Commencement Speech
Martha L. Loudder
TAMU Faculty Senate Speaker
May 14, 2004, 7:00 p.m. Reed Arena

Congratulations to all of you on one of the happiest days of your life!

What I hope for you is that some day you will say to yourself what I often say..."I am the luckiest person in the world to have this job!"

I'm here to tell you that it will not always be a smooth road for you, and I want to share what I think is the most important characteristic that you can have to succeed: RESILIENCE

Winston Churchill defined it like this:

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts."

I had polio at age three, and I was close to death. At first I couldn't move at all. Then, with a lot of rehab I was able to walk, but never regained much use of my arms. As a result no one had any expectations for me. I feel certain that my parents never expected that I would marry, have children, drive a car, scuba dive or get a Ph.D. - but I did them all. When I was a freshman in college, I told my counselor that I wanted to be a college teacher. He told me that I would never be able to teach because of my disability. As it turned out, I majored in accounting, and although I graduated at the top of my class, I couldn't get anyone to hire me as an accountant. In desperation I took a position as a bookkeeper and worked my way up to chief financial officer, then later went on to get my Ph.D. and came to TAMU to fulfill my dream of being a teacher.

One reason I was able to reach my dream is because I had two great teachers who pushed and pushed and pushed me past fear, failures, obstacles, and defeats by teaching me RESILIENCE. They weren't actually my school teachers. One was my grandfather who, from the time I was a toddler, told me that I could be anything I wanted to be and do anything I wanted to do. He said "You can even be a doctor if you want to." I think he meant a real doctor, for I'm not sure he even knew what a Ph.D. was! The other one is my husband George, who pushed me to take risks...he taught me that I could never reach my personal and professional goals unless I was willing to risk the consequences of failure.

There are two things I want you to learn from my story [and this will be on the TEST]. First is that you too will need such teachers in your life. Find them, nurture them...and most of all love them. Lord knows you will never lack for nay sayers. So you will always need another to believe in you, and be your advocate, your teacher.

Second, you should do a very Aggie thing, and that is to become an advocate for others. Whether you go into business, public service, or science, you too will be a teacher. Because you will be a parent and role model for your own children -- and you will be a coach and mentor for your employees and coworkers. You can do for them what my two teachers did for me. Set high expectations that they have to stretch hard to reach. Encourage them take risks, and in doing so they can learn how to fail. Notice that I did not say "make them take risks so they can fail." I said "so they can learn how to fail." Because only in learning how to fail do you learn resilience.

Winston Churchill is one of my favorites because he embodied what it means to be resilient. His career was filled with reverses and failures, both professional and personal. There is a myth that he gave "the world's shortest commencement speech" at his alma matter. It consisted of nothing more than the words "never ever ever ever ever give up." Actually he gave a complete speech and here are the words he closed it with:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never--in nothing, great or small, large or petty--never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

I would add that sometimes the enemy is your own fear.

Someone warned me that it was just too easy and even trite to quote Churchill in my speech, and here I've gone and given you a double dose of the great man. So I'll close with the words of someone Aggies might find more relevant: John Wayne...who once said - "Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway."

Now saddle up, Ags. Go out there and have a great life...and be RESILIENT!

GIG EM!