This post is unlike others I’ve shared, but I wanted the message to come across as it was intended. Today I gave the Commencement Address for the December 2018 Graduation at the University of Texas School of Nursing. It was a powerful experience.
During one of my conversations this week, a wise woman told me that our life is designed in a series of circles, and our experiences always come back around. Today I experienced one of these moments as I was lining up for the graduation processional. The young lady in front of me was graduating with her BSN and was the BSN student speaker. I too held this honor at my BSN graduation and I remember how nervous I was to stand in front of that crowd—-it was the first time I ever gave a public speech and I was so afraid that I would get it wrong. This was her first public speech too and she had the jitters, so I gave her some words of wisdom to help calm her down and as we were walking to the stage I was almost brought to tears thinking about how my earlier experience as the student speaker at my own graduation, and every experience I’ve had since that time brought me to this day and to her. And I couldn’t help but be reminded of God’s perfect plan for all of us.
This was my first commencement address. And who knows, it may the only one I ever give, and that’s okay. Because I know I left my legacy in that ballroom today. We are called to reflect God’s light into a dark world. What would happen if we accepted this role more often?
A Career of Success and Significance
Dr. Taura L. Barr PhD RN
UT SON Commencement Address December 2018
Hello Graduating Class! I’m honored and humbled to be here today and I want to first give praise to and thanks for God’s perfect plan that brought me here today. It still amazes me how I’ve been brought to moments like this and it’s important to reflect on them and be reminded of how everything is woven together. I also want to thank your Dean, all of her staff, the graduating committee and everyone else who has worked so hard to bring this event together. Lastly, I want to thank you graduating class, for saying yes to the opportunity of nursing.
Just take a look around and breathe it all in for a moment…..This is exciting?!!!
Today is a monumental day. In a few moments you will walk across this stage and claim your degree. That’s a big deal and quite an accomplishment!! Congratulations!!
But not only are you claiming your degree…..you are stepping into your future. When you leave here, you will go in different directions, take different paths, but carry with you the legacy and promise of nursing.
Nursing is an amazing profession. It’s taken me to places I’ve never imagined. From bedside nurse, to research faculty, Chief science officer in a biotech start-up and recently as consultant and health coach. Nursing is a career that can shift over time and adapt as you do. I can’t think of many other professions that have the capability of doing that. So you have chosen very well.
I don’t want to get into clichés, but I love tying in the old with the new, so I thought I would tell you a little bit about my roots. As a nurse in West Virginia, I’ve been intrigued by Appalachian nurses and their resiliency. Nurses in old appalachia, were not called nurses, they were people who saw a need to heal and served. They were not formally trained, but played critical roles in maintaining the health and wellness of our communities. In fact, these early caretakers took knowledge from the old world, infused that with native American healing traditions and added their own learnings regarding their new world and basically kept their folks alive for a large part of our early history. Because we were so secluded from the rest of the world, these caretakers left a legacy of resiliency that still permeates our culture today. And I think if you looked at nursing’s roots throughout the ages and other geographic areas you would probably see a similar pattern.
But as I’m maturing in my profession, I’m worried that we are beginning to forget our roots. And knowing where you come from is critical to understanding your future. Now I’m not very old, but I’ve been in nursing long enough to know that we often have a hard time unifying what we do and defining what sets us apart from other medical professions. But I believe that if you look deep enough, the answer lies in our roots of service to others. So regardless of what you decide to do from here, you will be a nurse and carry that title with you into everything you do, and thus carry this legacy, so it may behoove you to reflect on what service really means to you as you mature in your career.
My goal today is to inspire you, but I also feel compelled to challenge your thinking a little. And, if there is anything you take from my address, I want you to remember that above all a career in nursing that leaves an impact is not about you.
As nurses with various backgrounds, we will assume various positions, but will each have a unique opportunity to make an impact and leave a legacy. Our society looks up to nursing, we are a trusted profession, often sought after for various tasks and serve as leaders and role models in our communities. We often come into people’s lives at vulnerable times, or when they are in need. And because of that, something I like to call Legacy Living is critical to the continued advancement of our profession.
But up until about three or four years ago, Legacy Living was not the way I viewed my career, nor did I think it important for nurses to consider. In fact, for the past 14 years, I’ve been solely focused on success. Now I’m not saying that success is a bad thing, but when you are focused solely on your success, it’s really short sighted. And I was….. trying to be great at what I did, meeting the milestones, writing papers, promotions to leadership position, you name it—-Success is what drove me. But a series of fortunate events (or unfortunate depending on how you see them) has opened my eyes to the selfishness that often surrounds the worlds view of success. And because of that I’ve shifted my focus to being Significant by Living a Legacy.
I want you all to take a moment and reflect on where you are today. What drove you to be here? Its okay if you want to be successful, but I would like to propose that to leave a legacy, you need to also be driven by the promise of having a last impact, the promise of significance and design your career to leave a legacy that is counter-cultural to what most of us are familiar with.
I will further explain what I mean, as I dig into my personal story, but I want to share that when your Dean reached out to me to give this speech, I was reluctant to say yes. Because I immediately thought about me….what was I going to say? How was I going to look on stage? And over the last few weeks I’ve gone through a few versions of this address, because I was focusing on me.—-you know old habits die hard they say! But sincerely, so much of what we do and think is driven by the selfish desire to succeed sometime in the future. And because of this we often miss great opportunities to change lives in the here and now.
This address feels very different than most of the opportunities, I have been given to speak. This one feels some how more important, more personal. You see, I believe there is someone in this audience who needs to hear exactly what I’m going to say and I want to make sure I don’t get in the way of getting that message to you.
Over the last five years, I’ve been challenged in ways I never imagined. Personally, professionally, physically, spiritually and emotionally. And I’ve come through some very dark alleys to be able to stand in front of you all today. In the eyes of some, my decisions over the last few years have been viewed as a step down or in the wrong direction or something not what’s normal. But in reflection, I’m exactly where I need to be.
Because for the last 14 years I have been very focused on the world’s definition of success. And pretty selfishly I might add. I flew through my BSN, went straight to PhD, practiced as a nurse on the side, and plowed through PhD work. All while marrying my high school sweet heart building a family and doing all of the things that quote—‘make you successful” I was burning it up and everyone was reminding me just how great I was doing, so the desire to succeed just kept building. And In the fall of 2012, I was at the peak of my young academic career. I had been a faculty member for two and a half years, my husband made sacrifices to stay home with our children and I was building a career centered on the use of multi-omic methodologies to improve stroke.
But I was missing something.
I remember this so clearly that during one of my travels I began to journal about it…..I actually wrote in that journal “what am I missing” I have everything I want…..right? When I look back on that experience now and re-read my words, I sincerely believe it was a premonition. Because three months later, I almost died.
I was 12 weeks pregnant and recently returned from a work trip feeling pretty awful for a few days…and were not talking normal awful, were talking chest pain, palpitations, shortness of breath…..yeah, couldn’t walk up my stairs without getting short of breath, awful….but I was a mom of 3, pregnant with baby number 4 and a young assistant professor, so I did what every other nurse would do in this situation and pushed through to get my work done. Nurses are the worst patients, aren’t they?! All jokes aside, it wasn’t until I started coughing up blood that I went for help.
I had my husband drive me to the ER only to discover what I already knew…. I had a pulmonary embolism—a blood clot that had lodged in my lung…… and I’m told it was very large and if it had lodged centimeters to the left the pressure on my heart would have been enough to induce a sudden cardiac arrest. Surviving this was only part of it, within a week, I was bleeding in my lung, and within a month developed a heart block and heart issues, ….remember I also had a tiny baby in my belly and for my entire pregnancy I just survived. I struggled to keep my blood pressure up and was pretty much on bed rest the entire summer. In an instant I became the patient and as a very independent nurse scientist this is a painfully humbling experience. I’m happy to say I successfully delivered that tiny baby, and little Bobby is healthy as ever, but I cannot tell you how this experience changed everything. And I learned a tough lesson.
A career that leaves a legacy has nothing to do with success. Success is fleeting, it is here today and gone tomorrow. Life goes on. Success is quickly forgotten. While I was recovering, life simply went on.…. the programs I was working on at work shifted, they filled my absence with someone else and other projects and after a year and a half of surviving and recovering, when I came back to work, I felt like I was starting over.
In the metaphorical sense, I had died…..everything I had built my career around became unimportant and in that moment, I was compelled to begin living my legacy. At the end of your life, this is going to matter, and you are going to think of these things. So take note, very few people have the luxury of an event like this to help set you straight before it’s over and it is sincerely by God’s Grace that I stand before you all today to share this message.
A nursing career that leaves a legacy is not about you.
It is not selfishly centered on your success or being the best, it is centered on serving. And contrary to the popular phrase, it’s really not about following your heart.
A career of significance is about letting the needs of others shape the desires of your heart so you can serve in meaningful ways, TODAY not tomorrow or some point in the future when all your ducks align or you get all those degrees. But, TODAY. When you follow your heart, you only serve yourself. But when you follow the needs of others, you get the beautiful opportunity to serve many, regardless of what position you are in.
A life of significance will ALWAYS and I want to stress always, leave a legacy and by doing so is by its nature a success. Think of those people around you that have left lasting legacy’s, —I’m going to bet that what they all have in common in a selfless desire to be significant in the life of another. Because, it is in our moments of being significant in the life of another, that we find our success.
Prior to and immediately following my illness I was me-focused—-how can I advance in my career? How can I make my mark in the world? Why did this have to happen to me? And why now, when everything was aligning so perfectly to fit my plan?
But I’ve realized that it was never really about me. None of it. All of your training, all of your experiences, all of your challenges, and even your victories have been for the sole purpose of preparing you to serve in a specific way. We are comforted in our trials, so we can comfort others in theirs. We learn from our mistakes, so we can then teach others to avoid the same. Everything that happens along your journey is perfectly designed to be shared.
In a world of me-me-me, and the desire for self-importance, this truth is going to be very hard for you to follow. You are going to want to strive for the skin-deep version of success, you know the one that gets the news headlines and all of the attention. So, it will take effort and intention to get this right. And you can start today by considering the legacy you want to leave and begin living it. Everywhere you go, the grocery store, the coffee shop, everywhere you go you leave something—what are you going to leave? If you strive for significance, you will always reach success.
I know that you will all likely forget my name, you may even forget my story, but I’m praying that you have been inspired to LIVE your legacy, starting TODAY. Choose to lead with ALL of you, body, mind and spirit…the real you….the authentic you…… Your Dean tells me that she lovingly modified your motto, What starts here changes the world, to What starts here Heals the world. And I would like to add my twist to that—what comes from the Real you Heals the world. And our world desperately needs healing. So we need the real you and for you to infuse all of you into everything you do as a nurse.
Embark on personal journeys that challenge and transform you so you can empower others to do the same. Always be grounded in service, so you can breath the essence of nursing and encourage wholeness everywhere you go.
Leave room for your career to adapt as you go through the seasons of your life.
Finally, I choose to leave you with a simple but profound question posed by the most significant person who has walked the face of this earth, Someone who has truly inspired me to seek significance.
Are you willing?
Thank you for your attention. I pray that your career is fulfilling and your legacy lasting.
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