譯文
“我不再試圖讓生活完美，而是試圖讓它有趣躯护【矗”
感謝 Reed 主席，恭喜所有 2013 級的同學(xué)棺滞。
很高興回到 MIT裁蚁，也很榮幸今天能和你們在一起。我仍然帶著我的 Brass Rat继准，在畢業(yè)那天轉(zhuǎn)動這個戒指仍然是我生命中最自豪的時刻之一枉证。
有很多原因使這一天很特別，但我為你們的興奮的原因是移必，這是你們?nèi)松性僖膊恍枰催x框框的第一天室谚。
在你們的頭 20 年，生命里的成功意味著從一環(huán)跳到另一環(huán)：得到測驗成績崔泵、進(jìn)入這所學(xué)校秒赤，上課、獲得這個學(xué)位憎瘸。進(jìn)入一個好的機構(gòu)倒脓，以便進(jìn)入下一個好的機構(gòu)。所有這一切都在今天結(jié)束了含思。
規(guī)劃人生里最難的事是不知道要去哪里崎弃，卻希望盡快到達(dá)那里。也許你會創(chuàng)辦一家公司含潘、治愈癌癥或?qū)憘ゴ蟮拿绹≌f饲做。但誰知道呢？這些事可能會錯得離譜遏弱。我也不知道盆均。
今天在這里穿著長袍演講并不是我七年前計劃中的一部分。事實上漱逸，我從沒有一個偉大的計劃——而我現(xiàn)在意識到泪姨，畢業(yè)后幾乎沒有可能有這樣一個計劃游沿。
我想了很多次，你們今天開始的生活到底有什么不同肮砾。我想過如果重來我會做什么诀黍。你們知道的基本上就是變得聰明和努力工作。但沒有人告訴你仗处，今天之后眯勾，成功的的秘訣改變了。所以我想給你們一張小抄婆誓，我在自己畢業(yè)的時候想要的那一張吃环。
我的小抄上沒有很多內(nèi)容。只有一個網(wǎng)球洋幻、一個圓圈和數(shù)字 30000郁轻。忍一下，我知道現(xiàn)在它們還沒有任何意義文留。
我 21 歲時在一家 Chili's 飯店里創(chuàng)辦了第一家公司范咨。我和聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人 Andrew Crick 都是第一次。我們不知道是否需要穿著西裝去市政廳厂庇，或是制作公司印章來加蓋重要的文件渠啊。后來我們發(fā)現(xiàn)只需要到網(wǎng)上填寫一個表格，大約兩分鐘就可以了权旷。這有一點虎頭蛇尾替蛉，但我們已經(jīng)開始做生意了。吃著洋蔥圈拄氯，我們決定公司將為 SAT 制作一種全新的網(wǎng)課躲查。那時候大多數(shù)孩子仍然使用老式的 800 頁課本，而其它網(wǎng)課一點都不好译柏。我們給它起名為 Accolade镣煮，一個 SAT 詞匯，表示贊揚榮譽鄙麦。實際上典唇，我們稱之為 “Accolade 集團有限責(zé)任公司”，這樣聽起來更令人印象深刻胯府。
我在回家的路上停在了斯臺普斯介衔，儲備了一些卡片。很明顯炎咖，做生意最重要的步驟是 PS 一個標(biāo)志，然后打印一些名片，上面印著“創(chuàng)始人”乘盼。做生意的下一個步驟是在會議上把它們發(fā)出去级野，然后告訴女孩們“是的卷中，我有一個公司议忽。”這太酷了十减。
但最好的部分是學(xué)習(xí)各種新東西栈幸。我每個暑假都住在兄弟會的房子里，五樓有一個樓梯通到樓頂帮辟。我拖了一個綠色尼龍折疊椅過去速址，還抱了許多從亞馬遜購買的書過去，我把每個周末的時間都花在閱讀市場由驹、銷售芍锚、管理等我完全不了解的地方。我并沒有打算在 Phi Delta Theta 的屋頂上拿到 MBA蔓榄，但就是這么發(fā)生了并炮。
兩年后，事情開始走下坡路了甥郑。我覺得要獲得進(jìn)展越來越難了逃魄，有時候我會情緒失控，無法解開關(guān)系平行線的數(shù)學(xué)題澜搅，或者無法趕上 3:45 離開孟菲斯的列車伍俘。我想有些事情出現(xiàn)了問題。我因為沒有生產(chǎn)力而感到內(nèi)疚勉躺。創(chuàng)辦一家公司一直是我的夢想养篓，也許，我沒有這個能力赂蕴。
所以我休息了一小段時間柳弄。當(dāng)然，如果你在 6 班，“休息”有時候表示寫一個撲克牌機器人碧注。對于那些不知道什么是撲克機器人的同學(xué)嚣伐，就是你在網(wǎng)上玩撲克游戲入热，坐著點了幾小時的按鈕策严，然后輸?shù)羲绣X。而一個撲克牌機器人則表示可以讓電腦為你輸?shù)羲绣X烦感。
但這是一個引人入勝的挑戰(zhàn)逝变。我被它支配了基茵。哪怕是洗澡的時候我也會思考它。午夜的時候也會思考壳影。就像是打開了一個開關(guān)——我突然變成了一臺機器拱层。
進(jìn)行到中間的時候，父母希望我們所有的人去新罕布什爾州過一次家庭周末宴咧。但我真的想繼續(xù)做我的撲克牌機器人根灯。所以我打開我的雅閣后備箱，然后把電腦和電線全部拖到了我們的小屋里掺栅。餐廳桌子不夠大烙肺，所以我把所有的鍋和盤子都移走了，為我的顯示器騰出空間氧卧。這次是我媽覺得我出現(xiàn)了問題桃笙。她確信我馬上就要進(jìn)監(jiān)獄了。
我當(dāng)時說是為喜愛的事物工作沙绝，但事實上并不是這樣搏明。很容易說服自己正在做的事是喜愛的——誰想承認(rèn)并不是呢？當(dāng)我想到這一點時宿饱，我知道的那些最快樂和最成功的人不僅僅愛他們做的事熏瞄，他們癡迷于解決一個重要的問題，對他們來說重要的事情谬以。他們讓我想起狗追棒球：它們的眼睛看起來有點瘋狂强饮，繩子松開它們飛奔出去，撞走路上的任何東西为黎。我有一些其他朋友也很努力工作邮丰、獲得了豐厚的報酬，但他們抱怨像被銬在了辦公桌上铭乾。
問題是很多人沒有立即找到他們的網(wǎng)球剪廉。不要誤會我的意思——我喜歡和下一個人一樣的良好標(biāo)準(zhǔn)化測試，但成為 SAT 家庭作業(yè)屆的國王并不是我想要的炕檩。讓我感到害怕的是斗蒋，撲克牌機器人和 Dropbox 一開始都是讓我分心的事情捌斧。我腦海中那小小的聲音告訴我應(yīng)該去哪里，但我一直在讓它閉嘴泉沾，這樣我才能回去工作捞蚂。但有時小聲音才是最好的。
我花了一段時間才知道跷究，工作最努力的人并不辛苦姓迅，因為他們順練有素。他們努力工作俊马，因為解決一個激動人心的問題相當(dāng)有趣丁存。所以今天之后，不要再強迫自己柴我；而要找到自己的網(wǎng)球解寝，那件拉動你的事⊥突唬可能需要花點時間编丘，但繼續(xù)聽從內(nèi)心中那微小的聲音与学，知道你找到它彤悔。
讓我們回到我畢業(yè)的那個夏天，你即將到來的夏天索守。我兄弟會的一個哥們晕窑，Adam Smith，以及他的朋友 Matt Brezina 即將創(chuàng)辦一家公司卵佛，我們決定一起在一個公寓工作杨赤，這樣會很有意思。
這是一個完美的夏天——幾乎完美截汪〖采空調(diào)壞了，所以我們都穿著內(nèi)褲編碼衙解。Adam 和 Matt 全天候工作阳柔，但隨著時間推移，他們不斷被潛在的投資人拉走蚓峦，投資人會分享自己的秘密舌剂、帶他們坐直升機。我有點嫉妒——我已經(jīng)為我的公司工作了兩年暑椰，Adam 只工作了幾個月霍转。我的直升機在哪兒坐？
事情只會變得更糟一汽。八月要到了避消，Adam 告訴我一個壞消息：他們要搬出去了。不僅是太熱了，還有他們要去硅谷了岩喷，他們做出真正的行動了委造，而我卻沒有。
每次我給 Adam 打電話都會聽到事情在如何進(jìn)展均驶』枵祝總是相當(dāng)好「狙ǎ“我們今天下午見到了 Vinod爬虱，”他會這么跟我說。Vinod Khosla 是 Sun Microsystems 的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人腾它、億萬富翁投資人跑筝。然后 Adam 丟出了一枚炸彈，“他即將給我們五百萬美元瞒滴∏＃”
我為他感到興奮，但這對我來說是一個震驚妓忍。他是我忠實的乒乓球啤酒游戲伙伴虏两，也是我兄弟會里的弟弟，比我小兩歲世剖。我不能再有借口了定罢。他馬上要參加超級碗了，而我甚至沒有在選秀中被選上旁瘫。Adam 當(dāng)時并不知道祖凫，他踢了我一下，我正需要這一下酬凳。是時候改變了惠况。
大家經(jīng)常說你是與你常在一起的 5 個人的平均值∧校花一分鐘想一下：你的圈子是哪五個人稠屠？我有一個好消息，MIT 是世界上建立這個圈子最好的地方之一台诗。如果我沒有來這里完箩，我不會遇到 Adam，我也不會遇到我神奇的聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人拉队，Arash弊知，也就不會有 Dropbox。
現(xiàn)在我學(xué)習(xí)到了粱快，讓自己被鼓舞人心的人包圍秩彤，和有天賦或努力工作同等重要叔扼。你能想象邁克爾·喬丹沒有進(jìn)入 NBA，他身邊的 5 個人是一群意大利人嗎漫雷？你的圈子推動你變得更好瓜富，就是 Adam 推動我一樣。
現(xiàn)在你的圈子將會增長降盹，會包括你的同事和周圍的每個人与柑。你住的地方會有影響：只有一個 MIT，只有一個好萊塢蓄坏，只有一個硅谷价捧。這不是巧合：無論你在從事什么，頂尖的人才通常只去一個地方涡戳。你應(yīng)該去那里结蟋。不要在其它任何地方定居。結(jié)識我認(rèn)為的英雄然后向他們學(xué)習(xí)渔彰，給了我巨大的優(yōu)勢嵌屎。你認(rèn)為的英雄也是你圈子的一部分——跟隨他們。如果真正的行動發(fā)生在其它的地方恍涂，那就去宝惰。
畢業(yè)后你會踩進(jìn)的最后一個坑是“準(zhǔn)備好了∪榉幔”不要誤會我的意思：學(xué)習(xí)是你的首要任務(wù)掌测，但現(xiàn)在最快的學(xué)習(xí)方式就是去做内贮。如果你有一個夢想产园，你可以用一輩子的時間來學(xué)習(xí)和規(guī)劃，來為之做好準(zhǔn)備夜郁。你現(xiàn)在應(yīng)該做的就是開始什燕。
老實說，我從沒有覺得自己“準(zhǔn)備好了竞端∈杭矗”，直到我們的第一個投資人說了好事富，然后問我們錢送到哪里技俐。對于 24 歲的人來說，這就是圣誕節(jié)——打開禮物就是在 bankofamerica.com 上一遍又一遍刷新统台，看著你的公司賬戶從 60 美元到 120 萬美元雕擂。剛開始我欣喜若狂——這個數(shù)字里居然有兩個逗號！我截了張圖——然后我突然有點反胃贱勃。有一天這些人會把錢要回去井赌。我自己到底他媽的得到了什么谤逼？
你們已經(jīng)知道這種感覺：在 MIT 我們稱它為”用消防栓喝水〕鹚耄“它就像聽起來的那么好玩流部，我們都有內(nèi)出血來證明它。但我們也學(xué)到了纹坐，這是對你有好處的枝冀。今天，一個閥門關(guān)上了耘子。你需要出去找到另一個消防栓宾茂。
Dropbox 是我的。正像你們猜想的拴还，建設(shè)這家公司是我生命中最令人興奮跨晴、有趣和充實的經(jīng)歷。但我沒有真的說出來的是片林，它也是最屈辱端盆、沮喪和痛苦的經(jīng)歷，我甚至數(shù)不出出錯的事情的數(shù)量费封。
幸運的是焕妙，這并沒有關(guān)系。沒有人在現(xiàn)實生活中得到 5.0弓摘。事實上焚鹊，畢業(yè)之后，GPA 的真?zhèn)€概念就消失了韧献。當(dāng)你在學(xué)校時末患，每個小小的錯誤都會成為你那面擋風(fēng)玻璃的永久裂縫。但在現(xiàn)實世界中锤窑，如果你不是每次都轉(zhuǎn)身去撞墻璧针，就不會走的那么快。你最大的風(fēng)險不是失敗渊啰，而是變得太舒服探橱。
比爾·蓋茨的第一家公司制作交通燈軟件。史蒂夫·喬布斯的第一家公司做塑料口哨绘证，可以讓你撥打免費電話隧膏。兩個都失敗了，但很難想象他們曾對此很失落嚷那。這是今天的改變中我最喜歡的事情胞枕。你不再攜帶表示你所有錯誤數(shù)量的數(shù)字。從現(xiàn)在開始车酣，失敗都沒有關(guān)系：你只需要成功一次曲稼。
我以前擔(dān)心各種各樣的事情索绪，但我可以記得我平靜下來的那一刻。我剛剛搬到舊金山贫悄，一天晚上我睡不著瑞驱，所以我打開了我的筆記本電腦。我在網(wǎng)上讀到“你的人生有 30000 天窄坦』椒矗”起初我沒有想太多，但我突然想在計算器上打出來鸭津。我輸入 24 乘以 365彤侍，然后——我的天，我已經(jīng)過去了幾乎 9000 天逆趋。我他媽一直在做什么盏阶？
（順便說一句：你們過去了 8000 天。）
所以這就是 30000 為什么出現(xiàn)在小抄上闻书。那天晚上名斟，我意識到?jīng)]有熱身、沒有練習(xí)的回合魄眉、沒有重置按鈕砰盐。每天我們都在為我們的故事寫下幾個新的句子。當(dāng)你死的時候坑律，不會像“這兒躺了 Drew岩梳，他是第 174 個來的』卧瘢”所以從那時起冀值，我不再試圖讓生活完美，而是試圖讓它有趣藕各。我希望我的故事會是一個冒險——這就形成了所有的區(qū)別池摧。
我外婆今天在這里，下周我們會慶祝她的 95 歲生日激况。我搬到加州后我們更多通過電話交流。但有一件事一直讓我困惑膘魄，她總是用一個單詞來結(jié)束我們的電話：“Excelsior”乌逐，意思是“一直向上〈雌希”
今天在你們的畢業(yè)典禮上浙踢，你們現(xiàn)實生活的第一天，這是我為你們許的愿望灿渴。不要試圖讓生活完美洛波，給自己自由讓它成為一次冒險胰舆，并且永遠(yuǎn)向上。謝謝蹬挤。
原文
Below is the prepared text of the Commencement address by Drew Houston '05, the CEO of Dropbox, for MIT's 147th Commencement held June 7, 2013.
Thank you Chairman Reed, and congratulations to all of you in the class of 2013.
I'm so happy to be back at MIT, and it's an honor to be here with you today. I still wear my Brass Rat, and turning this ring around on graduation day is still one of the proudest moments of my life.
There are a lot of reasons why this is a special day, but the reason I'm so excited for all of you is that today is the first day of your life where you no longer need to check boxes.
For your first couple decades, success in life has meant jumping through one hoop after another: get these test scores, get into this college. Take these classes, get this degree. Get into this prestigious institution so you can get into the next prestigious institution. All of that ends today.
The hard thing about planning your life is you have no idea where you're going, but you want to get there as soon as possible. Maybe you'll start a company, or cure cancer, or write the great American novel. Or who knows? Maybe things will go horribly wrong. I had no idea.
Being up here in robes and speaking to all of you today wasn't exactly part of my plan seven years ago. In fact, I've never really had a grand plan — and what I realize now is that it's probably impossible to have one after graduation, if ever.
I've thought a lot about what's different about the life you're beginning today. I've thought about what I would do if I had to start all over again. What got you here was basically being smart and working hard. But nobody tells you that after today, the recipe for success changes. So what I want to do is give you a little cheat sheet, the one I would have loved to have had on my graduation day.
If you were to look at my cheat sheet, there wouldn't be a lot on it. There would be a tennis ball, a circle, and the number 30,000. I know this doesn't make any sense right now, but bear with me.
I started my first company in a Chili's when I was 21. My cofounder, Andrew Crick, and I had never done this before. We were wondering if you needed to wear a suit to City Hall, or if you needed to make a company seal for stamping important documents. It turns out you can just go online and fill out a form and be done in about two minutes. It was a little anti-climactic, but we were in business. Over onion strings we decided that our company was going to make a new kind of online course for the SAT. Most kids back then were still using these old-school 800-page books, and the other online prep courses weren't very good. We called it Accolade, an SAT vocab word meaning an award of distinction. Well, actually, we called it "The Accolade Group, LLC" which we thought sounded a lot more impressive.
I stopped at Staples on the way home to pick up some card stock. Clearly, the most important order of business was to Photoshop a logo and print out some business cards that said "Founder" on them. The next order of business was to hand them out at conferences, and tell girls "why yes, I do have a company." It was awesome.
But the best part was learning all kinds of new things. I lived in my fraternity house every summer, and up on the fifth floor there's a ladder that goes up to the roof. I had this green nylon folding chair that I'd drag up there along with armfuls of business books I bought off Amazon and I'd spend every weekend reading about marketing, sales, management and all these other things I knew nothing about. I wasn't planning to get my MBA on the roof of Phi Delta Theta, but that's what happened.
A couple years later, things started going downhill. I felt like I had to paddle harder and harder to make progress, and at some point I just snapped and couldn't deal with any more math questions about parallel lines or the train leaving Memphis at 3:45. I figured something was wrong with me. I felt guilty for being so unproductive. Starting a company had been my dream, and, well, maybe I didn't have what it takes after all.
So I took a little break. Of course, if you're in course 6, sometimes "taking a break" means writing a poker bot. For those of you who don't know what a poker bot is, what happens when you play poker online is first, you sit for hours and click buttons, and then you lose all your money. A poker bot means you can have your computer lose all your money for you.
But it was a fascinating challenge. I was possessed. I would think about it in the shower. I would think about it in the middle of the night. It was like a switch went on — suddenly I was a machine.
In the middle of all this, my mom and dad wanted all of us to come up to New Hampshire to spend a family weekend together. But I really wanted to keep working on my poker bot. So I pull up in my Accord and open the trunk, and next I'm dragging all my computer stuff and all these wires into our little cottage. The dining room table wasn't big enough so I started moving all the pots and pans off the stove to make room for all my monitors. This time it was my mom who thought something was wrong with me. She was convinced I was going to jail.
I was going to say work on what you love, but that's not really it. It's so easy to convince yourself that you love what you're doing — who wants to admit that they don't? When I think about it, the happiest and most successful people I know don't just love what they do, they're obsessed with solving an important problem, something that matters to them. They remind me of a dog chasing a tennis ball: their eyes go a little crazy, the leash snaps and they go bounding off, plowing through whatever gets in the way. I have some other friends who also work hard and get paid well in their jobs, but they complain as if they were shackled to a desk.
The problem is a lot of people don’t find their tennis ball right away. Don't get me wrong — I love a good standardized test as much as the next guy, but being king of SAT prep wasn’t going to be mine. What scares me is that both the poker bot and Dropbox started out as distractions. That little voice in my head was telling me where to go, and the whole time I was telling it to shut up so I could get back to work. Sometimes that little voice knows best.
It took me a while to get it, but the hardest-working people don't work hard because they're disciplined. They work hard because working on an exciting problem is fun. So after today, it's not about pushing yourself; it's about finding your tennis ball, the thing that pulls you. It might take a while, but until you find it, keep listening for that little voice.
Let's go back to the summer after my graduation, the summer you're about to have. One of my fraternity brothers, Adam Smith, and his friend Matt Brezina were starting a company and we decided it would be fun for all of us to work together out of one apartment.
It was the perfect summer — well, almost perfect. The air conditioner was broken so we were all coding in our boxers. Adam and Matt were working around the clock, but as time went on they kept getting pulled away by potential investors who would share their secrets and take them on helicopter rides. I was a little jealous — I had been working on my company for a couple years and Adam had only been at it for a couple months. Where were my helicopter rides?
Things only got worse. August rolled around and Adam gave me the bad news: they were moving out. Not only was my supply of Hot Pockets cut off, but they were off to Silicon Valley, where the real action was happening, and I wasn't.
Every now and then I'd give Adam a call and hear how things were going. Things were always pretty good. "We met with Vinod this afternoon," he would tell me. Vinod Khosla is the billionaire investor and cofounder of Sun Microsystems. Then Adam dropped the bomb. "He's going to give us five million dollars."
I was thrilled for him, but it was a shock for me. Here was my faithful beer pong partner and my little brother in the fraternity, two years younger than me. I was out of excuses. He was off to the Super Bowl and I wasn't even getting drafted. He had no idea at the time, but Adam had given me just the kick I needed. It was time for a change.
They say that you're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Think about that for a minute: who would be in your circle of 5? I have some good news: MIT is one of the best places in the world to start building that circle. If I hadn't come here, I wouldn't have met Adam, I wouldn't have met my amazing cofounder, Arash, and there would be no Dropbox.
One thing I've learned is surrounding yourself with inspiring people is now just as important as being talented or working hard. Can you imagine if Michael Jordan hadn’t been in the NBA, if his circle of 5 had been a bunch of guys in Italy? Your circle pushes you to be better, just as Adam pushed me.
And now your circle will grow to include your coworkers and everyone around you. Where you live matters: there’s only one MIT. And there's only one Hollywood and only one Silicon Valley. This isn't a coincidence: for whatever you're doing, there's usually only one place where the top people go. You should go there. Don’t settle for anywhere else. Meeting my heroes and learning from them gave me a huge advantage. Your heroes are part of your circle too — follow them. If the real action is happening somewhere else, move.
The last trap you might fall into after school is "getting ready." Don't get me wrong: learning is your top priority, but now the fastest way to learn is by doing. If you have a dream, you can spend a lifetime studying and planning and getting ready for it. What you should be doing is getting started.
Honestly, I don't think I've ever been "ready." I remember the day our first investors said yes and asked us where to send the money. For a 24 year old, this is Christmas — and opening your present is hitting refresh over and over on bankofamerica.com and watching your company's checking account go from 60 dollars to 1.2 million dollars. At first I was ecstatic — that number has two commas in it! I took a screenshot — but then I was sick to my stomach. Someday these guys are going to want this back. What the hell have I gotten myself into?
You already know this feeling: at MIT we call it "drinking from the firehose." It’s about as fun as it sounds, and all of us have the internal bleeding to prove it. But we’ve also learned it's good for you. Today, one valve shuts off. Now you need to go out and find another firehose.
Dropbox has been mine. As you might expect, building this company has been the most exciting, interesting and fulfilling experience of my life. What I haven't really shared is that it's also been the most humiliating, frustrating and painful experience too, and I can't even count the number of things that have gone wrong.
Fortunately, it doesn't matter. No one has a 5.0 in real life. In fact, when you finish school, the whole notion of a GPA just goes away. When you're in school, every little mistake is a permanent crack in your windshield. But in the real world, if you're not swerving around and hitting the guard rails every now and then, you're not going fast enough. Your biggest risk isn't failing, it's getting too comfortable.
Bill Gates's first company made software for traffic lights. Steve Jobs's first company made plastic whistles that let you make free phone calls. Both failed, but it's hard to imagine they were too upset about it. That's my favorite thing that changes today. You no longer carry around a number indicating the sum of all your mistakes. From now on, failure doesn't matter: you only have to be right once.
I used to worry about all kinds of things, but I can remember the moment when I calmed down. I had just moved to San Francisco, and one night I couldn't sleep so I was on my laptop. I read something online that said "There are 30,000 days in your life." At first I didn't think much of it, but on a whim I tabbed over to the calculator. I type in 24 times 365 and — oh my God, I'm almost 9,000 days down. What the hell have I been doing?
(By the way: you guys are 8,000 days down.)
So that’s how 30,000 ended up on the cheat sheet. That night, I realized there are no warmups, no practice rounds, no reset buttons. Every day we're writing a few more words of a story. And when you die, it's not like "here lies Drew, he came in 174th place." So from then on, I stopped trying to make my life perfect, and instead tried to make it interesting. I wanted my story to be an adventure — and that's made all the difference.
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My grandmother is here today, and next week we'll be celebrating her 95th birthday. We talk more on the phone now that I’ve moved out to California. But one thing that's stuck with me is she always ends our phone calls with one word: "Excelsior," which means "ever upward."
And today on your commencement, your first day of life in the real world, that's what I wish for you. Instead of trying to make your life perfect, give yourself the freedom to make it an adventure, and go ever upward. Thank you.
