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So if you’re leaving this school with your imagination enriched and sharpened,
you are leaving here with a lot more job-relevant skills than you may think.
In fact, you’re leaving here with the most important skill you can have.
Because when the world is this flat, and it is,
we have this many distributed tools of innovation and connectivity,
what you imagine is going to matter so much more,
because you can now act on your imagination as an individual,
so much farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before.
And not just to invent a new product of value,
it can also be to launch a new movement of value.
I was in India a few weeks ago,
and recently profiled two young Yale environmental engineering and environmental grads
who organized a solar caravan across India.
They got an Indian electric car company to both donate the cars
and retrofit them with solar panels on the roofs to power the batteries
so the cars could run 10 percent of the time on pure solar energy.
They went out and raised the money from local business groups themselves,
drove from village to village,
picking up people and bands and singers and performers along the way,
in what they called a “climate caravan.”
Posting on YouTube home-grown solutions for energy efficiency
being developed by Indian companies, communities, and innovators,
hoping to inspire others to take action.
I was blown away by their gumption.
They knew that the only reason such a caravan wasn’t being done
was because they weren’t doing it.
So they did it, and they did it simply because they imagined it.
I actually got my start in journalism here in Iowa.
I was a graduate student in London at the time, 1975,
and my then girlfriend, now wife,
the daughter of the Bucksbaum music and theatre [Carolyn Swartz Bucksbaum ’51],
were walking down the street in London,
and Jimmy Carter was running at the time against Gerald Ford.
And the Evening Standard, the afternoon newspaper in London,
had a blaring headline on the newsstand.
It said, “Carter to Jews: ‘If elected, I promise to fire Dr. K.’”
And I turned to my then girlfriend, now wife, and said,
“Isn’t that funny? Jimmy Carter is running for president.
He’s trying to win Jewish votes.
And to do it, he’s promising to fire the first-ever Jewish secretary of state.”
So I went back to my dorm room.
I had no idea what possessed me to do this,
and I wrote an op-ed piece about it.
And my then girlfriend, now wife, took it home to Des Moines on spring vacation.
She gave it to Gil Cranberg, the editorial page editor of the Des Moines Register.
He liked it.
He printed it with an Auth cartoon, and he paid me $50.
I thought that was the coolest thing in the world.
I was walking down the street, I had an idea—
I just imagined something—
I wrote it up, and someone paid me $50.
I’ve been hooked ever since.
I was talking to a lawyer friend the other day,
and he was telling me how his law firm was cutting back and letting people go.
But the people who were holding onto their jobs, he said,
were sometimes very surprising.
Lawyers who were just used to showing up
and having work handed to them were dropping like flies, he said,
because with the explosion of the credit bubble the flow of work just wasn’t there anymore.
But those who had the ability to imagine new services, new opportunities,
new niches, and new ways to recruit work,
no matter how old or young they were, they were staying,
and now rising more quickly than ever.
And that, class of 2009, is the world you are entering,
a world where more things than ever are possible,
and fewer things than ever are guaranteed.
You’re entering a world where more things than ever are possible,
and fewer things than ever are guaranteed.
And for all those reasons,
I hope by now I’ve persuaded you,
or at least your parents,
that your degree from here really is relevant.
Your country needs you to bring the values you learned here,
the imagination you’ve sharpened here,
the activism you nurtured here, to be the Re-Generation.
To add values and to create products and services
and social movements of value.
Some company, some organization somewhere will pay you for those things,
and if they won’t, well baby, roll your own.
It’s a flat world, and there’s nothing stopping you now.
I repeat, if it’s not happening,
it’s because you’re not doing it.
So that’s about it from me.
I just have one final word.
It’s a piece of advice I tack on to every commencement address.
While you’re out there tackling the world, slaying the dragons,
and imagining a new future, please don’t forget one thing:
call your mother.
You will always be glad you did.
When you were just in elementary school,
there was a legendary football coach at the University of Alabama named Bear Bryant,
and late in his career,
and after his mother had just died,
Bell South telephone company asked Bear Bryant to do a TV commercial.
As best I can piece together from the news reports,
the commercial was supposed to be very simple,
just a little music and Coach Bryant saying in his tough, gravelly coach’s voice,
“Have you called your mama today?”
On the day of the filming though,
when it came time for Coach Bryant to recite his simple line,
he decided to ad lib something because his own mother had recently died.
He looked into the camera and said,
“Have you called your mama today? I sure wish I could call mine.”
And that was how the commercial ran,
and it got a huge response from audiences.
I know what Coach Bryant meant,
my own mother died last year, just shy of 90 years old.
I miss her dearly.
She was the only reader of the New York Times who agreed with every word I wrote.
I wish I could call her, too.
So, class of 2009,
go forth and be the Re-Generation.
Bring along the values and imagination you learned here,
but whether you stay near or go far,
also bring along some extra minutes on your cell phone
to call Mom and Dad.
You’ll always be glad that you did.
Godspeed, and good luck.