Gov. Phil Bredesen congratulated and encouraged UTM graduates to “bring credit on [UTM] by bringing credit upon themselves. You’ve accomplished something that is significant and all too rare.”

Bredesen used his commencement address as a time to honor a longstanding tradition of passing on advice – but this time it was advice he received from a group of Tennessee first graders. After sharing several of the youngsters’ lighter suggestions – a governor must know how to ties his shoes, how to carve meat and how not to get arrested – he offered more serious fare.

“As is always the case when you talk to children, there are some other nuggets of insight that, through their sheer simplicity, really hit the nail on the head,” said Bredesen. “Whether you’re governor or a new graduate or a grandparent, it’s advice all of us can use, out of the mouths of innocents.”

Work seriously hard. “I know you’ve spent these past years of school feeling like you’ve worked seriously hard. Today, celebrate the results of all that hard work. Tomorrow, you start over with a clean slate, and a whole new world of seriously hard work awaits.”

He added, “In a world of business and enterpreneurship, for every hundred people who have a good idea, there is maybe one who actually makes something happen, and that one is not the person who is smartest or got the best grades or went to the best school or had the most advantages. It is almost always the person who rolls their sleeves up, who focuses and who does the hard work that it takes to make something happen.”

Know how to do important stuff. “Remember that one,” Bredesen said. “Everyone needs to know how to do important stuff.

“Graduation is a milestone, and those life milestones are times when we pause for a moment and think about the road ahead. When you think about the future, you naturally think about what you want out of life. Some of these things are commonplace: a nice home, family vacations, security. These ambitions are common and perfectly proper,” the governor told graduates. “But this is also a time to think about what a well-spent life really is – what is the important stuff that you need to do?"

Bredesen encouraged the graduates to think beyond the obvious and conventional goals and think about what will give their lives meaning. “Is it doing something lasting for your community or your country? Is it creating a loving and successful family? Is it something else you’ve dreamt but haven’t shared with anybody up to now?”

Using an analogy about how the nation’s pioneers saw the land as “young, fresh and the stuff of dreams,” Bredesen said, “I want you to imagine and to recapture the sense of awe and wonder and humility that those pioneers must have felt in the presence of the new land God have given them on which to write their own lives and, in the process, write the story of a new nation.” He added, “. . . America is still that new land, that land of opportunity and possibility, with many chapters in its story yet to be written. In a world of too much noise and too much living for today, we just have to reach inside ourselves and remember that, first of all, America was the land of limitless dreams.

“As you leave here and begin to write your own stories on our land, may God bless the life of each and every one of you, and may He give you wisdom and purpose to be a credit to your families, to your communities and to our great nation of limitless dreams. Godspeed to each of you.”

A record number of graduates and their families and friends heard Bredesen’s remarks and were congratulated by Dr. John Petersen, University of Tennessee president, who introduced the governor. Dr. Nick Dunagan, UTM chancellor, presided over the exercises and conferred degrees.

The University Singers closed the ceremony by singing the alma mater.