Ward addressed two types of graduates: the exceptionally gifted who would find early, rapid success, and everyone else — 'bewildered and confused and clinging tenaciously to some course you love.' For the latter, she counseled patience. Sometimes the gatekeeper who opens a door for you appears when you're twenty; sometimes you're thirty, forty, fifty, or sixty. She drew an extended metaphor of navigating a tumultuous sea on a raft, paddling, bailing water, and reading the constellations to find land — an image inspired by watching her grandmother's life with new eyes. What had looked like failure from a teenager's perspective revealed itself, in adulthood, as extraordinary resilience.