your stocks, and, when they go up, sell them. If they don’t go up, don’t buy them.

Being Aggies, most of you will end up in management no matter what field you go into. Someone will be calling you boss. Yankee hall of famer and coach, Casey Stengel gave the best management advice I’ve heard: He said you’ve got to keep the players who hate your guts from talking to those who are still undecided.

I’ll close with a thought I had while talking to the 4-H jamboree recently. I was in 4-H, but not living on a farm, I didn’t have a pig or a calf as a project, so I couldn’t relate to that. But when I was in the first, second, or third grade—they were all in the same room in my three-room school house, so I don’t remember which—the county agent brought some pine seedlings to school for us to take home and plant.

I planted my pine seedlings out behind the house and for the next few years I was proud of my little pine trees.  But as the years passed, my little pine trees became big pine trees, and I realized I had planted them too close to the house. My horizon had been too small. I didn’t think big enough.

At his commencement address this morning, Regent Jones talked about not thinking big enough. He said it was his big ambition to become a lawyer. Nobody in his family had done that before. It never occurred to him to dream of being the Governor’s official lawyer, which he became. I’m sure it never occurred to him to dream of being a Regent of Texas A&M University, much less the Vice Chair, which he is.

He urged this morning’s graduates to think big and dream big. I urge you to do that as well. But as I prefer to put it: Remember, you are Aggies, so don’t plant your seedlings too close to the house.  Thank you, God bless, and Gig’em.