Amid uncertainty, your path awaits, for the world needs you

2025 Spring Commencement Keynote Address by UF Interim President Kent Fuchs

Graduates, when I returned as UF president last August, I had to relearn how to be presidential again and to do the important things that presidents do.  

For example, put on a big orange traffic cone suit to be “Coney, the Friendly Neighborhood Traffic Cone.”

And, issue the FXG, Foxy Gator, University of Florida meme coin.

I loved being Coney and having fun on April 1 — and I’ve loved all my time with you.

And now … graduates … we are here to celebrate!
 
You are receiving your degree from the University of Florida, and I get to cheer your accomplishment and send you on your way.

It’s celebration time!

However, I recognize that you may feel some anxiety about what comes next in your life. 

A quiet, anxious voice may be asking: 

What’s next? What have these years at UF been building up to?

When I graduated college, I thought I knew the direction of my life.
 
I was graduating with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. However, in my last two years of college, I had been involved with other students in a local church. 

I decided in my final year not to pursue a career in electrical engineering, but rather to attend seminary, divinity school, so that I could be ordained as a pastor, a fulltime minister of a church. 

So, that is what I did or at least tried to do.

After my engineering graduation ceremony, I drove to Chicago, where I took an intensive summer course on New Testament Greek. 

That fall, I entered the three-year masters of divinity program, which went fine for the first year – but then I took my first homiletics class on writing and preaching sermons.

I discovered I couldn’t write or deliver a sermon in a way that stirred people’s emotions or touched their hearts. I could inform, but I couldn’t inspire. It’s hard to be a pastor, rabbi or imam if you can’t reach people’s hearts. 

To make things worse, my girlfriend at the time broke up with me.  I was also struggling financially, despite working late nights and weekends as a security guard. 

I was heartbroken and my career plans were shattered.

Graduates, if you ever feel this way about your life plans …  or if, maybe, you even feel this way today… as your president, I predict that there will be an even better and richer life before you than you can possibly dream, in the midst of your uncertainty and disappointment.

As I was worrying about my apparent failure in seminary, I came to realize that my shortcoming could be my strength. 

My seminary professors told me that I wasn’t good at reaching people’s hearts with my public speaking, but I could reach their heads. 

I couldn’t preach, but I could teach.  

In fact, I came to realize I enjoyed teaching, and that being an educator could be as important as being a pastor.

This realization, of both my weakness and my strength, led me to return to engineering for graduate school, with a new goal of teaching students as a college professor. 

Electrical engineering graduate school for me was also really hard since it had been several years since my last engineering class. 

I discovered that the students for whom I was a Teaching Assistant knew more than me.

But I survived, and with persistence and patience, eventually thrived in nearly six years of engineering graduate school. 

That moment of painful reckoning in divinity school … 

That time I thought I wasted three years and didn’t know what to do …

It was awful. 

It was great. 

It ended my path but directed me to a new path and new purpose. 

Not only that, divinity school is where I met my partner and wife, Linda. She was returning an overdue library book, which I needed for a paper I had to write about infant baptism.

Here we are at this time on a date in Chicago. I worked really hard to get that crease in my jeans!

I lost my dream of serving as a fulltime pastor, but I gained much more. 

I got a library book, a life partner — Hi, Linda! — and a new direction to my life.

There’s a saying that old men like to give good advice because they can no longer set bad examples. 

So, I’m going to tell you three things I’ve learned about not knowing what to do next, wrong turns, and not achieving my own expectations.

The first thing is to not be afraid of uncertainty.

I have found over the 40 years of my career that uncertainty in the future has been a great part of my life’s path.  

Some commencement speakers say to follow your dream.

I have the utmost respect and admiration for those who can follow that advice. But I haven’t had a dream that I’ve followed since college. 

In fact, I’ve never followed a dream. It’s been the other way around. My dreams followed me, revealing themselves to me based on my actions and what was happening around me.

So, the first thing I want to tell you is that if you feel some uncertainty now … or find yourself zigging and zagging from one path to another in the years ahead … it’s OK, and likely will have great results.

Someday you might even get to be Coney, the Friendly Neighborhood Traffic Cone!

The second thing I have learned is to view my failures or wrong turns with hope rather than with despair.

I never became a fulltime minister of a church. 

But my lack of ability to touch people’s hearts and emotions in my public speaking was a real weakness, so I committed to get better. 

It has never come to me naturally, and now, nearly five decades since those awful homiletics classes, I still work daily at learning to communicate not just information but reaching hearts and souls.

I ask you to be hopeful if you experience those moments of weakness, failure or wrong turns. 

Think about how you can turn them around.

What step can you take to distill your doubt into determination? 

Your shortcoming into strength? 

Be hopeful. 

Be brave. 

Then act.

The third and last thing: Your ability to get past the natural obstacles of life isn’t just about you. 

It’s also about the world we share, which gets me back to that question you may be asking: What’s next? What have my years at the University of Florida been building up to?

In my case, at my own graduation, I thought I knew the answer. I thought it was to be a minister and to guide a congregation.
 
I was wrong. Boy was I wrong!

I learned instead that the world beyond college needed me for another purpose. 

It needed me not to be a minister, but to be a teacher and mentor. To be a husband, father and grandfather.

I was needed to be here, right now; to express my pride in what you have accomplished by graduating today from the University of Florida and to express my love for each one of you.

With your valuable UF degrees, the world needs you to be business and public-service leaders, pastors, rabbis, educators, homemakers, doctors, chemists, historians, lawyers, engineers, marketers …

The world needs you to be moms or dads or caregivers or mentors or nurturers of others.

The world needs your inner glow of beautiful orange and blue.

Your lives will go in so many awesome directions … including not knowing which way to turn … and wrong turns … and they will turn into your best turns!

Graduates, the University of Florida and the entire Gator Nation will always be there for you. 

We will always cheer for you.  

Albert and Alberta will always chomp for you with their big goofy grins!

Graduates, although you may leave Gainesville, the University of Florida will always be your home, and I pray that you will return home often.

An old Irish blessing expresses my personal affection for each one of you.

May the sun shine gently on your face. 
May the rain fall soft upon your fields.
May the wind be at your back. 
May the road rise to meet you.
And may the Lord hold you in the hollow of his hand.

Until we meet again.

Graduates, congratulations!  It is great to be a Florida Gator!