Wichita ? Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a crowd of high school graduates at his alma mater in Wichita to be prepared for life to take you in a direction you hadn’t planned.

While delivering the commencement address Wednesday night at Wichita East High School, Gates said that lives likely were saved when he switched his major from pre-medicine to history in college.

He urged the students explore new subjects.

Gates says he dreamed of seeing the world when he was younger and would watch the trains coming and going from the depot.

But the amount of the world he saw exceeded his expectations. He says he still considers himself “a kid from Kansas who got lucky.”

Gates graduated from Wichita East in 1961.