For the Next Generation

Hello all, and Happy 4th of July! I hope you are celebrating this Independence Day with friends and family.

I spoke at the high school commencement at Stuyvesant in New York last week. I thought my remarks to the next generation would be a nice way to ring in the Holiday Weekend. Have a great one!

Hello everyone it’s great to be here. My wife Evelyn, who is here with me today went to Stuyvesant. This is an amazing school with a singular place in American life.

To the parents who are here - congratulations! Many of you sacrificed a lot for your kids to get to this stage and you should see today as a real culmination of your work.

For the young people who are graduating today, congratulations as well. You have made it through one of the great high schools in the country and are on your way.

This class in particular has been through a lot. Covid came and disrupted our lives on a level that we couldn’t have imagined just a few years ago. Our neighborhoods are changed. And some of us felt as if our place in this city, our home, has been called into question for the first time in our lives.

I reflected on why I was asked to address you all today, and I realized that I may have a great deal in common with some of you. I was the son of immigrants from Taiwan who emphasized education at every turn. The message I got from my parents was to get good grades, go to a good school, get a good job and make a place for myself in this country. I imagine it’s a familiar message to many of you.

My brother is a professor at NYU today, so you know at least one of us listened. But one thing we didn’t really talk about in my house growing up was politics. My parents were never like, “You’re going to be President of the United States one day!” It was more likely to be “Clean your room” or “do your homework.” It’s possibly why, when I told my parents in 2017 that I was going to run for President, their response was less enthusiastic and more concerned.

You all likely remember my presidential run, when I appeared on your TV screens in 2019. I hope it made some of you proud.

But the decisions that led me to that stage took place over years and even decades, and probably not in the way you’d imagine. You see, I’d been disappointing or alarming my parents for a long time. When I was 25 I left my first job at a New York law firm to try to start a business. What’s funny is that my respect for my parents was one reason I left that job. It didn’t make sense to me that I was making more money than they were straight out of law school when they were actually inventing things or helping people and I wasn’t.

So I set out to start a company back in 2000. I put my heart and soul into it, reaching out to anyone who I thought could help. Starting a business was a massive challenge. Too big a challenge, as my company failed pretty quickly. That failure hurt. I remember lying on the floor wondering what I had done wrong, feeling like I would never accomplish anything.

But for years afterward, I would think, “Well, whatever happens can’t be as bad as when my company failed.” It made me very resilient and able to weather difficult situations. I joined another company that was just finding its feet. A few years later I became the CEO of a small education company that grew to become #1 in the country and was bought by a bigger company in 2009. I would not have been able to do any of that if not for my experiences as a failed entrepreneur years earlier.

As Evelyn can attest, running for President was not the result of some laid out plan. If she had known that I was going to run for office when we were first dating, she would probably have run the other direction. It was the culmination of a lot of cumulative experiences, both good and bad, successes and setbacks in equal number. I can trace it all back to that decision I made when I was 25 to start a company that I had no business starting that didn’t work out, because each experience, happy or sad, success or failure, prepared me and led me to the next.

You’re all about to head to college. And right now your biggest choice might be what course of study to pursue. You should take it seriously, because your time is important, but know that it’s not something that will determine your direction or lot in life. The average young person will now hold 12.3 jobs during your career. Even if you come in below that number, you will probably find yourself in a range of different environments doing different things. I guarantee you’ll do something at some point that you didn’t study.

Some of you are heading to your dream school in the Fall. Others of you aren’t so sure. Don’t be overly concerned. It’s the individual and what you make of your own experience that will matter, not the starting point. I know a ton of very successful people out of every school or no school, and a lot of people in reverse. What you do is going to be much more important than where you do it.

You’ve been in a very competitive environment and some of you feel immense pressure to succeed. I know that I did when I was your age. Realize that you cannot be perfect; none of us can. You are going to make mistakes. Some of them will even hurt. I know there were times when I was 20 or 25, some of my missteps felt like the end of the world, whether it was relationships or school or work. That’s fine. As long as you keep moving forward, you will come back from them and continue to grow. What feels like a life-altering failure one year can become the story you tell with a smile just a few years later.

Your class has been through a lot, but I believe that has raised, not lowered your potential. Because after what you’ve all seen and experienced, what can the world do to you now? The best companies are started in times of adversity, and the best people will emerge from this time more resilient than ever.

I have a world of confidence in you in part because I know that the country needs what you bring to the table. If my math is right, most all of you just turned 18. That means you’re an adult and can vote. In America today, so much is polarized and tribal. We can’t agree on much. And I believe that many of you here today may carry the antidote.

What is that?

Here is where I may be projecting my own nature and experiences onto you, but I’m guessing that many of you are introverts. The author Susan Cain wrote, “There’s another word for introverts: thinkers.”

In an era of social media and disagreement, we need more of the opposite: Deep thought. Reflection. Curiosity. People who think for yourselves, who form your own ideas and judgments and viewpoints. Who are truly independent because you arrived at your own conclusions and then have confidence in your beliefs.

This, to me, may be the biggest need– that you have been trained not just to work hard in pursuit of goals, yes, but that you form your own perspective as products of this exceptional high school in the most dynamic and diverse city in the world.

In America today, there are two dominant ways to interpret the world, with neither of them truly speaking for most or improving our lives. I believe it may be you all who bring a different perspective in American life that centers on solving problems while others are arguing about them.

This is a tough time, yes, but tough times breed great people, and great opportunities for the right people. You all have the potential to be the right people at a pivotal point in our country’s history. You can make this your time as long as you continue to think and learn for yourself, grow from your successes, and from your mistakes, and continue to move forward.

I know you’ll do just that. And I’m excited to see you make your mark on this city, this country, and this world in the years to come.

Congratulations Class of 2022! The future will be what you make of it. I will see you out there.