Moulton Delivers Commencement Remarks at Framingham State University

"To Seize Opportunities, You Must Take Risks and You May Fail”

Washington, D.C. – On Sunday, May 21, Congressman Seth Moulton (D-MA) was the commencement speaker at Framingham State University’s masters’ program graduation, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate of public service. In his remarks, Congressman Moulton called on students to seize opportunities, reminding them that, “to seize those opportunities, you’re going to have to be willing to take some risks. You’re going to have to be prepared to fail.” His full remarks as delivered can be found below.

Remarks as Delivered:

Thank you very much. Good morning. Thank you to the faculty, the staff, the Board of Trustees, and President Cevallos. Thank you to the students, families and friends, for allowing me to share this exciting day with you. And, congratulations to the class of 2017. I’m truly honored to be with you here today. Framingham State University has a reputation for its commitment to community involvement. I hope you will carry with you the lessons exemplified by President Cevallos about service, about being leaders in your communities, wherever you go.

First, to the class of 2017. This is an incredible accomplishment. For some of you, this has been a dream since childhood. For others, an advanced degree is an achievement that even a generation ago may have seemed out of reach. For all of you, I know this degree represents countless late nights studying, juggling—sometimes disappointing—your family and friends, and struggling to keep up with other jobs and competing priorities. After all those years of hard work, you’ve made it, and you should be proud. But while this is a hugely significant milestone in your lives, one that you will never forget, it also marks the very beginning of the journey you take next. I remember what it felt like to graduate college, and then graduate from graduate school, and I also remember what it felt like to graduate from Marine training. In each case, I soon realized that this was more the beginning of a journey than the end. And while what you’ve been through has been hard, there’s a good chance that what comes next will be harder.

By virtue of the degrees you’ll be awarded today, you will have access to an incredible array of opportunities. You can go pursue your fortune. You can help others through your work and service. Or you can invest in our nation’s future by teaching others or starting a new business. I hope you’ll live a life that allows you to do all of this, and be involved in your community every single day. But to seize those opportunities, you’re going to have to be willing to take some risks. You’re going to have to be prepared to fail. So that’s something I want to talk about today, because I don’t think we talk about it enough: and that is failure. Truly facing failure, and surmounting it. Like anyone else, I have failed along the way, and you will fail, too, but as I always remind my team, we will be judged not by how we do when times are easy—when progress is possible, when people like our ideas, and when nobody is running against me. We’ll be judged how we do when times are hard—when we make mistakes, when we fall down and fail, and have to pick ourselves back up again, and keep fighting. So let me tell you about two times in my life when I failed, and what I learned from them.

Ever since I decided to join the Marines my senior year in college, my dream was to be in the infantry. I wanted the challenge of leading Marines on the front lines, and I wanted to be with them through the most difficult days of their lives. As an infantry platoon commander, I led about 40 Marines, most of whom were younger than most of you. My job description was a single sentence: You are responsible for everything your platoon does or fails to do. That’s it. Full stop—no exceptions or excuses. I was in the first company of Marines into Baghdad with those guys, and over the course of weeks fighting our way through Iraq, we became a true band of brothers. But my relationship with my commander—my boss—was more hit and miss. We didn’t always see eye to eye, and I rarely hesitated to let him know when I disagreed with him.

After the invasion, but well before the insurgency, we settled into occupation duty in Iraq, back when Iraq was a relatively peaceful place much like postwar Germany or Japan, and my platoon was assigned a police station and the neighborhood around it. One night, we responded to gunfire and reports of a man with a grenade, and in the dark and confusion, one of my Marines shot someone who turned out to be an Iraqi Policeman. It was a terrible mistake, but a sadly common one in those days since all they wore for a uniform was an armband. Thankfully, he survived. I reported the incident to my commander over the radio; he was asleep, but I was told he had received the message. I expected a response, frankly, but didn’t get one and admit feeling a little relieved because I was afraid he would get my Marine in trouble. What I should have done was gone out of my way to ensure he knew exactly what happened, and in retrospect, I was wrong not to do that. The next day, I brought it up casually, and he accused me of trying to cover up the incident. He also gave me an earful about all the other things he didn’t like about me. And he fired me on the spot. All of a sudden, I had lost everything I had fought a year—and taken a great deal of risks—to get: a platoon I loved like brothers. And I lost them not on some training operation in California, but after I had promised their parents that I would do everything I could to bring them home. It was the worst day of my life.

Now, I disagreed with my boss’s judgment, and so I appealed his decision. Eventually, a more senior officer threw out the decision and I was reinstated as a platoon commander. But at that point, I guess could have rested on my laurels and gone through that second chance feeling like I was vindicated and had nothing to prove. But I didn’t do that. I had still failed to lead my Marines—because I was taken away from them. I had failed to maintain the trust and confidence of my commander, so he fired me. And so I saw this as the greatest failure of my life up until that time, and I resolved to learn from it.

I realized that while I was focused incessantly on protecting my Marines, my subordinates, I had done a terrible job of managing up, of managing my relationship with my boss. I didn’t adapt my own leadership style to meet the demands he put on me—which as my boss, he had every right to do. I learned that you have to manage what you can control, and also come to terms with what you can’t. I learned how much relationships matter, sometimes even more than principles or facts. And I’ll tell you what: When I got to be a platoon commander that second time around, I did a much better job because I took those lessons to heart. In fact, not only do I keep in close touch with my Marines, but my second boss is someone I still go to for advice.

The second failure I’ll share with you was ten years later in the midst of my first political campaign. One thing you have to understand about me is that I’m new to politics—I don’t have any family money, or family political connections. Do you know who the first Congressman my parents met was….? It’s me, you’re looking at him. How many of you are about to start paying school loans, tomorrow or the next day? Quite a few I bet. Well I’m still paying them, too, I feel your pain. I’m still paying them, even as a Member of Congress. So, I didn’t get here because I had political connections, family money, or anything like that. I didn’t expect to be doing this at all, in fact, and when I was recruited by a non-profit trying to get veterans to run for office, I entered a race against an incumbent in my own party who had been there for eighteen years.

Aside from my friends (including those Marines), just about everybody was against me. I spent hours upon hours upon hours meeting with every one of the city and town democratic committees in the 39 communities I now represent. And my goal was to just get a few, maybe a third, to endorse me. Exactly zero did. After a while, my own pollster told me to quit, and my campaign manager agreed with him. He said it was statistically impossible to win this race. And one morning in Lynn, I came up to a voter at a Democratic breakfast wearing an ‘I’m with Tierney’ sticker, an endorsement of my opponent, and I held out my hand and I said, ‘I’m going to work hard to earn your vote.’ He looked at me and he said, with a scowl, ‘What part of “I’m with Tierney” don’t you understand?’ And I said, as politely as I could muster, ‘What part of ‘I’m going to work hard to earn your vote’ don’t you understand?’

The reality is that he probably still voted for my opponent. That conversation didn’t succeed in winning his vote. The poll was a disaster—we had to totally change our strategy. And I had totally given up on convincing those town committees. It was easy to look at my campaign at that point as one failure after another. But I didn’t give up. I followed the advice of a great Vietnam War general whose motto was, no matter what the situation, ‘Drive on!’ Drive on… The details here are less important than the principle, but clearly there was a lot we had to change in order to win. I even appointed my driver, the most junior staff member on my entire campaign, to be the campaign manager. But through it all I didn’t give up—and we didn’t give up—and that’s how we won.

So this morning as you revel in the majesty and the excitement of the day, love it, enjoy it, celebrate it. But also know that failure will come your way, too, and remember these two lessons I’ve shared from a couple of my own failures: one, don’t just face failure but embrace it, and commit yourself to learning from it. And two, no matter what happens, don’t give up – drive on. If you do that, then you’ll do well when it’s hardest, and that’s when it matters most. I hope you’ll look back on the last several years of getting your degrees not just as a period of triumph, though triumph is what we celebrate today, but as a period of struggle. A time when you failed, and got up, and carried on, and doing well when it was hard—not when it was easy—is what got you here today. If you do that, it will serve you well for years to come. I know I wouldn’t be half as effective today if I had never made those mistakes.

And finally, as you take your degrees and go out to celebrate with family and friends tonight–and celebrate I’m sure you will–be proud of your accomplishments, but remember that the greatest work—and the greatest opportunity—is still to come. I am proud of what each and every one of you has accomplished, but I’m even more proud of the good work that I know you will do in the future. Good luck!

To learn more about Congressman Seth Moulton visit https://moulton.house.gov or connect with him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Medium.

###