By Janelle Poore
Sen. Bob Bennett emphasized the importance of making careful decisions and finding happiness in life as he spoke to members of Utah Valley State College”s 2004 graduating class Friday, April 30.
Bennett addressed over 3,800 enthusiastic graduates, the largest UVSC graduating class, composed of students from 17 to 66 years of age and from more than 165 countries.
Bennett focused on the importance marrying the right person, choosing the right career and deciding what to believe as the three most important and influential decisions young people must make early in their life.
“Make careful, intelligent and properly examined decisions,” Bennett said. “You will make the three most important decisions when you”re in your twenties; you can”t avoid them.
“I realized … that it isn”t fair for you to have to make the most important decisions of your life in your twenties,” Bennett said. “You should wait until you have a little more experience.”
Bennett described these decisions as “challenging, even daunting” tasks, but insisted they are inevitable decisions.
Who you marry is the most important decision to make, Bennett said.
“Nothing is going to affect your life more than that decision,” he said. Putting it off, or refusing to make this decision, is still making a decision, he said.
“A good marriage provides an anchor in your life that gives you a sense of stability and continuity that nothing else can,” Bennett said.
For graduates, deciding what to do in life is another turning point. Bennett said college is only a “preliminary decision” the graduates have made that will influence the rest of their lives.
Bennett counseled graduates to “choose the right profession that will make you feel good about getting up in the morning to go to work and give you a sense of exhilaration in what you do.”
Drawing from his own experience, Bennett admitted that his 11 years of service as senator have been the longest time he has had the same employer.
“As an entrepreneur, I ended up moving from place to place, from opportunity to opportunity, and I have enjoyed it,” he said.
Bennett rhetorically asked graduates what they were going to accept as fundamental truth in their lives.
“This is a religious question, this is a political question, this is a cultural question,” Bennett said. “The way you answer it will affect all the rest of your life.”
He counseled graduates to make these decisions now.
“If you wait until you are as old as I am to face them, you will look back and discover that by default you made those decisions anyway,” Bennett said. “You cannot dodge them, you cannot put them off.”
In addition to speaking to the graduates, Bennett was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Public Affairs by UVSC President William Sederburg.
President Sederburg expressed his appreciation for Bennett and commended him for “the humanity and the personal attention” Bennett gives to everybody.
“We are delighted to recognize you for your common touch … a humble person, committed to the citizens of Utah,” Sederburg said.
