Thank you so very much.
And good morning to the class of 2026. Parents, families, faculty and yes, everybody in the blue. The graduates. Most of all, I want to start with a confession if I could. When the call came inviting me to this day, my first thought, honestly, was that somebody, somewhere I had made a big mistake. I almost called back to check.
I have spent my career interviewing people who walk into rooms like this one as if they're born to be there the presidents, the CEOs, the founders whose names are on buildings. And here I am. And the truth is, I never in a million years thought I would be the one standing on this stage. And I'm telling you all of this this morning, because the small voice in my head this morning, the one that is whispering, who are you to be up here, is exactly the voice I came here to talk to you about today.
So I want to start with a little story. When I was 17 years old, I used to go home during lunch from high school and call a guy at the New York Times, a columnist named Stuart Elliott. I did this every day for months. I was trying to get an internship with him, and he never picked up the phone.
And then one day he did. I thought God was on the other phone, on the other line at the side of the phone. And that phone call started my career, changed my life forever, and it led to everything that came after it the journalism, the books, the shows, everything. And for a long time, I told myself that the lesson of that phone call was persistence.
And in many ways it was. But it wasn't really the whole story. And that's what I want to talk to you about. I've spent my career trying to understand not just power, but ultimately drive. What makes the most successful people in the world go. I sat across from the CEOs, the presidents, the founders whose names are on buildings.
And I'm here to tell you something today that nobody puts on the magazine covers. They are, almost without exception, deeply insecure. That's where the drive comes from. But before I tell you about them, I want to tell you a little bit about you and me, because in many ways, we're not that different from them. It's just a question about how we use it.
So I want you to think back, if you can, to your first week here, I imagine you walked onto this campus, and somewhere in the first couple of days, that feeling arrived. Some of these people around here are smarter than I am. They read more books. They've got stronger opinions. I know I did this. You scanned the dining hall.
You tried to figure out where to sit. You thought you knew the answer in class. You didn't raise your hand. You stood in front of the mirror before a party and wondered if you look good enough to walk in, and you spent months quietly wondering whether the friend that you wanted to be your friend actually wanted to be your friend.
And right now, I imagine there's folks you sitting in chairs right now feeling a newer version of all of this. You look around and it seems like everyone has figured out what they want to do in their lives. They've got a job, they've got a plan, they've got a program. And you may think in this moment that you have no idea.
And every single person here, I imagine, has felt some version of that. The athlete, the kid who seemed to have it figured all out from day one, I promise you, has felt it.