Commencement Address

The Honorable Martha F. Rasin '65, June 6, 1999

Good Morning - to all of you who have come to this special event and, in particular, to graduates and families of graduates.

Being asked to give the commencement address at St. Margaret's is truly a highlight in my life. I have such reverence for what St. Margaret's is about, that I take it as a high compliment that she believes I somehow embody even part of that mission. There are few things that have brought me more pride than this opportunity to stand on this stage where I received my diploma, and to address this audience.

When I was preparing to speak to you today, I tried to remember the speakers at the commencements in my own life. I thought back to this graduation, to my college graduation and, indeed, to my graduation from law school, searching for guidance and inspiration - and I was absolutely unable to remember anybody who ever spoke at one of my commencements. I was disturbed by this and mentioned it to my friends. They couldn't remember their commencement speakers either. Then I read in USA Today that 70% of my peers can't remember their commencement speakers. What was more disturbing, however, was more than 50% of your peers can't remember their commencement speakers.

That started me wondering whether it really is an honor, after all, to be a commencement speaker - to be asked to go down in history among the unremembered - to join the ranks of the fuzzy nameless. Judge Rasin, wouldn't you like to come to Tappahannock on Sunday June 6th and give a speech that absolutely no one will remember?

Well, I decided to face it head on. As long as I am going to have this great honor, and as long as it's a pretty safe bet that more than half of you will have absolutely no idea tomorrow who spoke at your graduation today, I thought I would try something to increase the chances of your remembering me. I went to the store and bought all of the little boxes of raisins that I could find, and here they are (throwing boxes of raisins into the crowd).

This is just a little souvenir for you to take away with you today, along with your diploma. Then, when you get home, you can look in one hand and you'll know you graduated. Look in the other, and you'll know who the commencement speaker was. Just don't get mixed up and have the raisin box framed.

My friends who couldn't remember their commencement speakers were hasty to add, "Oh it isn't who gives the speech, it's what you say." Of course that's true. I realize, however, that today your inability to remember is exceeded only by your inability to concentrate, and so I'm going to try to make it real simple. After all, you're going to have to keep it in your head because your hands will be full. Diploma in one. Raisins in the other. I want to give you a piece of advice as you spend your last moments before you enter the next phase of your life - a phrase which requires you to make and live with serious choices. One piece of advice. I won't hide the ball. I'll make it simple. My message is: Your life choices must be made according to your own inner compass.

Conjure up the image of a relay runner. She's standing at her position on the track. She watches the race start and the first runner takes off with the red baton clenched tightly in her fist. She watches the first runner pass the baton to the second, and then she sees the second runner coming toward her. She stays in place until the precise moment when she receives the baton, and then she takes off with it at breakneck speed.

Imagine that relay runner is you here today. Instead of a baton, you receive a diploma. From this day forward, you are off and running out in the world, using that diploma and all it represents to take you through the many phases of life.The runner in my analogy wasn't born standing on the track that day. She was the product of a childhood, a family, a community, a school and a lot of hard work. It was that about her - who she was before she received the baton - that determined what happened. The baton didn't determine whether she won or lost the race. It was the person she was when the baton came into her hand that decided the outcome.

It's the same with you. You will not be transformed into someone new when you leave the stage today with your diploma. You will be the same person you were the day you arrived at St. Margaret's, the same person you were when you went to bed last night, when you made some of the terrible errors and misjudgments of youth, when you were jilted by your first boyfriend, when you named your puppy, when you made your family proud. This diploma won't change who you are.

Although each of you is unique, St. Margaret's has had her influence on who you are as you approach the stage. Whether or not you know it, as you leave this stage you are well prepared to make the hard choices ahead. You have a clearer view of the world and of yourself in it. You have developed gut instincts about what's right and wrong, good and bad, fair and unfair. This I call your inner compass - your own personal sense of direction to take you through life's choices.

I remember the first time I went home after coming to St. Margaret's. My parents said to themselves, "This girl has changed." Maybe it doesn't happen that fast for everyone, but I have no doubt that it happens. Of one thing in my life I am sure: St. Margaret's had a huge influence on my inner compass, and that when I have had to choose between two roads I have relied on it heavily. My choices have not been conventional - when I "should" have gone to law school after college I decided, "No, maybe later If I go now, I won't do it well." Of course, I finally did go to law school at the age of 30. In the interim I was a secretary, a sign painter, a waitress, a boat cleaner, a veterinary assistant, and a long-term traveler through Europe. As it turned out, I made great grades when I finally went to law school and, at 34 when I became a lawyer, I was a better prepared, more mature, happier lawyer than I would have been ten years earlier.

I married when I was 26 and divorced 8 years later. I suppose it would have been "normal" for us to have had children, but I knew that no matter how much I wanted children, our marriage was not strong enough. As it turned out, I never did have children - at least not until my late 40's when I married and, as part of the bargain, got two wonderful daughters. Funny how things turn out in the long run.

Our choices usually don't let us to go back and start over. Choices are permanent, and they lead to more choices, which are also permanent. We each need a strong inner compass to ensure we make the right choices.

Wrong choices lead to bad results. As a judge, I have seen many people who have made the wrong choices in life. More often than not, they have inner compasses that seem to spin around as if there is not a North Pole. They made the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons - - - often just to please someone else, or to get short-term happiness, or because they left the decision to someone else.

When you face a big choice, you may not face it alone but the decision is yours alone. Should I go to medical school? Should I be a waitress, save up my tip money and go to Asia? Should I move away from my family and friends and take that job in Minnesota? Should I marry him? Should I leave him? Should I quit my job? No matter how much advice and guidance others give you, in the end you must pull out your own inner compass and find your way. You need a good one.

This is not to say we reject what others want. Sometimes the best inner compass tells us we need to rely on advice from others. This past week, one of my best friends had to decide whether to take chemotherapy when the results were not promising. He asked each member of his family in the room with him to vote. He knew that the decision - which was his - had to incorporate their wishes.

Using your inner compass doesn't always result in getting what you want - but it does result in doing what's right for you. It's a kind of maturity. Almost like becoming your own parent. You will sometimes find that you choose against what you want.

If your inner compass leads you in the direction of power and money, is that wrong? No, not if that is who you really are. Let your compass take you there. Remember, power and money have achieved many wonderful things. Look at the new building here at St. Margaret's. It is the product of power and money and a lot of other things. If you have power and money and the right inner compass, your values will make you use power and money wisely.

If you want to be a wife and mother, you should be. You will have that choice some time over the next few decades and, when the time is right, go for it. Peer pressure, social pressure, family pressure and other pressure may force you in a direction that is not right for you. Sometimes in the short term, you have to give in to them. But for planning the long term, the really big choices must be made against those pressures if they are not right for you.

Let me read you a poem called "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. Many of you will recognize it. He tells us about life's choices.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;


Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same;


And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.


I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

As you take the baton, remember - it is who you are as you approach the stage that determines where you go when you leave it. The fine inner compass you honed at St. Margaret's should be working pretty well whether you know it or not. So let your heart, your soul, your inner compass be your guide as you enter the race, and I have absolutely no doubt that the paths you choose from here on out will be the ones to take you to a world of happiness and success.

Good luck.

(from the Spring/Summer 1999 edition of The Thistle.)