Commencement address to the graduating Class of 2017, Thomas Jefferson High

School for Science and Technology

EagleBank Arena, George Mason University, June 17, 2017

By Glenn Kessler

Thank you very much, Rahul and Caroline, for that kind introduction. In particular, I want to

honor Dr. Glazer for his leadership at TJ in the past decade.

I am very honored to speak at your graduation. Two of my children, Andre, class of 2011 and

Hugo, class of 2015, are graduates of TJ. I know what a terrific education you have received

and I also know how hard you worked.

Forty years ago, I was sitting at my own high school graduation, wondering what the future

would bring. My graduation gift was something called a typewriter. At the time, there were only

three national television networks CBS, NBC and ABC. The national news aired just once a

day, for a half-hour each night. Magazines such as Time and Newsweek summarized the weeks

news.

The weekend before I graduated from high school, a movie called Star Wars was released.

Maybe you have heard of that. And five days after I graduated, a tiny company called Apple be-

gan selling one of the first personal computersthe Apple II. At the time, it was not considered

nearly as cool as the Radio Shack TRS-80, which, believe it or not, outsold it five to one.
I was one of those odd people who always knew what they wanted to do when they grew up.

When I was in fifth grade, I decided I would be a newspaper journalist. And I stuck to that plan,

through thick and thin. But little did I know that the Apple II computer would help lead a techno-

logical revolution that would upend and nearly destroy the industry in which I had always

dreamed of working.

And little did I know that my treasured graduation gift of a typewriter would soon be tossed into

the trash can, replaced by a computer.

When I started my career, there were no newspaper websites. Cable TV was in its infancy. Read-

ers and even reporters did not have instant access to transcripts or youtube videos of news

briefings or congressional hearings.

Expanded access to information, for both readers and reporters, has many advantages. I could not

write The Fact Checker column on a daily basis without the vast resources of the Internet. But

the technological changes also have come at a cost. Newspapers and the evening news shows

used to provide Americans with a common point of reference. Now Americans are increasingly

sorted in ideological cul-de-sacs, able to decide if they want their news slanted left or right.

A critical question is whether additional access to news and faster dissemination of information

is better informing Americans or making them increasingly intolerant of other points of

views. Tweets are no substitute for reasoned discourse. In the 2016 election, people allowed their

Facebook feeds to become polluted with fake news that matched their political inclinations.
The Internet helped open a world of information and facts for Americans. But that freedom is

wasted if Americans are content to only absorb facts and political analyses that match their blue

or red political inclinations. We seem to have gotten richer with information but poorer in

knowledge and understanding.

We cant go backwards, of course. We can only try to forge a responsible path forward. In large

part, that will depend on you.

Given the rigor at TJ, I am certain many of you will get to college and find yourselves wondering

why you have so much free time on your hands.

But thats actually a good thing.

TJ has a national reputation. Depending on the survey, its the best, or one of the best, high

schools in the country. (Theres a high school in Texas that I simply will not mention.) You have

had amazing opportunities in high school. And now many of you are going to go off to college

and, frankly, many of you will blow it.

Dont get me wrong. Academically, college should not be a problem for almost all of you. But

too many students these days go to college thinking only of their future careers. Thats under-

standable. College is very expensive, and many of you or your families are taking out

loans to help pay for it. But college is not about careers; its about learning.
This is a commencement speech so of course I am going to offer some advice about going to col-

lege what I call the three donts.

Dont let education get in the way of your college experience.

Dont worry about your major.

Dont be afraid of failure.

Let me explain.

First, dont let education get in the way of your college experience.

For many of you, college will be your first time living away from home. Youre going to have to

wash your laundry, manage your finances and organize your schedule. Youre going to meet new

people, with vastly different experiences, strengths and weaknesses. You will, in fact, meet peo-

ple who are smarter than you and better at skills that you thought you had mastered.

Youre going to learn a lot in class. But you are going to learn even more from your peers. Late-

night discussions over beers or coffee will linger in your mind more than a professors lecture

especially if you were hanging out with your friends until 3 am and the lecture was at 9 am.
Obviously, you shouldnt ignore academics. But going to college also is about freedom the

freedom to experiment, the freedom to explore, the freedom to spread your wings. And you will

have to learn how to manage that freedom.

Second, and this is really important: Dont worry about your major.

After your first job, not a single person is going to care about your major. The people who hire

you for your first job probably wont care either. For the next four years, this is your last oppor-

tunity to study anything you want. Once you go to graduate school or off to work, that option is

going to be closed.

So if you study science and technology, take courses in art history, English literature, film or mu-

sic theory. Anything to broaden your mind. Too many people think they need to go college to get

a job, when in fact they need to go to college to learn how to think critically and creatively.

Thats what will help you get a job and excel at it.

My father had a degree in chemical engineering, but he became a successful executive at Procter

& Gamble because he was such a good writereven though English was not his first language.

Employers want people who are well-rounded and know how to express themselves clearly and

thoughtfully.

My son Andre took three poetry classes at MIT; Ms. LebrykChao, one of TJs great teachers, had

inspired him to love poetry. The classes were very small for MIT, often just five or six students,
which was a welcome relief from some of the bigger classes he had to take to fulfill MITs grad-

uation requirements.

Andre also graduated with a math degree, even though he effectively was a computer science

major. But he just didnt want to waste time on an introductory course that was required of all

computer science majors at MIT. It certainly did not matter to SpaceX, where he works now as a

software engineer.

Lets face it. You cannot expect that your major alone will prepare you for your first job. What

will matter more are the summer internships, which is where you will acquire training, expertise

and contacts.

My other son, Hugo, is a film major at Wesleyan University. But he worked at Apple as a soft-

ware engineer after freshman year and is back at Cupertino this summer. Ultimately, what will

matter for Apple is the work he does for them, not necessarily what he studied in college.

I was a history major at Brown University. I didnt take any journalism courses there. I can as-

sure you that no employer ever asked me what my major was in college. I also took five art his-

tory courses in college knowledge that still serves me well every time I walk into a museum.

Third, dont be afraid of failure.

As high school graduates, you may not have had much experience with failure. In our society

these days, failure is considered a negative. No one likes a loser. But heres the truth: You will

learn more from your failures than your successes.

If you have not failed at something, it means you havent taken a chance. It means you have not

pushed yourself hard enough or pushed the envelope far enough. Every successful person has

a history of failures. Steve Jobs is a good example. But these leaders ultimately succeeded be-

cause they learned from their mistakes and misjudgments. You need to learn how to be self-criti-

cal and reflective.

Early in my career, I wrote an article about a Wall Street executive that resulted in a threatened

lawsuit against my news organization. My writing was not precise, allowing readers to make

false assumptions. It was an embarrassing failure that might have cost me my job. In fact, my

company had to pay a substantial sum to avoid a protracted legal battle. But it also taught me a

lesson about the importance of precision and accuracy one that I have never forgotten.

The world is moving at such a fast pace these days that everyone will lose their balance at some

point. You may not remember how many times you fell when you tried to learn how to walk

your parents can tell you but it was a lot.

You are here today because you had a passion to learn. But you need to have a passion for life.

You need to get involved, whether its your university, your community or your religious institu-

tion. Its too easy to stay focused on yourself, especially in college, while losing sight of the

world at large.

If your nose is always on the grindstone, youre never going to notice whats happening around

you. Take a moment to smell the flowers and help figure out how to make the world a better

place. Youve all been good students. Now, please, be good students of life.

Congratulations, Class of 2017!