A Conversation with President Hennessy

A Tribute to Stanford's Last President
I met with President Hennessy last quarter, 
in his office,
one-on-one,
and we had the most fruitful, open conversation. 

Entrance to the Office of the President, at the Main Quad.
How exciting!

It was great, really! Meeting with the President of Stanford University is something I’d never considered myself able to do. Even as I sit here, on Stanford’s campus, within biking distance of the President’s Office and just an email away from making contact with our President. These things just never occurred to me. My mom had the idea - she told me that I must meet with President Hennessy before he leaves. Somehow, probably even before I knew, my mom knew it was his last year as President, and she immediately caught this as an opportunity for me to have a discussion with him. She told me “President Hennessy says he loves interacting with students!” How did she even know this? I swear, my mom keeps closer tabs on Stanford than I do. 

My mom keeps close tabs on Stanford,
and insisted that I meet with the outgoing
President!

So thanks, Mummy, for thinking of this. Because once you planted the idea in my head, I decided that this was something I wanted to do as well. Getting into Stanford? Not free. Getting insights from someone who’s been at Stanford for more years than I’ve been alive? Not just free, but priceless. Indeed, President Hennessy was one well-worded email away. And after I’d bridged that gap, I found myself sitting on a plush chair in his office, notebook in hand, questions waiting to spill from the tip of my tongue. The next moment we were shaking hands and Hennessy, the Obama of Stanford, was calling me by name and asking me to tell him a little bit about myself.

What could I say?

I gave him my age-old spiel about writing being my childhood dream, which started to wane as I got older because of doubts and the concern about having a “practical” job - one with which I could “support myself”. I’d bought into the idea of having a “stable career” and doing writing as a thing “on the side” and this was my mentality coming into Stanford. Right now, however, this quarter, I wasn’t so sure. I made myself go back to the drawing board. I need to get back in touch with my dream. Why was I doing Chemistry again? 

But this isn’t about me.

What did our President have to say? What could possibly come out of almost an hour of chatting and exchanging stories and wisdom? Just the realest pieces of advice ever, from a real person. His name might be President right now, but he had dreams growing up just like the rest of us.

“I wanted to be an engineer,” Hennessy responded when I asked about his childhood dreams. “I always liked building things.” But I was curious: did he always dream of one day being at the helm of such an institution?

Apparently, it was only as an undergrad in university that President Hennessy discovered his interest in teaching, and research, and this sparked his desire to become a faculty member. And this is exactly what he did. His path led him to become a faculty member here, at Stanford, and after teaching for many years, he rose to the ranks of Provost and eventually President. Sadly, since he’s been President, he’s only been able to teach a couple of times and admitted that he misses teaching, and yearns to go back to it.

So there I was, trying to discover the man behind the name “President” and of course, I wanted to know, the typical question asked of highly successful people: what did it take to reach where he reached? (I mean, read his bio online, and you’ll see just how distinguished, accomplished and accoladed our President is).

I bet you guessed it: Work, work, work, work, work, work - call me Rihanna, call it cliche, but this is the one word echoed by many a successful person. President Hennessy’s response was no exception:

“Lots of hard work. But,” he adds, “I enjoyed most of it."

Enjoy? Work? Are those two words ever allowed to be in the same sentence? According to Hennessy they can, and they should.

“You have to love what you do, and be passionate about it,” he told me later on, and:

“I think that if you’re not doing something you’re passionate about, you won’t be able to muster the enthusiasm and excitement necessary to be successful.”

Not the first time I’ve heard this, I admit. But coming from someone who seems to be the epitome of success, and clearly loves what he does, and says so with such conviction…it’s a different story. It is a reassurance that yes, I’m doing the right thing by ditching pre-med requirements (which I never wanted anyway) to discover my creative side, my writing side (my true passion from childhood).

I went on to ask him about what he hopes for Stanford students after they leave the bubble. It’s simple really:

“Enjoy whatever you do, and make an impact.”

Right in line with Stanford’s unsaid philosophy I think. I mean, a lot of people around me seem to be going for just that: something that they enjoy, and something that’s going to make some kind of difference in a world that needs fixing. But sometimes it feels like these philosophies conflict, especially when you factor in the need to support yourself, and your family. And then there’s the hard work that it would take. I’m sure we’ve all witnessed or experienced the pre-med struggle (you want to become a doctor, but you hate chemistry. Is it worth it?) or the artists’ struggle (I love my craft, but the process is grueling…yet there’s that satisfaction when I’ve completed the project. Is it worth it?) or just the struggle of being an ambitious human being. You want what you want, but the tedious work involved makes you question whether or not it’s worth it. And so, I wanted to know: when the days are long and the work is hard and you can’t find happiness in what you do, when is it no longer worth it to pursue?

I considered this a tough question, and expected a complicated answer, but President Hennessy is not fazed and didn’t even hesitate before he responded:

“Have you watched Steve Jobs' commencement address?” - I nodded. I’m pretty sure I’d stumbled across it on YouTube as I Stanford-stalked the summer before freshman year. Or maybe I’d seen the TedTalk? Anyway, President Hennessy recalled when Steve Jobs said this:

"...I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?' And whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something." 

I nodded my head in reflective agreement. This was gold. And so simple, too. Maybe success comes with finding simple answers to complicated questions. I suppose things aren’t always as hard as we imagine them to be.

President Hennessy’s own thoughts on the matter are similar: “When the drudgery outweighs the feeling of excitement and accomplishment, then it may not be worth it anymore. Life’s too short!” 

Indeed! And speaking of life, I wanted to know what a typical day was like in the life of the President of Stanford University. 

President Hennessy wakes up at 5:30am (!), and works out (!) and reads the paper. After that, his day can be any combinations of meetings, talks and office time. He usually travels for a couple days per month, but the rest of the time, he’s here, on campus, doing Presidential things to keep this place running.

But let’s backtrack for a bit. President Hennessy said he works out. How does the President have time to work out? I don’t even have time to work out, and I’m but a mere student. It’s refreshing to hear though, because if the President can find time to work out, then so can I if I really wanted to. Taking breaks from work? Takes time. Taking care of yourself? Priceless.

“Like they say: ‘Work hard, play hard’. But you have to actually do both,” Hennessy clarified. Indeed, it’s easy to get carried away with the “work hard” part and forget to actually relax, but we should: 

“Take time to do things that restore you."

As President, he doesn’t get to take many breaks (I mean, you can never really take a break from being Stanford’s President. Like Hennessy said, “the job follows you”) but he does get the opportunity to travel relatively often, which he enjoys, in addition to reading and paying golf. Personal fitness is, evidently, a presidential priority. Which makes sense. What makes us think that our bodies are invincible? We’re not doing ourselves any favors when we’re lacking sleep, eating badly, never exercising, and overworking - but somehow, we think we can do all this, and still be on our game. It’s at trap I feel the need to crawl out of. After all, success like this isn’t worth my mental health.

But then again.

Success. It’s relative, it’s subjective. Success means different things to different people in different places. At Stanford, though, I feel like success is easily seen as involvement and accomplishment in the widest array of things. A “successful” Stanford student is the best of not just both worlds, but of all worlds - they can do and manage everything on their plate while keeping a smile on their face. Their resumes are enriched, but their experiences? Not so much. 

This is hard to swallow when we all have such varied interests and are tempted to try everything. And we all know that Stanford lacks nothing the when it comes to new opportunities and ways to engage - they’re laid out before us like a buffet; who wouldn’t want a little taste of everything?

“Dabbling in different things is great,” President Hennessy comments when it comes to exploring your interests. “But in the end...

"...it’s better to be deeply committed to a few things than superficially involved in many.”

This will never be easy to accept, and that feeling of “not doing enough” seems to always plague us, when we’re surrounded by people who always seem to be doing and being so much more. 

And this is one of the biggest challenges students here face.

“Students go from being extremely high achievers who stood out in high school, to a place where everyone’s a high achiever,” President Hennessy explains when I asked about student challenges.

It reminded me of the Fish-in-Pond Syndrome. In high school, we’re big fish in a little pond. But we arrive at Stanford, and suddenly we’re little fish in a really big pond and it’s hard to always remember your worth when everyone seems so much bigger than you.

Our President offers one word of advice to get through this: Resilience.

Resilience, huh.

It’s probably what got the President through hard times as well. He described for me one of the biggest challenges he faced on the job: Years ago, when the economy had taken its downward turn, Stanford’s endowment was drastically reduced by billions. Drastic times call for drastic measures. 

“There were hard decisions to be made,” Hennessy laments, “We had to rally the troops and make the necessary cut backs.”

He emphasized that something had to be done. Hennessy recognized that this was not to be taken lightly, and he acted accordingly. Having to deliver some “tough messages”, Hennessy admitted earlier, was indeed a  challenge within his occupation. 

But even amidst such challenges, Hennessy has no major regrets about where he is and the path he took to reach here. Maybe another thing to note about successful people: they don’t seem to have regrets. Maybe because they’ve long learnt how to view regret as valuable, as a learning experience, and as having an integral role in their achievements.

There are, however, skills that he’d wished he’d learned earlier.

“Before I was President,” Hennessy reflected, “I was an engineer, and I’d give many talks - but they all used slides. I was so used to giving talks with slides. As President, I had to learn to give speeches and talks with no slides, and this is a very different skill. Look at Obama, have you seen him speak? He’s a natural. It’s a hard skill to develop, and one I wish I’d developed earlier.”

I suppose then that PWR2 (Program in Writing & Rhetoric Part 2) is Stanford’s way of preparing us for the world. But how else does Stanford prepare us for the world?

“I think the most important thing you learn here isn’t specific knowledge,” Hennessy remarks, “but how to express yourself well, how to relate to people, and how to interact with people of varying backgrounds, which are important skills in the world beyond.”

So what’s next for our esteemed President? 

He’ll be sticking around at Stanford for a while, managing the new scholarship program that I’m sure you may have heard of: the Knight-Hennessy Scholars Program.

“I’d like to go back to teaching, as well, before I retire,” Hennessy adds, “because I miss it.”

Maybe this is it, the mark of true success and a life well lived: when you love what you do so much, that you want to continue doing it, even after years and years of working hard.

Decades from now, I’d like to be able to say the same.