Graduation Speeches

Graduation time will forever bring to my mind the 1997 "Wear Sunscreen" speech... not really a speech at all but an exercise by Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich. The Tribune in its wisdom requires you to pay to read the original, titled "Advice, Like Youth Probably Just Wasted on the Young." Fortunately you can find it all over the internet for free. My favorite line:

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Loudoun had 10 graduation speakers this year (I know... commencement addresses) but I've only heard about two that I didn't actually attend, and predictably it was the professional entertainers who drew the comments. Dancer Philip Clyde Bernier spoke to the grads at Park View for what was apparently a very long time, and then sang for them. Comedian Patton Oswalt spoke to the Broad Run grads. Each was invited because he is an alum who showed up on national television several years after graduating.

I'm sure complaints are annual. Last year some folks were upset by the speaker who derided Vice President Cheney from the podium. This year Mr. Oswalt drew the written complaint. I don't know exactly what he said to upset people though "cussing" was mentioned. You can read the parts that weren't controversial in this press release. I think that someone so inclined could have taken a moment to type "Patton Oswalt" into YouTube and then penned a complaint letter well in advance of the speech itself. Not that the person who filed their objection did this, just that I saw this one coming.

Look a little deeper though. Someone doing some checking might also have found Patton Oswalt's own blog entry a few weeks ago discussing this invitation to speak. In it he acknowledges that he wasn't invited to bring gravitas to the stage:

They've got access to museum docents, Senators, Congressmen, political reporters and The Greaseman. But despite this deep pool of wisdom to draw from, they thought, "Let's get that fat dude who tells dick jokes to drunks." I'm lucky enough to count people like Michael Penn, Harlan Ellison and Carl Gottlieb as friends. These are people with true, hard-won wisdom slung from their gun belts. I'm armed with the equivalent of a cheap, Turkish Taser.

On that blog entry, just before launching into a "rough draft" of a graduation speech that reads like an adolescent fan sequel for an amalgam of Office Space and Mad Max, Patton Oswalt mentions a speech given by David Foster Wallace in 2005 at Kenyon College.

David Foster Wallace's commencement speech has truly changed me. I think about it every day. Like Bernstein thinking of the girl on the ferry in Citizen Kane. It's changed me for the better.

I was intrigued enough to go out and find Wallace's speech, and to read it. It's so meaningful that even just to quote from it here would detract from it rather than summarize or tease as a good quote should do. Take 15 minutes out of your day to find it and read it. How odd that its wisdom would be brought to me by a "fat dude who tells dick jokes to drunks" and the man who complained about the words he used.

If you attended a 2008 LCPS graduation ceremony (or if you graduated!) let me know what you thought of the speaker you saw... and whether you remember him. (I can say "him" because all of the speakers this year were men. Class of 2009 take note.)

LCPS Graduation Speakers

It's graduation time again, I plan to attend several events this year. I received this years' graduation speakers list earlier this week, it's a very interesting group.

Briar Woods High School: Brett Fuller, Chaplain of the Washington Redskins

Broad Run High School: Patton Oswalt, 1987 BRHS Graduate – Actor, writer, voiceover artist and professional comedian. (Voice of Remy in the movie Ratatouille)

Dominion High School: Michael Bukva, Student-selected faculty speaker, Government Teacher.

Freedom High School: James Thrash, Wide receiver for the Washington Redskins.

Heritage High School: Rick “Doc” Walker. Former Redskin player and current sports commentator.

Loudoun County High School: Steve Coll, CEO, The New America Foundation. Pulitzer prize winning writer and former managing editor of the Washington Post.

Loudoun Valley School: Pending – Original speaker has been deployed for 6 mo., Sponsor and class officers currently looking for a replacement.

Park View High School: Phillip Clyde Bernier, 2001 PVHS Graduate. Member of the winning team on ABC’s Dance War

Potomac Falls High School: Frank Wolf, Congressman. 10th District, VA.

Stone Bridge High School: Grant Harris, SBHS Graduate. CEO of Gstar Wear and a Management Consultant for Booz Allen Hamilton.

Academy of Science, Dr. Kevin Moses, Associate Director for Science and Training for the Janelia Farm Research Campus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Monroe Technology Center, Aneesh P. Chopra, Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia

Graduations over (almost)

Yesterday I attended the Park View and Potomac Falls High School graduation ceremonies. With this morning's ceremonies for the grads at Dominion and Loudoun Valley, another round is complete. Well, almost. On August 11th will be the summer school graduation, for those kids who couldn't quite get it done by June. I imagine the frustration, embarrassment and anger they must be feeling. They were left out of one of life's great rights of passage, not able to celebrate with their friends. All of the fanfare is over, and they missed it.

When my own college graduation came around, I was just one paper shy of finishing just one class. For better or worse, that class was a core requirement for my major, and I was therefore one class short of graduating. I called my professor and alternately attempted to charm and cajole her. I promised to complete it as soon as I got home. It worked, and she gave me a B on the paper before I'd ever written it. I walked across the stage and collected my diploma, knowing I hadn't quite earned it the way my classmates had.

It was terribly difficult to motivate myself to write that paper during the summertime, but I did, eventually. When I heard back from her that she had received, reviewed and accepted that paper, that's when I finally felt good about graduating. It was as if I had my own summer school session, and private commencement. And when people ask when I graduated, I tell them... 1992. Nobody cares which month it was.

So, all you summer school grads... hang in there. August 11th will be here soon and your graduation will be just as real as the ones in June. You'll still have family and friends telling you they're proud of you. And I'll be there with you, in more ways than you know.

Science Commencements

During the past week I attended two graduations for Loudoun students specializing in science studies. First was our own Loudoun Academy of Science, and then on Saturday was Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. These students deserve special recognition because their high school experience involves travel to a school away from the rest of their friends. They are rewarded for their extensive commute times with exceptional homework loads and extremely high expectations.

They are among the most academically gifted of our community, a gift one cannot choose. But they do choose to work very hard, to explore, to achieve at great cost to their time with family and friends. Loudoun does a great service to these students by giving them exceptional opportunities in conjunction with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Fairfax County schools. (HHMI sponsors lunches with scientists, including Nobel laureates. Fairfax County owns TJ and permits a limited number of Loudoun students to attend each year). This exceptional opportunity ensures that their curiosity, passion and talents are primed for success at our best universities.

You can find a story about the Academy of Science graduation here, including a list of graduates.

TJ Grads included:

• Stephen Ammann
• Winn Chen
• Elias Clizbe
• Anne Cotter
• Scott Fernandez
• Boris Kiseley
• Kimberley Lauder
• Lisa Meintel
• Ashabari Nayak
• Sarah Pak
• Francisco Pareja-Lecaros
• Anastasia Rumiantsev
• Yan Song
• Brian Stoepker
• Nathaniel Stoltz
  

CAMPUS Graduation

On Wednesday evening I attended the graduation ceremony for CAMPUS program graduates, minority students who will be the first in their families to go to college. First, I want to congratulate these 50-odd young men and women for being pioneers in their families and communities. It is important for people in families where college is an expectation to remember that this widespread college accessibility is recent phenomenon that many families have yet to envision for their children.

According to this 2000 white paper, only 25% of Americans are college graduates and just over half of Americans have attended any college at all. We've come a long way from the days of my father's childhood when three quarters of Americans weren't even high school graduates and only 5% were college graduates. We've come so far by encouraging students who might not have considered college as a viable option for themselves in a grand variety of ways.

Jay Mathews is an education columnist for the Washington Post, and recently wrote a piece called Multiplying Benefits of College for Everybody. In it, he cites studies showing the substantial benefit to people of every educational and economic level in attending college. I have read other, equally convincing pieces that suggest we are focusing too much on college and not enough on technical disciplines. There are two arguments against sending everyone to college. One is that a college degree is only advantage when not everybody has one. The second is that so many college grads spend a hundred thousand dollars or more on a liberal arts education and then start their career in low-paying entry-level jobs, whereas a high school grad with an education in auto maintenance or technology can easily make over $50K/year right out of the gate and with no further educational expenses.

I'm not in a position to mediate this dispute, so I'm setting it aside to get back to the most important point. There are many families in this great country who are waiting for one of their own to attend college. LCPS has a great program to help students in these families be leaders even in their young years, and both the students and the folks who keep this program going deserve a big round of applause from everyone in our community.