Norbert S. Hill, Jr. retired Area Director of Education and Training for the Oneida Nation, reminded graduates, their families and guests that life gives us more than experiences. It also gives us perspective, interesting observations and wisdom worth sharing.
Hill returned to the University as the December 2025 Commencement Speaker on Saturday, December 13, more than 50 years after then-Chancellor Ed Weidner hired him as the assistant dean of students, a first job out of college that changed his life and provided a career he never imagined. Over those years, that experience and many others made way for valuable lessons and wisdom, best appreciated in Hill’s own words from his speech to graduates:
“This is your day. It is a happy day for you and your family. I know that (you) have your hopes and dreams for the future, so it may be a bit presumptuous for me to tell you what hopes I have for you, but these are exactly the same ones that I have for my grandchildren.
- Take this time to celebrate this important milestone in your life.
- Never settle for good enough.
- Life is not fair. Get used to it.
- If your teacher is touch–wait until you get a boss. When you screw up, he’s not going to ask you how you feel about it.
- It’s not your parents fault if you screw up. You are responsible.
- Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off. Not even Spring Break. They expect you to show up every day for 8 hours. If you are not ready for that–go to Graduate School.
- If you are slow, start early.
- You have learned to learn–you have a lot of information between your ears, and you will require more.
- You have mastered the 3R’s…reading, writing and arithmetic.
- You have not made enough mistakes yet. Don’t be afraid to make a mistake as long as you learn the lessons.
- Change will come faster than ever before as you leave the comfort zone of the University. (There is) An ever-growing internet and the new horizons of AI. Be ready. This a far cry from my generation of typewriters.
- Bill Gates talks about the new 3R’s–Rigor, Relevance and relationships.
- But being bright is not good enough. I say that in a good way. I am not diminishing your ability to learn facts, memorize lists to math problems quickly. Pay attention to your relationship with yourself and others.
- You leave the comfort zone of the University and go into the wilderness of your intuition.
- Nobody majors in wisdom.
- What does your heart know?
- America suffers from information overload and wisdom underload.
- The absence of wisdom is the absence of a moral compass to guide you to making good decisions.
- Wisdom is the energy of the good.
- The longest journey that you will take in your lifetime is the distance between your head and your heart. Leadership requires you to make the journey back from your heart and your head.
- There are two major ceremonies that we all experience in our lifetime. In between the two major ceremonies we will have minor ceremonies to help us make sense of the world. The first one is being born–it’s spiritual and magical. The last ceremony is that we will experience is that we are going to die. In between we will have minor ceremonies–a baptism, the first day of school, your first job, having children, marriage and retirement. Some of these are lessons from the severe teacher – if you have not had a severe teacher until–losing someone close to you, a family splitting up, a divorce. Graduation is one of those ceremonies. I love the pomp and circumstance. This is the “saying goodbye” ceremony, with a new beginning just around the corner.
- Pay attention to your dreams. Someone once said, an unexamined dream is like not opening a letter from God.
- Above all–Don’t become terminally serious. Laugher is the sweet medicine.
- Leap for the sun–you may not reach it, but at least you get off the ground. By being here today, you are already standing on your toes, ready to leap.
- Make your life count and make the world a better place because you lived.
I leave you with this final prayer:
May the Creator bless you in a mighty way and that you always remember that the most powerful weapon in the universe is the human soul on fire.
Buckle up, good luck, and God bless!”