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FAIRBANKS — This afternoon, hundreds of men and women will be honored by the University of Alaska Fairbanks for their persistence in achieving their personal academic goals.

When these wonderful graduates first entered the university, most of them believed the opposite of success was failure and that talent was the key ingredient of success. Now, I hope they have learned that talent is never enough, and the opposite of success is quitting.

Failure is the fertilizer of success. If it were not so, we would focus on the thousands of light bulbs Edison blew up before he got one right. We would laugh at Commodore Perry’s seven aborted missions to the North Pole before he finally reached it. Nor would we remember Dan Jansen as an Olympic and world speed skating record breaker; we would only remember his falling in front of the world several times before.

All of the men and women receiving their certificates and degrees today have faced adversity, setbacks, disappointments and failures during the last several years of their studies at UAF, but unlike all of those who are not earning degrees today, these graduates persisted in the face of failure and kept on going.

David Brooks wrote in a recent New York Times column, “The latest research that the key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.”

Our 30th President, Calvin Coolidge, had this quote over his desk in the Oval Office: “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”

I challenge our graduates to remember what your UAF faculty has taught you: set goals, write the goals down and read them every day, plan your work and work your plan, and when you miss a mark simply reset the target and plow on. As you leave the Carlson Center today with your certificate or degree, remember the words of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: “The heights that great men reached and kept were not obtained by sudden flight. But they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward through the night.”

If you go to the graduation celebration this afternoon at the Carlson Center, please note that when each graduate’s name is called, and they receive congratulations from President Hamilton and Chancellor Rogers, there is no reference to their grade point average, nor is there any reference to how long it took them to earn their certificate or degree.

Just like diamonds, these sparkling men and women were once ordinary lumps of coal, who stuck to the job, despite enormous amounts of heat and pressure.