I show a hands this morning to begin how many here grew up on farms or have

extended family who are farmers. You see?

Oh, that's pretty good.

This is Missouri, right?

All right.

How about how many are from military families?

All right, we got any active military? Okay. How about any present athletes or students

from families that loved athletics.

Okay, that's a lot, there we go.

Now I know nowadays not many of us are farmers and relatively few in this room of

college students I'm assuming have already served in combat but many more of us in this room have tried our hands at competitive

athletics. I'm talking about the kind of athletics you train for. You don't just show up and play, you train, condition, and

get ready. And you may not have been aware of it at the time, but if you have been a soldier or a farmer or an athlete,

then you have been challenged.

Like relatively few modern people have been challenged to learn how to really work.

That is, you were presented with some objective, some concrete challenge, train for battle,

plant a field, practice for game day, and you either put in the required effort and found it in you to

complete the task to be successful on the field or you grew weary.

You cut corners.

Eventually you gave up perhaps.

You either demonstrated you had it in you to do the hard thing, to

persevere and achieve the goal against the obstacles, against the challenges.

...