The most significant honor a university can bestow
is the honorary degree.
At Georgia Tech, we hold these degrees dear.
Only 28 honorary degrees have been
awarded in the Institute's 129-year history.
Honorary degree holders include President Jimmy Carter,
Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen, Jr., astronaut John Young,
and oil executive Pete Silas, and Senator Sam Nunn,
who's on our faculty.
Today, the Georgia Institute of Technology
will confer its 29th honorary doctor of philosophy degree
on E. Roe Stamps IV.
Roe Stamps earned his bachelor's and master's degrees
in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech in 1967 and 1972
respectively.
He went on to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School
and since then has been extensively involved
in higher education and, in particular, in higher education
here at Georgia Tech.
I'd also like to note that Roe and Penny Stamps, his wife,
who's here with us today-- Penny, wave to us--
[APPLAUSE]
--they have a nephew, Andrew Stamps,
who's an honor graduate today, and he'll
be receiving his degree in business administration.
Roe Stamps' honorary degree citation
reads, "The president and faculty of the Georgia
Institute of Technology, to all whom these presents may come,
greeting.
Whereas E. Roe Stamps IV has provided exceptional leadership
in the private investment sector,
has enabled extraordinary educational experiences
for our nation's brightest and most
promising undergraduate students at leading institutions
across the country, and has tirelessly
supported his alma mater through service
in a number of volunteer leadership positions,
and, along with his wife Penny, provided
transformative philanthropic support profoundly affecting
the life and experience of many students here at Georgia Tech,
now, therefore, we do hereby confer the degree
of Honorary Doctor of Philosophy with all the rights,
privileges, and honors there unto appertaining.
In witness whereof, the signatures
of the Chancellor of the University System of Georgia
and the President and Registrar of the Georgia
Institute of Technology are hereto subscribed.
To confirm to all present, this degree
is affixed with the seal of the Institute.
Congratulations, Dr. Stamps.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
Congratulations.
I'll hold onto this.
Thank you.
It's all yours.
Thanks, Bud.
I can tell you I'm incredibly honored to be here today.
I'm incredibly honored to be part of the class of 2014.
I'm finally graduating.
[LAUGHTER] So congratulations to all of my fellow classmates.
I'm delighted to be here with you.
[LAUGHTER]
It took a while, but finally get a chance to graduate.
Before I get too far along, I want
to give a special shout out to four people
in this class I know really well.
First is my nephew Andrew Stamps.
And then there are three Stamps Scholars, Jacqueline Griffith,
Ronnie Foreman, and Frederic Grimm.
One thing I can tell you is if these four incredible young men
and women are in any way indicative of what
this class is all about, we better buckle our seat belts
because we are in for quite a ride.
So congratulations to all of you and certainly to those four
that I know awfully well in this class.
I first came to this building 52 years ago.
We didn't have Nick Selby at the time
to exhort us to do great things because we were
on this great campus and because we could.
Nick would have done that.
But instead we had a dedicated state employee standing
somewhere probably right roughly where I am,
and he said, "I want you to look to your left
and look to your right, and two of you
will not be here on graduation day.
He also told us to take German.
[LAUGHTER]
And if you couple that with the beginning of fraternity rush
and the beginning of classes that very week,
particularly freshman chemistry, I
was lucky to make it through my first week
here on this campus, much less to get out
of here some years later.
But I did get out.
That's what we did in those days.
We actually didn't graduate.
We got out.
[LAUGHTER]
We had getting out parties.
And we really found it to be our sole purpose in life to get out
of this place, like it was Alcatraz
or somewhere like that.
And looking back, I'm not sure I know
what the rush was because it was a great place to be.
It was a great experience for all of us,
and we certainly enjoyed it.
And then two weeks ago, I was reminded of what an incredible
place this was, and that is when Harrison Butker kicked
a career-long field goal--
[CHEERING]
[APPLAUSE]
--kicked a career-long field goal to give us life.
And then DJ White steps in front of the intended receiver
and sealed the deal against the hated, the dreaded Georgia
Bulldogs.
To hell with Georgia.
[APPLAUSE]
So I was reminded of what a great place this was
at that time, and I was rolling around the floor
like I was a freshman again.
So I'm sure all of you enjoyed that experience,
and I'm sure many of you will enjoy it
many times in the future.
So when I was asked to come here,
I wondered what might be a good use
of the few minutes we have together.
By the way, Dorcas emphasized "few."
And so I decided to consult some experts,
and I first asked Donna Shalala, the president
of the University of Miami.
I said, you've given a million of these addresses.
What's the trick?
And she said, well, it's really simple.
You got to be funny and you got to be short.
And so I thought about that sage advice for a little while,
and realized that's easy for her because she's funny
and she's short.
[LAUGHTER]
So I then consulted Dr. Bud Peterson.
How about a hand for Dr. Bud Peterson.
[APPLAUSE]
Is this guy doing the job or not?
And so I asked him.
I said, what's a good use of our time?
And he said, well, just tell them
some of the things you learned.
And I realized at that point that he had complete access
to my transcript when I was here.
[LAUGHTER]
So he could readily conclude I didn't learn a lot when
I was here, and he must have been referring
to some of the things that I learned along the way.
So I was still a challenged to find a good use
for the few minutes we have together.
And so I boiled everything I know down to four key points.
Now, some of you will recognize these points
because I'm sure you've heard them from your parents.
But the first one is, I want you to be prepared
to work really, really hard.
And I try to make that point to young audiences.
And I ask, how many of you worked hard to get here?
And I get a lot of hands.
And then I ask, how many of you worked really hard to get here?
And I still get plenty of hands.
But when I think of working really, really hard,
I think of a conversation I had a few years ago
with a buddy of mine, an active duty Navy SEAL.
And I asked him about that BUD/S training.
For those of you who don't know what BUD/S training is,
it's the final phase of SEAL training.
And in that, 90% of the roughest,
toughest, meanest, most determined people
the military can summon fail out because they can't do the work.
And I asked him, I said, Jason, how tough is that BUD/S
training?
He said, well, they said it was tough,
but it was nothing compared to combat.
And they were right, according to Jason.
He said, because in combat you're too hot
or you're too cold.
Everything's going wrong.
Your plans break down.
And you got people trying to kill you.
He said, that's kind of a bad combination of things,
and working hard is exemplified by what
you have to do in combat.
So the way I read where all of you are in your lives
is that a lot of you have worked hard to get here,
and a lot of you have worked really hard to get here.
My guess is that before you accomplish your goals,
let alone the goals that society would have for someone
so talented and so driven, before you accomplish
those goals, you're going to have to earn your combat pay.
So work really, really hard.
My second point is, I need you to think
about making really good decisions.
And I have an idea of how to make better decisions that I'll
share with you in a second.
But I speak as a veteran of someone
who made plenty of bad decisions and got away with them.
I think that was then.
That was the era of my generation
when we could do really stupid things when we were young
and get away with them.
I don't think that era exists today,
because there's a record for all to behold forever
and ever of every stupid decision you make.
So you need to avoid bad decisions.
On the good decision side, I can tell you
that I recently returned from my 40th business school reunion.
And at that reunion and at others before that,
I've tried to ask the question, what
is it that differentiated the accomplishments of this really
talented young man or woman from that one?
Why was this person able to accomplish more than he or she
ever dreamed and this one didn't?
And I concluded that one of the major reasons
for that differentiation-- of course,
we all looked the same when we got there.
We kind of looked the same when we got out.
One of the major reasons was the care
with which they approached some of the important decisions
that they had to make in their lives.
And I've tried to look at a way to make
better decisions over the years.
Worked so well for me, I'm surprised how few people do it.
And it's just this simple.
It's just every time you address a decision of some importance,
ask yourself a simple question-- what am I
trying to accomplish here?
And if you're sitting across the table from somebody
that you're trying to get hired by,
or trying to sell them something,
or trying to get them to do something,
ask the related question-- what are their objectives?
And it strikes me that asking and answering
those simple questions-- it only takes a couple of minutes--
will help you with the clarity of thought that
will enable you to make a better decision.
And ultimately, I think it will lead
you to be much more likely to be in the side of that group that
was very happy with their life's accomplishments.
My third point is, I think you should
be prepared to invest in yourself.
There at least two ways to that.
One is you're doing here today.
You're showing your success on this great university campus.
And educationally, and in every other way of learning, I think
it's important for you to continue
that trajectory of learning.
But there's another way of investing in yourself.
And in that manner, I would recommend
that whatever the size of your paycheck, take a piece of it
and invest it in your future.
One of the things that I guarantee you that will lead to
is you'll develop a net worth.
And a lot of you will learn in your lives
there's a huge difference between a high income
and a high net worth.
One of the often overlooked reasons
that I think it makes sense to invest in yourself
financially is that I'm convinced
that one of these days, opportunity
will knock on your door.
You're too talented, too driven for it not to be true.
But opportunity will knock on your door.
And if you're so wrapped up in car payments and boat payments
and house payments, club dues, and the kinds of things
that you can easily get caught up in,
then you might not recognize opportunity
when it knocks on your door.
And you might wake up one day and ask where it all went.
My last point-- by the way, that always gets a huge round
of applause from people saying, oh, my god, he's finishing--
[LAUGHTER]
--is protect your most valuable assets.
I'll tell you a story of a picture we have in our house.
It's actually my favorite picture, and it shows my wife
and me on graduation day 40 years ago.
And we were grinning like crazy.
I'm not sure why I was grinning.
I was scared to death.
And my wife was grinning, and I'm
sure she was grinning because she said, finally,
I can get this guy to go to work and see if he's any good.
And the reason I like this picture
so much is it shows everything we had and didn't
have at that stage of our lives.
First, what didn't we have?
Well, we didn't have any money.
I assume that's kind of like some of you.
In fact, we had debt.
In fact, I think that's probably like some of you as well.
But bear in mind there is hope.
You can deal with that.
What else didn't we have?
We didn't have much of a past.
Sure, we'd been to some good schools.
We'd had some jobs.
I'd been in the Navy.
But realistically, we had a lot more to prove in our lives
than we had there to date proven.
That's some of what we didn't have.
What did we have?
One thing we had, we had each other.
And I don't want to underplay the importance of that one
because I think all of you will find,
as Dr. Peterson mentioned a minute ago, having
good partners in life and having people
to help you go through life is awfully important,
whether that's in the business sector
or in the personal sector.
I've been blessed on both fronts.
I've had a terrific wife of 43 years, a wonderful family,
and I've had great business partners along the way.
What else did we have?
And to me, that involves one more story.
I took my daughter off to college a few years ago.
I was swollen with pride at the person she had become
and the person she was becoming.
And I told her, I would trade places with you in a heartbeat,
just as I would trade places with all of you.
And my daughter looked at me kind of quizzically and asked,
why?
Why would I do that?
She said, you have come so far.
You've accomplished so much, and you have so much.
Why would you consider trading places with me?
And I think the answer to that question
is the definition of the asset that she has and had
and all of you have a great deal more of than I have.
Because that asset is your future.
The good thing about your future and assets like that is you
have a lot of it.
The bad thing about it is that it's perishable.
It has to be treated with care.
It has to be nurtured.
It has to be safeguarded.
You have to work really, really hard.
You have to make good decisions and avoid bad decisions.
You have to invest in yourself.
You have to protect that as your most valuable asset
because it really is.
So with that, let me ask you one last time
while we have you captive on this great university campus.
Look to your left and look to your right.
Congratulate your colleagues on their incredible
accomplishments getting here today.
[APPLAUSE]
But now I want you to look straight ahead, look straight
ahead at your wonderful, your glorious,
your incomparable future.
Thank you very much.
Congratulations.
[APPLAUSE]