Messages to Graduates: Stand Up, Fight Back, Speak Out
Published to The New York Times on June 18, 2017
There are those who think life is a marathon. I don’t agree. I think life is a series of sprints. You get to start over and over and over again, always adapting to the long and winding road in front of you. Along the way, you’ll have failures. But if you choose to see these failures as feedback, it will help you plan your next step. When I used to play, a long time ago, that game of tennis, that sport of tennis. The ball would be coming to me. Each ball is a new opportunity. I have to make a decision so I have to take responsibility and I have to decide if I’m going to hit it. If I hit it and the ball goes wide, I take that information, I delete it from my computer in my brain, I enter that in my computer in my brain and I’m ready for the next shot I get that same shot to make a correction. If you think of it as feedback, not failure, O.K.?” – Billie Jean King, Tennis champion and gay rights activist, Northwestern University, June 16