When Robert Jones takes the stage to deliver his commencement speech Sunday, he will not stress success, but failure.
Jones, Trinity '02 and a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Medicine, was selected earlier this month to deliver the undergraduate commencement address. He was chosen from a record number of candidates, said Sterly Wilder, executive director of alumni affairs and a member of the student speaker selection committee.
"We kind of swim in a pool of success here at Duke, and I thought it would be interesting to speak about failure," Jones said. "Some of our best life lessons come out of our failures, and that's basically the overarching theme of my speech."
A native of St. Louis, Mo., Jones was a member of Duke University Improv as an undergraduate and he graduated with a degree in classical languages. After receiving his bachelor's degree from Duke, Jones spent two years researching at the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center.
He began studying at the School of Medicine in 2004, but took a year off in 2007 to teach in England as part of the Colet Fellowship. The fellowship offers American college graduates the chance to teach for a year at St. Paul's School-an all-boys secondary school in London. Jones returned to Duke last year to complete his fourth year of medical school.
"It was great having a year to be involved in something that was very much away from my work as a student, and being a teacher and just getting the opportunity to teach some of the brightest minds in England," he said. "To act both as a friend and work with them as a teacher was probably one of the highlights of my past few years."
While at St. Paul's School, Jones taught biology and Latin and coached soccer and tennis. He said he will use "past failures and self-deprecation" to deliver his message, instead of merely recounting his experiences at Duke.
"Essentially what I'm trying to do is boil down the great lessons and opportunities at Duke into this one lesson: that failure is actually a really fun thing, just as powerful, as positive at times as success," he said. "Going out into the world where failure is inevitable, it's valuable to have that perspective."
The student speaker selection committee consists of University officials and undergraduate, graduate and professional students. All graduating undergraduate, graduate and professional students were invited to submit speeches to the committee by March 5. The submissions were first read without the author's name, Wilder said. Finalists then presented their speeches several times before the committee made its selection.
"We had a really good crop of speeches," Wilder said. "When we worked through them and narrowed them down, Bobby came out on top at the end.... He had some humor, but had a serious, but not too serious message and terrific delivery."
She added that Jones had a "good sense" of the audience in terms of addressing both the undergraduate and graduate student bodies.
Jones said he was not initially planning on submitting a speech, and only did so after he overheard a conversation between selection committee members.
"It hit home to me that I was leaving this place after spending nearly a decade here as a student," he said. "I decided that I wanted to try to speak to that."
When asked how the audience might respond to his address, Jones said he hopes for "thunderous applause and laughter," adding that his ultimate goal is to impress commencement speaker and media personality Oprah Winfrey enough that she will invite him on her TV show.
Jones said his last few weeks have been comprised of mixed emotions including excitement, fear and sadness.
"I think I'll feel shy and nervous afterwards, and that's OK. I hope that the lesson will be well received and that people laugh at my jokes, too," he said. "There's excitement I have about being on the better side of 30 and finally getting a job. Duke is essentially what I've known for the past 10 years-I know my world here. Leaving that is exciting, but also scary. Leaving a place is ultimately about redefining yourself in a new setting."
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