Amid uncertainty, your path awaits, for the world needs you

When I returned as UF president last August, I had to relearn how to be presidential again

Amid uncertainty, your path awaits, for the world needs you

2025 Spring Commencement Keynote Address by UF Interim President Kent Fuchs

Graduates, when I returned as UF president last August, I had to relearn how to be presidential again and to do the important things that presidents do.

For example, put on a big orange traffic cone suit to be “Coney, the Friendly Neighborhood Traffic Cone.”

And, issue the FXG, Foxy Gator, University of Florida meme coin.

I loved being Coney and having fun on April 1 — and I’ve loved all my time with you.

And now … graduates … we are here to celebrate! You are receiving your degree from the University of Florida, and I get to cheer your accomplishment and send you on your way.

It’s celebration time!

However, I recognize that you may feel some anxiety about what comes next in your life.

A quiet, anxious voice may be asking:

_What’s next? What have these years at UF been building up to?_

When I graduated college, I thought I knew the direction of my life. I was graduating with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. However, in my last two years of college, I had been involved with other students in a local church.

I decided in my final year not to pursue a career in electrical engineering, but rather to attend seminary, divinity school, so that I could be ordained as a pastor, a fulltime minister of a church.

So, that is what I did or at least tried to do.

After my engineering graduation ceremony, I drove to Chicago, where I took an intensive summer course on New Testament Greek.

That fall, I entered the three-year masters of divinity program, which went fine for the first year — but then I took my first homiletics class on writing and preaching sermons.

I discovered I couldn’t write or deliver a sermon in a way that stirred people’s emotions or touched their hearts. I could inform, but I couldn’t inspire. It’s hard to be a pastor, rabbi or imam if you can’t reach people’s hearts.

To make things worse, my girlfriend at the time broke up with me. I was also struggling financially, despite working late nights and weekends as a security guard.

I was heartbroken and my career plans were shattered.

Graduates, if ever you feel this way about your life plans … or if, maybe, you even feel this way today… as your president, I predict that there will be an even better and richer life before you than you can possibly dream, in the midst of your uncertainty and disappointment.

As I was worrying about my apparent failure in seminary, I came to realize that my shortcoming could be my strength.

My seminary professors told me that I wasn’t good at reaching people’s hearts with my public speaking, but I could reach their heads.

I couldn’t preach, but I could teach. I came to realize I enjoyed teaching, and that being an educator could be as important as being a pastor.

This realization, of both my weakness and my strength, led me to return to engineering for graduate school, with a new goal of teaching students as a college professor.

Electrical engineering graduate school for me was also really hard since it had been several years since my last engineering class.

I discovered that the students for whom I was a Teaching Assistant knew more than me.

But I survived, and with persistence and patience, eventually thrived in nearly six years of engineering graduate school.

That moment of painful reckoning in divinity school …

That time I thought I wasted three years and didn’t know what to do …

It was awful.

It was great.

It ended my path but directed me to a new path and purpose.

Not only that, divinity school is where I met my partner and wife, Linda. She was returning an overdue library book, which I needed for a paper I had to write about infant baptism.

Here we are at this time on a date in Chicago. I worked really hard to get that crease in my jeans!

I lost my dream of serving as a fulltime pastor, but I gained much more.

I got a library book, a life partner — Hi, Linda! — and a new direction to my life.

There’s a saying that old men like to give good advice because they can no longer set bad examples.

So, I’m going to tell you three things I’ve learned about not knowing what to do next, wrong turns, and not achieving my own expectations.

The first thing is to not be afraid of uncertainty.

I have found over the 40 years of my career that uncertainty in the future has been a great part of my life’s path.