Stewart offered this advice as the distillation of everything he had learned in his meandering career path. Rather than encouraging graduates to chase prestige or wealth, he urged them toward something simpler and more durable: genuine competence in work they love. The phrase 'let the chips fall where they may' carried particular weight coming from Stewart, who had spent years doing jobs he didn't love before finding comedy, and then years doing comedy in obscurity before The Daily Show transformed his career. His path was proof that competence combined with passion eventually creates its own opportunities, even if the timeline is unpredictable. By calling competence 'a rare commodity,' Stewart was also making a sly observation about the working world graduates were about to enter — that simply being good at something and caring about it would set them apart more than any credential.