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Smithsonian Editor in Chief Carey Winfrey '59 has learned a lesson or two in his long, varied journalism career. Yesterday, he shared some of those lessons with 29 Cum Laude honor society initiates from the classes of 2010 and 2011, upper schoolers, parents, and teachers. Also present were McDonogh's four living headmasters: Bob Lamborn '35, Bill Mules '59, Bo Dixon, and Charlie Britton.

Winfrey's remarks follow:

Headmaster Britton, members of the faculty, McDonogh boys and girls, distinguished guests, headmasters galore ...Thank you very much for that generous introduction, and thank you for inviting me here on such an august occasion.

Let me begin by congratulating those of you elected to Cum Laude. It’s a tremendous honor in which each of you should take enormous pride. Let me also say that I do not speak from experience.

In fact, I have to confess I was a bit skeptical when Charlie invited me here today, especially when he suggested I might impart some “life lessons.” I told him I didn’t do life lessons. I’m still trying to figure it all out.

“Just talk about things you know now that you wish you’d known when you were here,” he said. I thought about that. And I remembered a friend who was asked what he had learned in two years at the Harvard Business School. He paused for a moment, then replied: “Ignore sunk costs.”

In that spirit, here goes: In college, I learned that the greatest lessons are learned outside the classroom.

It was only after college that I learned how wrong I had been about that and how much time I had wasted chasing girls and drinking beer. Especially the beer.

In the Marine Corps, I learned that if you put one foot after another, and don’t think too much about how far you have to go, you can go farther than you ever thought you could. Even with a pack on your back. You’ll surprise yourself.

After the Marines, I went to graduate school—in journalism. There I learned, in the words of Professor John Hohenberg, to “go with what you got”—meaning that when you’ve got a deadline, you meet it, one way or another. I also learned the secret of organization: put like things together.

In Hong Kong, on a fellowship after the J-school, I learned the Cantonese phrase, “Mo Sin Diensi Toy,” which is what I said to the taxi driver each morning when I got into a taxicab on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong harbor. “Mo Sin Diensi Toy”—I’m almost certain—means “wireless tv station,” which is where I made $232 a month as a reporter and sub-editor. One thing I did not learn is what a “sub-editor” is.

I was in Hong Kong when Martin Luther King was assassinated, when Eugene McCarthy almost beat President Lyndon Johnson in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, and when Bobby Kennedy announced he was running for president. And what I knew for certain that terrible, tumultuous spring of 1968 was that it was time to go home.

When I got back, I got a job at Time magazine. At Time, I learned that you should write for the ear. That means that when you’re done writing, read it out loud. It should have the rhythms of speech. I also learned that less is almost always more. When you think it’s perfect, cut it by ten per cent. I guarantee it’ll be better.

Producing a program about the press for public television, I learned that official sources can’t be trusted. It’s a harsh lesson, but there you are.

The main thing I learned as a reporter at the New York Times is that things are rarely what they seem. Every story I was ever assigned turned out to be different—more complex, more nuanced, different—than I thought it was going to be, going in. Maybe it was at the Times that I also learned that things almost never work out the way you think they will. Or maybe that came later.

I left the Times to try to my hand at fiction. What I learned in the six or seven months I spent trying, was that I wasn’t very good at it. That came as an enormous relief.

At CBS Cable, my next gig, I discovered there were not nearly enough advertisers—this was 1980—to support the kind of programming CBS Cable had set out to do. But, when, through a happy accident that I needn’t bore you with today, I was asked to turn some CBS print magazines into cable television programs, I learned the importance of luck in shaping a career. Or a life.

That lesson was driven home to me a year later, when CBS Magazines got a new president. On his first day on the job, he did away with my department, video development, and he fired the editor of Cuisine magazine. So now he had a magazine without an editor and me without a department.

On his second day he solved his problem in the neatest possible way. He made me the editor of Cuisine.

I called my new staff together. “I’ve never edited a magazine,” I told them, “and I don’t know anything about food. But other than that, you’re in good hands.” I still think it’s better to be honest about what you don’t know than to try and fake it.

At Cuisine I also learned that editing a magazine … is the most fun you can have without laughing. Come to think of it, there’s a lot of laughter when you edit a magazine. Or should be.

About a year after I found my true calling as a magazine editor, the company that published rival Gourmet bought Cuisine in order to eliminate a competitor. That's when I learned that magazine publishing is more than a calling-it's a business.

But bless his heart, the man who had made me editor of Cuisine—gave me a raise, a big title, and an even bigger office—and a job that was almost pure administration. I was miserable. If what you’re doing does not give you satisfaction… if it’s no fun, money and title and a big office won’t save it.

Fortunately, after a few months, the new president had an idea for a new magazine. Unfortunately I thought it was a dumb idea. But in trying figure out how to make it better, it won me over. Launching Memories magazine in 1987 was about the most fun I’ve ever had. Witnessing its death three years later, during the recession of 1990, was about the least. Lesson? After a calamity, move on as quickly as possible.

I moved on to American Health, a Reader’s Digest magazine that I edited from 1990 to 1996. There I learned the importance of exercise and healthy eating. After I left American Health—as you can see—I quickly forgot those lessons.

I left American Health to teach at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, from which I had graduated 30 years before. There I learned how difficult teaching is. Rewarding, yes, but hard. Very hard.

After two semesters at Columbia I was lured back to the workaday world as an editor at People magazine. I was something of an odd man out at People, because I had never heard of many of the celebrities we wrote about. I never did find out who Shannen Doherty is. I keep meaning to Google her.

After four years at People, I felt that if I had to edit one more story about Julia Roberts, or Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, or Brad and Jennifer—this was a decade ago—I could not be responsible for my actions. So when I heard that Smithsonian magazine was looking for a new editor, I went after the position like a starving man at an all-you-can-eat banquet.

Every day I would bombard the Smithsonian publisher with notes, letters, references, story ideas, testaments to my erudition, my love of furry animals, my patience with small children.

And after about four months, the headhunter who had first told me about the job went to the Smithsonian publisher and said, “I don’t know if Winfrey is the most qualified candidate, but nobody wants it more than he does.” And the Smithsonian publisher said, “Well, in that case, I guess we’d better give it to him.”

People hire people who want to work for them.

What have I learned in nine years at Smithsonian? Actually, I‘ve learned some history, and natural history, and science and art and a bit about other cultures. And I love that. I came into journalism because I love learning new things. And every day at Smithsonian I have learned new things.

But I guess what I’ve learned most of all is how lucky I’ve been and what a great life I’ve had, so much of which was formed here at McDonogh a half-century ago. It was here that I learned all the great lessons: play fair, work hard, have fun, treat people with respect, be the best of whatever you are.

If you can't be a pine on the top of the hill, Be a scrub in the valley--but be the best little scrub by the side of the rill; Be a bush if you can't be a tree.

Sure, it may sound a little hokey; but hokey doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

So you don’t need life lessons from me. You’re McDonogh boys and girls and men and women. You already know the important things—the things you need to know. With one exception; there’s one life lesson you can’t possibly know—and it may be the greatest of them all, as my classmate and former McDonogh headmaster Bill Mules '59 can attest: and that is just how fast 50 years goes by. I hope you’ll invite me back in another 50. Thanks very much.