Schneider closed his speech by reading an adapted version of the prose poem 'The Invitation' by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, a piece of folk wisdom that he felt captured the essence of what it means to be a truly present counselor. He prefaced it by telling the graduates to 'put down your cell phones and your neat formulations about jobs or status' and listen. The poem builds through a series of declarations about what truly matters — not your job or age or education, but whether you can sit with pain, dance with joy, be faithful to yourself, and get up after grief to do what needs to be done. This final line serves as the poem's culmination: the ultimate test of a person's inner life. For counseling graduates specifically, the question carried professional weight. Schneider had argued throughout his speech that the most important factor in effective psychotherapy is not technique but presence — the therapist's capacity to be fully with another person. That capacity, he insisted, begins with being able to be fully with yourself. He told the graduates to let their diplomas be 'living diplomas' — testaments to ongoing commitment rather than finished achievements.