I am very pleased to be here with you on this very special day for all of you. To the parents of the class of '97, I know how you feel. I have had three daughters graduate from college and always the emotions are mixed. You feel one part sad, one part happy, one part maybe a little astonished and every part fully proud. To the graduates, I offer my heartfelt congratulations.
Today is the payoff for all the late nights in the library and the long hours studying.
College graduation is one of the five great milestones in life. The others are birth, marriage, death and the day you pay off your student loan. You will find slipping from your mind the carefully memorized names of European monarchs, economic theories and the various body parts of dissected frogs. But as your hopes of hitting the jackpot on Jeopardy fade, you will find yourself grateful more and more not so much for the information acquired here as for the values reinforced here. When you are in school, you rely on grades to tell you how you are doing and where you stand.