Tuesday, 06/14/2005 Print Version |
Governor's Remarks at Santa Monica College Address
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Randal Lawson. Thank you very much, Randal Lawson, for the wonderful introduction. President Donner and Chairwoman Currey, graduates, students, parents, teachers, families and faculty, everybody, thank you very much for being here today, and it’s a great honor for me to be asked here to give the commencement speech.
First of all, let me just say to you that this, being up here on the stage, brings great memories to me—memories of pulling up here with my Volkswagen in front of the community college, pulling up here in front of Santa Monica College and wanting to register in my first English class here. It was such joy for me to look at that building and say, "This will be the first time that I will be going to a college." It was such an honor for me, because no one in my family ever has attended a college. No one ever has graduated from high school in my family. So for me this was a real honor, and it was such a great motivation for me to be part of Santa Monica College.
I remember coming into this building here to register for English 45, which was English for Foreign Students, and this was the first class I wanted to attend. And I had so much fun in that class, and we had so much help from that teacher, that I was so inspired. I remember that we had to all read out loud. Everyone was a foreigner, and we were sitting there and reading out loud, slowly, "I will go to school," and this is how we were reading. And we were laughing at each other, but the teacher was helping us, how to read faster, how to get more familiar with the words, and so on.
And so we had such great joy that I came back for a second class, and for a third class. And I found so much joy in this, educating myself here in this college, that eventually I took a regular English class, which was also just for Americans; it was English 1. And there I met my favorite teacher in my life, which was Dr. Dodge. Dick Dodge was the most unbelievable teacher that I’ve ever had in my life. He would teach us, he would take the class out of the classroom and he would go out in front of the college, and we would be sitting under a tree, and under that tree we would be studying English. We would be going through the various different authors and novels, we would be doing our work there, reading and writing, and it was the most unbelievable experience. He made education fun for me, and this is why I enrolled in more classes here at Santa Monica College.
And eventually he came to me, Dick Dodge, and he said, "Arnold, you are hungry for information. We want you to go to more classes, not just English classes." And that’s exactly what I did. He introduced me to a wonderful counselor, and that counselor helped me. And after an hour of talking to that counselor he said, "Arnold, back in Austria you took vocational education. You learned how to be a salesman, you worked with accounting, you studied how to do inventory, how to market products, how to deal with customers. Why don’t you continue with that education here? Why don’t you take business classes?" And this is exactly what I did. I started enrolling in business classes, microeconomics, macroeconomics, accounting, computer classes and all this, and I had so much fun educating myself here. I will never forget this experience.
Now, the interesting thing was that I was only allowed to take two classes, two classes at a time, because I was here first on a visitor visa. Then I took two more classes at UCLA extension, and then I took classes at West Los Angeles College, so I could take all five classes. And I kept educating myself, and then Dick Dodge came to me and said, "Arnold, why don’t you go for a four-year college degree?" And I did that.
So I had my foundation of education right here at Santa Monica College, and I will never forget that, that this was the springboard for me. I cannot even imagine sitting up there in Sacramento right now and making the decisions that I have to make without the education that I have gotten here at Santa Monica College. So I want to say thank you, thank you, to Santa Monica College.
Thank you to Santa Monica College for all the education I’ve gotten and the knowledge I’ve gotten. And I want to congratulate all of you. I want to congratulate all of you for the great work that you have done. This is a great stepping stone in your life, is to graduate here today.
Now, when I met just a few days ago some students at a Starbucks Coffee, I ran into some students from Santa Monica, and I said to them, "What do you want me to talk about?" And they said to me, "Talk about our college, how great it is, and then tell us exactly what you did in order to become successful." And I said to them, "I will do exactly that."
So first of all I want to say congratulations for the great education you have gotten here, and I want to congratulate Santa Monica College and also all the teachers.
But it is very important for every student here to understand that education is a tool to become successful. It’s a tool. You can go from here to a four-year college, you can go to the best universities all over the United States and all over the world. But it is only a tool. Education will not make you automatically successful. As I said, it is a means to an end, it gets you knowledge, and knowledge is the most important thing, because knowledge is power.
But in order to be successful, what you have to do now is, you have to pick a goal. You have to look and search for what is your goal in life. The most important thing is for you to go deep down inside and to ask yourself, "What do I want to accomplish? Where do I want to go?" Not what someone else wants you to do, not what your parents want you to do, or your relatives or your friends want you to do. What is it that you want to do? Because then when you have a goal, then you can visualize that goal.
Now, it took me, when I was 15 years old, I remember I still did not have a goal. My only goal was to come to America. This was my dream, to come to America. But then I picked up a magazine one day, a magazine that had one of my heroes on it, which was Redge Park. He was a star in the Hercules movies. And I looked at his picture, and he was posing there like Hercules in front of the magazine. And I read the magazine, and I read his life story, how through bodybuilding he got into movies and became a movie star.
And all of a sudden it dawned on me that that is my goal. I studied this guy’s life, career, very well, and I followed his footsteps, and I started training. My goal was to become a world champion in bodybuilding. I started training every day, four or five hours, and I kept training and training, even though people were laughing. They said, "What is bodybuilding? Why would you want to train your body?" And my father said, "Why don’t you become a soccer champion? Why don’t you become a ski champion? Those are Austrian sports. Why do you want to be a bodybuilding champion?"
But no matter what anyone said, I kept that goal in mind. That was my vision. I was very clear, and I knew that one day I will achieve that, because I saw myself as the champion. I saw myself as the guy with the trophies in the hand, and winning the championships. And so eventually I kept training and training, and I won the world championships in bodybuilding after five, six hours of training every day.
And then, because of that, I was invited to come to America to compete right here in America. And I stayed right here in America, because that was always my dream. And then after I won 13 bodybuilding titles in the world, 13 world championships, I then went after my new goal, which was, just like Redge Park, to become a movie star, to get into movies.
And again I did as much work as I could. I took four hours of acting lessons, accent removal lessons—not that it worked, but I took the classes anyway—and I studied speeches and everything in order to become a leading man in the movies.
Now, of course, when you are a bodybuilder like me, the first they said to me when I went to an agent, or to a manager, or to a producer or director or studio executive, they said to me, "You will never make it in the movie business, Arnold. You will never make it in our business, because no one ever from Germany, or with a German accent, would ever make it in this country." But I did not listen, because I had again a clear vision, a very accurate goal of where I wanted to go.
And I took my acting classes, and they started offering me parts as a bouncer. I said, "No, I don’t want to be a bouncer in a movie." Then they offered me parts as a Nazi officer, because of the German accent. I said, "I don’t want to play a Nazi officer. My vision is to be a leading man, to be a star in a movie."
Well, luckily I had enough money saved from my real estate investments that I didn’t rely on the money that was coming in from movies, so I could pick and choose. And eventually I got the role in Conan the Barbarian.
As a matter of fact, every single obstacle that the agents and the managers and the studio executives said were against me, which was my accent, my name—they said, "Schwartzenschnitzel, or what is your name?" Or my body being developed like that, they said it was an obstacle to become a star. All of those things became a big asset for me. All of the obstacles became a big asset, again because I kept focused on my goal.
Then when I did Conan the Barbarian, the director then said after the movie, "If we wouldn’t have had Arnold Schwarzenegger, we would have had to build one," because of the accent and because of the body development that I had. So it worked to my advantage. So I never lost sight of my goal. I always went after the goal.
Then when I did Terminator, Jim Cameron said, "If he wouldn’t have had that accent, if he wouldn’t have had that body, if he wouldn’t have moved around like a machine, we wouldn’t have then been able to do the movie."
So those are the kinds of things that happened to me, again because I kept strong, and because I kept focusing on that goal, continuously visualizing the goal.
The same happened again when I ran for governor. Again, people said, "It won’t happen. You cannot win governor, you did not work your way through the halls of Sacramento. You don’t have the knowledge, you don’t have the experience." But I had a very clear vision. Again, I saw myself as the governor, because the politicians in Sacramento ran the state down. This state almost went into bankruptcy because of the politicians, and because of the lack of leadership. So I saw myself that I can go and become governor and turn the state around again, turn the economy around again, and get people’s jobs again, get people’s jobs back. And that’s exactly what we did the first year.
Again, because I had a very clear goal, I had a very clear vision of what I wanted to do.
Now, the important thing is here, the message is, be strong. Go after your goal. Now, it’s going to be a big struggle. It’s going to be a lot of work. And make sure that you understand one thing; that you are the only obstacle. There is no other obstacle for you than you yourself, your own mind, because America and California is already the land of opportunity. It’s already the state with the greatest opportunity. You’re already here in the greatest state in the greatest country in the world.
So the only obstacle that you have is your own mind. Never fear competition. Always go all out, and always overcome your fears, because that’s what courage is all about. Courage is not the lack of fear, but courage is to mow through the fear and to go after your goals and do what you want to do.
And the most important thing I want to tell you is, besides thinking about your own goals and being successful, think also about the people that are less fortunate out there. Don’t just think about yourself. Think about the people that need your help.
It reminds me of a speech that my father-in-law gave at Yale University. It was a commencement speech just like that. And he went out there and he told the students, "Tear down that mirror, tear down that mirror in front of you, that mirror that makes you always look at yourself. Tear down that mirror and you will see millions of people behind you, behind that mirror, that need your help."
And he was right, because there is so much joy in giving something back. We have unbelievable people that are giving back. You have to give back to your community. You don’t have to go, like I did, become part of the President’s Council, or go and set up After-School Programs, or become governor. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about do simple things, like donating blood, or helping Special Olympics, working with people with mental disabilities, or helping people that are in the hospitals, serving some food to people that are hungry, or that are homeless. Those are the kind of things that you all can do. Give back to the community. Don’t just think about taking, give something back.
So again, I want to say, keep up the good work. Work, work, work. Study, study, study. Win, win, win, and give back to the community. Thank you very much for listening, and thank you for the great enthusiasm. Thank you very much. Thank you.
