I am delighted to be here, and grateful for the invitation to speak. I love academic surroundings, and especially Graduation Day.

It is truly a time to celebrate. For parents, it's cause to marvel that the interval between diapers and diplomas is so short.

For graduates, it's one of the five great milestones of life, the others being birth, death, marriage, and the day you finally pay off your student loan.

Certainly, you are richly blessed. But do not be fooled. Because if you choose to LIVE your lives, instead of simply drift through them; to be doers, not dabblers; to act with courage and compassion, you will often find your path obstructed and your course steep and uphill.

If you are truly guided by the rectitude of your cause, whatever your cause may be, you will almost surely be scoffed at by some who say your efforts are hopeless and doomed to fail.

If you are bold enough, you will almost certainly be opposed, for as John Lewis well knows and Robert Kennedy once said, "when there's nobody in your way, it's because you're not going anywhere."

But no matter how high the odds against you may sometimes seem, and no matter how tough the opposition may be. I hope you will have the courage to go for it, never back down, and don't give in.

Because there is no greater satisfaction in life than using your gifts to help others and to contribute to your community and country.

In years to come. I am confident that some of you will lift lives through your capacity to teach: others will save lives through your ability to heal.

Some will create opportunity through enterprise; or enrich public life through accomplishments in science and law.

Some will blaze new trails on behalf of human justice; others will develop novel insights into human life.

But I hope you will all be animated by a common spirit; your inspirations and energies giving life to a shared dream.

Class of 2000, congratulations once again; and thank you again for letting me share with you this very special moment in your lives.