Contrary to what your u9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you... you’re nothing special.posted by COD (190 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite
I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance. Don’t bother with work you don’t believe in any more than you would a spouse you’re not crazy about, lest you too find yourself on the wrong side of a Baltimore Orioles comparison.I was feeling good about this speech until I hit this part. I don't know many people who do work that they believe in, and the few that do mostly "believe in" their own professional advancement more than the meaning of the work itself. Adult life often requires working on things we don't believe in just to keep a roof over our heads. But maybe that's not commencement speech material.
In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another–which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality — we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole. No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it... Now it’s “So what does this get me?” As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of Guatemalans.Other parts I can take or leave. The biggest thing he's missing is the horrible fact that we never grow up. When I was in middle school I envied the cars and freedom of the high schoolers. When I was in high school I had the car and the job, but nothing felt finished. I decided the college students had it all figured out. So I tried college. But I dropped out — to my detriment — because it felt like high school, sitting in classes I didn't really see a point in, and I still didn't feel like I knew myself or what I was supposed to do.
As you commence, then, and before you scatter to the winds, I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance. Don’t bother with work you don’t believe in any more than you would a spouse you’re not crazy about, lest you too find yourself on the wrong side of a Baltimore Orioles comparison. Resist the easy comforts of complacency, the specious glitter of materialism, the narcotic paralysis of self-satisfaction. Be worthy of your advantages. And read... read all the time... read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life. Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it. Dream big. Work hard. Think for yourself. Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might. And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer; and as surely as there are commencements there are cessations, and you’ll be in no condition to enjoy the ceremony attendant to that eventuality no matter how delightful the afternoon.are as trite and overwrought as they are far too cursory to actually be instructive. Graduation shouldn't be a come-to-Jesus moment for living a substantive life, if for no other reason than it's a really ineffective tool toward that end.
If you’re raising kids in the suburbs, you know: Too many of us both smother our kids and push them to compete hard for Harvard — starting in kindergarten.posted by ericb at 10:19 AM on June 8, 2012
David McCullough Jr., a long-time English teacher at leafy Wellesley High, took on our parental disorder in his graduation address there Friday. “You’re Not Special” — now posted at Bostonherald.com — is a speech to read and copy and hand out next fall at PTO. He’s nailed our epidemic neurosis perfectly.
.... Now, you might think those Wellesley grads who are able to travel to Guatemala, South Africa, Sri Lanka — wherever would wow Bowdoin or Stanford or Yale — would recoil at their beloved teacher’s frank analysis. Instead, I heard repeatedly yesterday that most loved his words. McCullough himself, a father of four, said yesterday he’s guilty, too, of being swept up in this madness. He told of parents spending thousands on college counselors, said attitudes were very different when he started teaching 26 years ago and speculated that a tough economy may play a role here. But whatever the cause, he said, non-stop, anxious competition has affected every part of school life.
Well known at Wellesley for his ’06 graduation address, when he told seniors to “carpe the heck out of every diem,” McCullough — the son of renowned historian David McCullough — ended his talk with typical, upbeat advice to work hard, find your passion, help others selflessly, etc. But he also said, “The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life, is an achievement, not something that will fall into your lap because you’re a nice person or mommy ordered it from the caterer.”
Bottom line: Kids in tough, poor towns have problems. Kids in tony towns have problems, too. I wonder, 20 or even 50 years from now, which set of problems — rich or poor — will make it harder for those kids to create McCullough’s “fulfilling” and “relevant” life.
Weddings are one-sided and insufficiently effective. Weddings are bride-centric pageantry.Well.
You're doing it wrong. Ours was very egalitarian.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 7:11 AM on June 8 [2 favorites +] [!]
Yeah, that is a pretty bizarre sentiment. It's as if he's saying it's somehow wrong to actually be happy, by, say, watching funny videos on youtube and being distracted by your troubles, you have to pursue, and work your ass off so that you can be 'wealthy' and 'successful' and if you fail (as 90% will) then you deserve to be miserable. Or something.You’ll note the founding fathers took pains to secure your inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness–quite an active verb, “pursuit”–which leaves, I should think, little time for lying around watching parrots rollerskate on Youtube.Watching parrots rollerskate on youtube brings me happiness.
I'm personally really, really tired of hearing people my age and older bitch and moan about how young people these days have it "too good". Wasn't that what we were all working so hard for? That the generation after us could have it better? What's up with this sneering? And then to cap that off with some Hallmark bullshit about how to live, Christ dude, do you really wonder why kids don't listen to you?Plus, it's not even true kids graduating and entering the workforce today, and perhaps for several more years are going to have it worse then their people from prior decades. Although they do get cellphones. Which is nice.
Except that some of them almost certainly are special. This is not someone I think should have influence over children, except maybe as a cautionary example. He's certainly nothing special otherwise.And some of them no doubt have shitty lives. How shitty is it to give this speech when undoubtedly some of the kids in the audience come from broken homes, have abusive parents, etc. It's ridiculous.
Come... dry your eyes, for you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg. Come, dry your eyes. And let's go home
We are Anonymous. We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect usposted by fullerine at 2:16 PM on June 8, 2012 [3 favorites]
You’re about to be told one more time that you’re America’s most valuable natural resource. Have you seen what they do to valuable, natural resources? Have you seen a strip mine? Have you seen a clear-cut in a forest? Have you seen a polluted river? Don’t ever let them call you a valuable natural resource! They’re gonna strip mine your soul! They’re gonna clear-cut your best thoughts for the sake of profit, unless you learn to resist, ‘cause the profit system follows the path of least resistance, and following the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked!He was supposedly escorted out of the building shortly thereafter, or at least that's how he tells the story. Whether this happened or not, it's damn good advice for young people about what lies ahead and what they should look out for.
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Does this speech get better?
posted by peacheater at 6:20 AM on June 8, 2012 [20 favorites]