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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday May 13, 2002 Volume IV Number 19 |
FOCUS - Commencement Address
It’s the season for Pomp and Circumstance, and those predictable speeches that many people find intolerable. To them, the platitudes and the clichés and the formalities are hollow and pointless. But graduation day is a milestone, and is far more significant that most of the participants realize.
I suppose there was a time when solemnity prevailed over the annual rite as the mantle of all the distinctive ideals of the institution fell like a mighty weight on the shoulders of the matriculating class. The self-sacrificing work of the faculty and the administrative staff set the standard. The speeches contained instructions to bear the burden of service to humanity as enlightened people of privilege. Graduates are welcomed into the elite club, having fulfilled all the duties and responsibilities required, shown competence and proven abilities to perform on a level worthy of the certificate bound in leather with the imprint of the institution’s logo. But if you attend a graduation this season, “solemn” will not likely come to mind as a descriptive label.
You’ll hear whoops and hollers and wolf-whistles. Blow-horns and screams. It’ll remind you more of a dance recital or a track meet than a chapel service. It’s a sign of the times.
But I’ve never considered these graduation speeches inconsequential. I’ve always been one of those rare listeners who attend to every word. The young valedictorians, testing their wings in verbal flight, sometimes stumbling, sometimes stretching for the word picture just out of reach, the turn of a witty phrase, developing some kind of cadence, working the language to inspire, to touch the emotions, to somehow capture the moment in words – I sit there listening, smiling at their attempt to soar on the updraft of the audience’s admiration, dismissing it when they miss the mark ever so slightly, or stumble over a phrase, or misuse a word, or cross over boundaries of good sense, and then celebrating when they find it - the moment that elicits laughter or a simple nod or a knowing look to one’s neighbor with a smile of approval.
And after the student speech, the professional takes to the podium, showing the valedictorian how it’s done. The best of them really do take flight, and we soar with them on the hopes and dreams and possibilities of this graduating class.
I never tire of these rituals. They inspire me. I remember my own graduation(s). Part of me felt confident. Eager. Visionary. But part of me also felt fraudulent. Unsure. Circumspect. I wasn’t really as competent as they seemed to think. I learned the game. Played pretty much by the rules. I completed the work. But I hardly felt that I had mastered the material. I appreciated the predictions of greatness that came from here and there. But I knew somehow that the larger test was still out there. An examination in waiting. I wore the cap and gown. But I wasn’t so sure I was prepared.
Those graduations of mine are fading now in my memory. They are shadowy recollections, memorialized in photographs showing their age. The youngster under the mortar board bears some resemblance to the person I see in the mirror now – but it’s only slight.
So when I attend a graduation ceremony, it reawakens those memories. The promise and the hopes and the dreams come alive again. What is different now, I suppose, we would call prespective.
* * * * * *
There was no more defining moment for my generation than the war in Southeast Asia. In my suburban middle class neighborhood, there wasn’t much time for protest. My world was occupied by the veterans of World War II, and the fight against the threat of communism, wherever it might expand. We believed that fight was legitimate. Worthy. Patriots took their duty seriously. To back away, no matter what the excuse, was an unacceptable sort of cowardice.
In time, the costly war in Vietnam took a heavy toll on our national tranquility. Families were divided. The Universities became another sort of battle ground, invaded by armed National Guard troops in riot gear, attempting to keep order. Public institutions, including the Congress, on the inside became adversarial. Your position on the war put you in one of two hostile factions. As time passed, the hostilities just seemed to escalate.
I was perplexed by the animosity of my generation toward our national institutions. The Presidency. The Military. Government. The Universities. The Business community. The Media. Religion – particularly the old, traditional religious institutions. An emerging generation considered them all suspect. Rather than aspiring to a prestigious role, climbing the hierarchy of these institutions for a life long career, a whole generation spurned the whole notion of career altogether. For a season, our country teetered on the brink of anarchy. I was a wide eyed student, curious, walking the corridors of a major university, listening to the animated debates in the classrooms and auditoriums and there in the student forums. I wondered what energized this hot debate.
Some Bible teachers explained it as the End Times. I considered this view a convenient out. I had no problem with the idea that the planet will come to an end someday. I buy into the linear view of history. But few young twenty-somethings are eager for the end of the world; the Big Finish. I certainly wasn’t one of them. I was enthusiastic for my life to unfold. I wanted a future. And I wanted to understand.
A young New York Times journalist wrote a book. A long book. Heavily researched. It was a comprehensive history of the conflict in Southeast Asia. It set the stage for what would become the twentieth century’s American civil war. I remember reading it with rapt interest. The book won the young writer a Pulitzer Prize. His book, “The Best and the Brightest.”
I heard that writer, now more than thirty years later, make a commencement speech this week. He addressed some eight thousand fresh new graduates of the University of Southern California (USC). I turned to my daughter midway through and said, “there’s nothing quite like a talented word-crafter.”
In the years that followed his prestigious award, David Halberstam wrote more books. He’s developed a reputation for thorough research, clear narratives and penetrating perspectives.
And
in this self-deprecating talk to an elite collection of aspiring young
achievers, full of energy and ideals and equipped now with an impressive
resume, new members of a select association, he admitted that he was an
undergraduate underachiever. On his graduation day, he felt like
an also-ran. He knew he barely got by. Then, shortly after graduation, he was
fired from his first job as a newspaper writer in a small town near his
childhood home in Mississippi. He didn’t say why. I’ll take a wild guess that
in print he took an unpopular stand – a liberally educated journalist going in
your face in a rural Southern small town. Probably cost him his forty-five
dollar a week salary.
“As I sat where you are today, in my cap and gown, truth be told, I was well into the bottom half of my class. To be more precise, the bottom third.”
He continued, “I would like to speak to you today, those of you who received no special recognition for some distinctive achievement during your career as a student in this great institution. There is hope. There is life after University. I stand before you this day as Exhibit A.”
In retrospect, and to the surprise of his classmates and professors, though he didn’t say it in his speech, we all now know - he was on the road to a Pulitzer Prize.
* * * * * *
Our son-in-law, Ben, heard his name announced through the loud speaker in the cavernous Bovard Auditorium. His graduation robe, reserved for doctoral candidates, a regal red, embroidered with the insignia of the University, put him in the company of his classmates. From the top of his matching mortar board cap a gold tassel bounced with every turn of his head. The accomplishments of the Class of 2002 were highlighted by a grand assembly of faculty. A member of President Bush’s Cabinet (the United States Treasurer) made another compelling speech.
As we all stood to our feet in unison at the sound of his name, emotion flooded over us all. It was healthy pride. Genuine admiration. Distinguished members of the faculty placed the doctoral hood over our son-in-law, brightly colored, spilling down over his shoulders in celebration of the opening of a promising new chapter. We clapped and whooped and whistled and shouted his name from our place in the great auditorium, just like all the others in the room who felt the same burst of delight when their student crossed the platform for hooding.
It was a moment we will savor or the rest of our lives.
* * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader. And as a leader, this weekend, you thought about your Mom. You considered what she gave you. You talked to her, and thanked her once more for her sacrifice and continued care.
She was there when you walked across your graduation stage. She more than likely had tears in her eyes.
Maybe you’ve got a graduation or two on your calendar this month or next. Be there. Remind your student that their achievement is significant. Real. That the time spent and the disciplines learned and the comradeship and the networking and the mentoring will all pay rich dividends in the future. Let them know how much you believe in them.
Think about your journey. How your education established so much of what followed. Probably, you are involved in something entirely different than the career you imagined as a shiny new graduate. But the degree/certificate/diploma you earned set an unmistakable course. It equipped you in ways you didn’t understand then.
The writer and presenter of your commencement address had it right. You really were a person of promise. Then. And now.
Maybe we are not quite Pulitzer Prize material or doctoral candidates. But we are people of promise.
Let’s be sure the promise is fulfilled.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2002
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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