The Gift of a Good Start

The Gift of a Good Start

Colin Powell

During my time as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I often met senior foreign military leaders during my travels.  Sometime during our initial meetings, I came to expect this question to come up: "When did you graduate from West Point?"  Apparently they were still of the view that a West Point commission was the only way to get to the top.

"I didn't go to West Point," I replied, "as much as that would have been an honor."

An embarrassed cough usually followed, and then came the next question: "Oh, well, where did you go?"

The answer was the City College of New York, in Harlem, not far from where I was born.  I was commissioned through CCNY's ROTC program -- the first ROTC graduate, the first black, and the youngest ever to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

"It's a great school," I told them, "open to everyone." I'd usually go on to explain that CCNY was founded in 1847 and was then called the Free Academy.  It was the first fully open, free college in America -- a daring innovation in those days, as its president, a West Pointer, Dr. Horace Webster, declared on the opening day in 1849:

"The experiment is to be tried, whether the children of the people, the children of the whole people, can be educated, and whether an institution of the highest grade, can be successfully controlled by the popular will, not by the privileged few."

Time passes and I show up on campus in February 1954.  I'm not sure how I got in.  I was in no way an academic star.  My high school grades were below the CCNY's admission standards.  Was I given a preference?  I don't know.

At CCNY I was initially an engineering major, but quickly dropped it.  Later I settled on geology, but by then I had discovered ROTC.  I fell in love with ROTC, and with the Army.

After four-and-a-half no-cost, undistinguished academic years, CCNY administration took pity on me and allowed my ROTC A grades to remain in my college average.  This brought my average up to a smidgen above 2.0, high enough to quality for graduation.  To the great relief of the faculty, I was passed off to the U.S. Army.

Nearly 60 years later, I am considered one of the CCNY's greatest sons.  I have received every award the school can hand out; an institute at CCNY has named after me - the Colin L. Powell Center for Leadership and Service; and I have been titled a Founder and Distinguished Visiting Professor.  Many of my professors have to be spinning in their graves over all that...

I love telling the story of my rocky education career to youngsters.  My point is, it isn't where you start in life that counts, it is where you end up.  So, believe in yourself, work hard, study hard, believe that anything is possible, and always do your best.  Remember that your past is not necessarily your future.