Saint David's Honor
Society Speech- Version 2
I want to thank the administration of Saint David’s for
giving me the privilege of speaking to you on this special occasion. I love to speak to high school students any
time I get the chance. While I currently
teach at Duke University, I have taught high school in the past and enjoyed teaching
those students just as much. After they
graduated many of them friended me on Facebook and I still keep up with them
there today.
Speaking of Facebook, this may come as a shock to you but
sometimes the personalities that people portray online can be misleading. If I want to find out more about what people
are really like, I sometimes look at what they list as their favorite books,
movies, and quotes. People are normally
less guarded about what they put there, so it can reveal a lot. For example, if you look at Dr. Pitts' Facebook
page at his favorite books and authors you will see that the pictures of the authors
are in black and white, or there are no pictures at all because the authors
lived before photography was even conceived.
That will not surprise any of you who know him.
If you were to look on my Facebook page, you would see a
picture of me and my motorcycle. That is
what I want you to see: the cool old
guy. However, you could perhaps learn
more about the real me from my top three favorite quotes. The first one is: “The fear of the Lord is
the beginning of knowledge” from Proverbs 1:7. That tells
people that I fear God, value knowledge, and recognize the relationship between
the two. The second is a quote from the
character Indigo Montoya from the movie “The Princess Bride” (also on my list
of favorite movies). The character Vizzini keeps repeating the exclamation
“Inconceivable” to describe things that are happening around him. Montoya finally responds: "You keep
using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Also a good one. It tells people that I like sarcasm, and that
I think words have importance. The last
one is another movie quote from IROBOT.
Del Spooner, Will Smiths character in the movie, says “You are the
dumbest smart person I have ever met.”
I have never said those words to anybody, but I have certainly thought
them a lot.
In the movie Will Smith used the term “dumb smart person” to
refer to a scientist who was extremely confident in the technology she had helped to
create, so confident that she refused to consider any evidence that it could be flawed. Most of us know examples of people who are
very smart yet make bad mistakes, life changing poor decisions, or simply have
their brilliance fail to result in any significant life achievement. Some of the smartest people in the world can
also be some of the least successful.
Today, on the occasion of your induction into the honor society, I would
like to share with you some tips on how to avoid becoming a dumb smart
person. Specifically, here are three
principles to help keep your intellectual gifts from getting in the way of a
successful life.
First, you need to learn to value the non-academic gifts of
others just as highly as you do your own. The Bible speaks of how we are all parts of a
body and how all parts are important. That
is not just a spiritual concept that applies to the church; it is the way the
world works. I have been involved in building several successful companies and I
teach students at Duke about how to build successful companies. There is one thing that I can promise you
from my experience: your future success
in most important aspects of life will depend upon the contributions of people
who have very different capabilities than you.
Brilliant scientists who invent things need people who know how to write
in plain English to explain their inventions to others. They also need salespeople who are gifted
with good people skills to sell them. Some of those people who you depend on might even
have low GPAs, yet their skills in other areas are incredibly important. Your intellectual capabilities and academic
achievement are valuable, very valuable.
But if you don’t want to be a dumb smart person, remember to value the
gifts of others equally with your own.
Second, learn to view your knowledge in the context of how
much you don’t know. One of the concepts
that I teach to my marketing students at Duke is how to change people’s
perceptions by using comparison. If you
want something to look big, put it next to something small. If you want it to look inexpensive, compare
it to something expensive. Today, you
compare your knowledge with your high school peers, and it may seem to you that
you have a vastly superior intellect. Hopefully
you have kept those thoughts to yourself.
As you progress in your education and begin to measure yourself by
increasingly higher standards, you will look back at your high school self and
wonder “what was I thinking?” When you compare what you know to the infinite
universe that God has created, you will begin to realize what the greatest
intellectuals in history have all recognized:
a lifetime of learning is not enough to do anything but scratch the
surface. If you want to avoid looking like a dumb smart
person, learn to develop a healthy dose of intellectual humility.
Finally, realize that your life ultimately won’t be measured
by your abilities, but by what impact you have on the world by using them. Early in my career I had a co-worker who
believed he should be promoted because he was the smartest person in the department. He may very well have been, but he didn't
work very hard and didn't get much accomplished. He watched in frustration as others around
him got promoted and passed him by. It
may not seem to you that it works that way now.
In high school there are always people with extraordinary brains, or
athletic ability, or other types of talent, who seem to be able to achieve
without breaking a sweat. I’ll let you
in on a secret: they are often the ones
who struggle the most at the next level when the bar gets raised. They have never learned to study hard, to
train hard, or to push their other abilities to their limits. Many of the freshmen at Duke have a rude
awakening the first time they sit in a class and realize that everyone in the
room graduated in the top 5% their class, and that their 98% percentile SAT score only
makes them average. Whether it is in college or after graduation, at some point
in life being smart will not be enough.
Aptitude is great, but aptitude plus hard work is what yields great achievement. Don’t wait until you hit the wall, start
now. If you don’t want to be a dumb
smart person, don’t let your extraordinary capabilities be an excuse not to
work hard.
I hope that every student, parent, teacher, and staff member
in the audience will recognize that these same principles apply whether your
gifts are in the realm of academics, athletics, or the arts. If you don’t want your strengths to become
weaknesses, learn to value the gifts of others, show some humility and recognize
what you don’t know, and don’t let your capabilities be an excuse not to work
hard. If you do this, and fear the Lord,
I know that you all will achieve great success.
Thank you again for the chance to be with you today, and
congratulations to the new inductees on your achievement.
