Mentor-in-Chief or, "You Really Can Make a Difference"

I hope that the time you’ve spent here has given you a sense that you really can make a difference. You can’t transform the world overnight. It’s frustrating. There are setbacks. Progress is incremental. 

And because change is hard, it’s going to be tempting at some point when you’re in the middle of whatever job you’re doing, and things aren’t going exactly the way you want them, and you’ve had some disappointments, to kind of say, ‘you know what? This is all, not worth it, and I just gotta look out for myself.’ The culture sort of pushes you in that direction. But I want you guys to resist it.

You have more capacity, more power in your hands right now, and your prospects for your lives are better right now than they’ve ever been, in the aggregate, on average. And so you’ve got to take advantage of that. That’s because somebody along the way imagined something better, and worked for it, and that’s your job. Ok? Good luck! (Applause)