JIM ROGERS, author of A GIFT TO MY CHILDREN
COMMENCEMENT SPEECH AT THE HOCKADAY SCHOOL
JIM ROGERS COMMENCEMENT SPEECH AT THE HOCKADAY SCHOOL
Introducer: Itʼs now my honor and pleasure to introduce tonight Jim Rogers, who has been chosen by this wonderful class to speak to them as they leave Hockaday. Intrigued by his adventures and delighted by his reputation as a wonderful speaker, the class looks forward to his stories and lessons from his life as they begin a new adventure in their lives. Mr. Rogers, according to the jacket of his most recent book, Adventure Capitalist, had his first job at age 5 picking up bottles at baseball games. He was as assiduous a scholar as he was a businessman, and won a scholarship to Yale. After Yale he attended graduate school at Balliol College at Oxford. After a stint in the army, he began work on Wall Street He cofounded the Quantum Fund, a global investment partnership. During the next ten years, the portfolio gained more than four thousand percent, while the S&P rose less than fifty percent. At the age of 37, therefore, he decided to retire, although in his case, thatʼs a relative term. Continuing to manage his own portfolio, Mr. Rogers became a professor of finance at Columbia Universityʼs Graduate School of Business and served as moderate of the Dreyfus Roundtable on WCBS and the Profit Motive on FNN network. At the same time, he laid the groundwork for his lifelong dream, an around-the-world motorcycle trip which would take him more than 100,000 miles across six continents. That journey is the subject of his first book, Investment Biker, which was published in 1994. On his return, he continued as a media commentator at CNBC and other networks and as sometimes professor. He began his millennium adventure, again around the world, which is the topic of Adventure Capitalist, in 1999 and pursued his quest until 2001. He now contributes to Fox News, among other media, and enjoys parenthood with his wife, Page. Hockaday is delighted that this intrepid, articulate, fascinating and witty man has consented to speak to us tonight. Please welcome Jim Rogers. Rogers: Thank you, Liza. Thank all of you for coming, but most of all I guess I should thank you all. I have to tell you, I donʼt know about you, but Iʼve been crying, sitting up here, watching this show and that show and all of these shows. I also thank the senior class. I want you to know that this is the most important graduation Iʼve ever attended. Now before you think Iʼm nuts, because you know Iʼve graduated a few times, I have spoken at
graduations and I have been to graduations. I never had a child in my life. In fact, I thought children were pretty hopeless and a waste of time and didnʼt want to have any children. A year ago, I had a baby girl, and I found out I was dead wrong. Baby girls are so wonderful. You cannot imagine how beautiful and wonderful my baby girl is. So I now know that this baby girl of mine is pure ecstasy and so I am so flattered and so delighted to be here speaking to a hundred baby girls and I hope my baby girl grows up to be like you. When I got the invitation, I said, oh my goodness, what am I going to say? What am I going to say to eighteen year old girls? And then I got a letter from Tess. Tess is the president of the class. She is here somewhere. And the letter described the class. I donʼt know if you all have read the letter or have seen the letter, but if you are parents, I urge you to try to find a copy of Tessʼs letter because this really is a remarkable class. Itʼs a remarkable letter. I hope all of you can save it for your baby girls so they can read it when they are older. But it just taught me again, wow, this is really something, and so what am I going to say to such a remarkable class of baby girls? But then I thought about it. I talked it over with my wife. I talked it over with my baby girl, although she doesnʼt speak yet. And I decided what I would do is imagine that it is 2021 and my baby girl is graduating and what I would like for my baby girl to hear in 2021 when she is eighteen and graduating from a school like Hockaday. My wife and I both are determined that she will go to an all girls school. We are very keen on all girls, or single sex, education, whether it is Hockaday or some other place, I donʼt know. I hope she is smart enough to get into Hockaday, but having read Tessʼs letter, you know, who knows? Itʼs a high standard down here. But what I want my baby girl to learn, and I hope all of you will learn it, is perhaps the most important thing is I want her to learn to be extremely independent. I am already trying to teach her to be independent. Yes, Iʼve been around the world on a motorcycle. Yes, Iʼve been around the world in a car. Yes, Iʼve done a lot of things. But I want my baby girl to know that she can do whatever she wants. I want her to come to her own conclusions. I want her to be totally independent. I donʼt want her listening to the government, or to the press, or her teachers. I want her listening to me. But maybe she shouldnʼt even listen to me, her father, all the time. But if she can just be independent and come to her own conclusions, no
matter how absurd they may seem to me, to you, to everybody else, if those are her passions, I want her to pursue her passions. So very, very few people in life pursue their passions. Somebody tells them itʼs dumb. Somebody tells them you cannot do that. Somebody tells them you should go to law school. Somebody tells them something else. And Iʼm not talking about just because you are girls, or even boys. Men, women have the same problems. Life is full of people who do not pursue their passions. Most people in life donʼt so no matter how foolish you think your passion is or whatever your other classmates say, if you want to be a gardener, go be a gardener. Youʼll be the best gardener in the world, if thatʼs what you want, and someday you will be doing Buckingham Palace, or you will have a chain of garden shops around the world. So, please, be independent. Pursue your own passions. And be tough, because I promise you life is not that easy, and I donʼt mean tough in the sense of a motorcycle mama. Go out there and be tough with what you want to do. And donʼt let them stop you. Life is not easy. But you have to be persistent, and once you find your passion, please stay with it. And you might even fail. You might even fail twice at your passion. But it is a whole lot better to pursue your own passions than to wake up when youʼre 75 years old and say, you know, I never even tried. I never even did what I really wanted to do in life. I didnʼt even try because I was afraid I might fail. Fail. Itʼs not going to be the end of the world, I promise you. It wonʼt be the end of the world. Fail twice. It will make you a better person, a better woman, and maybe then youʼll succeed even more. So be persistent. But also when you are pursuing your passions, realize itʼs not going to be easy. Youʼre going to have to go out there and do the basics. You are going to have to learn the basics. I would like for all of you to be able to go out there and get extremely rich your first day on the job. Life never worked that way for me. It probably never worked that way for anybody here. So learn the basics. Itʼs not going to be easy. Get a good education. You have already started. You are already better educated than most people in the world will ever be. Keep at it. Youʼve obviously got the brains and the drive and the ambition. So, please, please, keep at it, and become as successful as you can be once you find your passions. Now, having told you some of the things I want my baby girl to hear when she is eighteen, I want to just give you a few more specific words of advice. One, in your lifetime, there is going to be a huge wonderful world
out there. They call it globalization. They call it various things. But itʼs true. In your lifetime, the United States will not always be the number one power in the world. Things are going to change. Find out about the rest of the world. They are dying to meet you. They are dying to have you come to see them. Please do. You will have so much fun out there in the world you cannot imagine it. I am going to hate it when I put my baby girl on a plane when she is eighteen or twenty-two and say, OK, go out there and see the world for two years. Iʼm going to cry my eyes out and Iʼm going to be scared to death for her. But I am going to make her do it because I know how important it is in her lifetime and especially in your lifetime, because we in the United States can no longer be insular. China is on the rise. China is going to be one of the great countries in the world, in your lifetime. I hope that every one of you learns Chinese, or at least learns Spanish, because those are going to be two very important parts of the world in your lifetime. But whatever you do, whatever you do, if you move to Ethiopia, please go out there and see the world. If you do it, you will learn a lot about yourself. You will learn a lot about the world and even if you come back to Texas, which is a spectacular place, you will be a better citizen of Texas. You will be a better citizen of the world, and you will have a lot more fun because you will know a lot more about yourself and a lot more about Texas once you have been away for a couple of years or more. I donʼt know how I am going to put my baby girl on the plane when she is 22, but I am going to do it. Another thing you need to know—I hope somebody will teach my baby girl, is that parents arenʼt so bad. I know when I was your age, frequently; I didnʼt get along with my parents. Often I thought they were useless and hopeless. When I went to university, I was convinced they were useless and hopeless. I could not tell you how embarrassed I was about my parents most of the time when I was in college. I am going to tell you, girls, I was dead wrong. I was absolutely dead wrong about that too. My parents really were not terrible. My parents were wonderful. They made me who I am, and thank goodness, I just wish Iʼd had enough sense when I was 18 or 20 or 22 to understand that. I hope you will find that out as you get older, and I hope you will teach my baby girl. And another thing somebody has got to teach my baby girl about is boys. I will tell you, I am really scared to do that. I donʼt know how I am going to do it. First, boys are going to tell you some really strange things. Theyʼre going to make up some up of the damnedest stories youʼve ever
heard in your life. I know. I can tell you the ones Iʼve used. I can tell you the ones Iʼve heard. So, just, please, please, please. Youʼve got to understand. Boys need you more than you need boys. There is no question. Little boys just really need little girls very badly. So donʼt listen to them. Live life your way and on your terms. Donʼt follow some little boy. Make him follow you. You do it your way. I know that sometimes you think, gosh, I need some boys. I want some boys. Boys are fun. Yes, boys are fun, but girls are more fun. So, please understand that. And also, you happen to very lucky to be living when you do, because statistically and demographically there is a huge shortage of girls developing in the world. The birth rates in most of the world are such that there are just not enough girls. There are not enough women. So even if you werenʼt a superior class of people, even if you werenʼt a superior being, there are not enough of you. So, donʼt listen to the boys. Now some people are going to tell you, these are the happiest days of your life, and Iʼm sure theyʼve been extremely happy for all of you. But I hope they are not the happiest days of your life. I hope things get better and better and better. When I was in secondary school, I loved every minute. I loved every minute of college. But I will tell you, life is going to get a whole lot better for you, so donʼt give up. Go out there and have a lot of fun. My wife, Paige, said to me, gosh, you know, people donʼt remember their graduations. People certainly donʼt remember what was said, and people donʼt remember who spoke. I donʼt know if youʼll remember any of that. But if Iʼm really, really lucky, one of you will be speaking in 2021 when my baby girl graduates from Hockaday, wherever she is going to graduate, and I hope that one of you will tell them, tell her that her daddy really loves her. Now Iʼm going to cry: that her daddy loved her a great deal, and that you will teach my little girl how to go out there and cope with life and to succeed. The most important thing is that if you follow your passions, you will have a lot of fun and life is not worth living if you donʼt have fun. So, please, go have fun. And I salute you. And my baby girl salutes you.
Jim Rogers co-founded the Quantum Fund before he turned 30 and retired at age thirty-seven. Since then, he has served as a sometime professor of finance at Columbia Universityʼs business school, and as a media commentator worldwide. He is the author of A Gift to My Children, A Bull in China, Hot Commodities, Adventure Capitalist, and Investment Biker. He recently moved to Asia with his wife and daughters. Please visit his website at www.JimRogers.com.
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