When recuperating from an illness kept Commissioner Lillian G. Burry from addressing the graduating class of MAST after 17 years of being at each graduation, the Commissioner wrote a letter to the Class of 2022.
The letter was read at the commencement ceremony on Pershing Field Wednesday by Commander Tracie Smith-Yeoman, USN (ret). Before reading the letter, Commander Smith-Yeoman reminded the class that while she had promised them completion of what they lovingly referred to as Burry Hall before graduation, renovations are still continuing on restoring two of the historic buildings on Fort Hancock for the NJROTC program.
The following is Commissioner Burry’s address to the students:
For the past seventeen years, I have attended the Marine Academy of Science and Technology graduations. I have also had many visits to the Academy , always with a strong interest in their needs and their accomplishments.
Look back on these last four years of your lives as a time of challenges and opportunities, while you look ahead at your lives knowing that you go forward well prepared to continue on the journey ahead. I can not pretend to know what you will achieve or how you will do it. What I can do is offer a few words of advice.
Some of what you do will be done through collaboration, working with others to achieve a shared objective. Other things will be done through rigorous competition, striving to be the first and the best. The challenge for you is to know which. Which of these is the right approach for you?
As you go on in life you will see that there is often more than one approach and there’s often even more than two! It has been said that life is about the journey not the destination. There is a great deal of truth in that and you should appreciate all the good things that you find in every day life along the way. However, a journey without a destination can be just another way of getting lost.
You need to formulate a goal and a plan for realizing it. Then change it as circumstances change. Reinvent yourselves as the world around you evolves. Never be afraid to stand your ground or strike out in a new direction. The key to it all is to know yourselves and be true to what you know. If you anchor yourselves to that truth you can find that you are on the island of serenity in a sea of shifting tides.
Now go out and be brilliant. If you find yourselves falling short of that, then make yourselves happy.
Good Luck in whatever path you choose.
Congratulations Class of 2022. Well Done!
Fondly,
Commissioner Lillian G. Burry
