It Surely Has Been a While

Gerry's Corner: Hello, superfans. I can't imagine any other, lesser fans are still reading this since I've been so negligent with your trust that I might post regularly. Oh, well. I have a variety of excuses, though most of them amount to this:

I am petrified of the month of April.

Even when I was "alive," I would pretty much hibernate through this month. (Well, that likely has something to do with the fact that I'm one-twelfth bear.) But to me, whether it goes in like a lion or out like a lamb, it seems like nothing good comes from April. Hitler's birthday, Columbine, and this year, we had the Virginia Tech shootings and Yeltsin dying and all that other stuff. Not cool.



The school of public policy that's named after me had their graduation ceremonies at the end of April. Of course, I didn't go, but I received a transcript of the student speaker's speech and found it quite disturbing. Here it is:

Thank you. You’re all beautiful.

As many of you may know, I was chosen as the student speaker largely for my interest in graduation speech policy. This address is divided into three parts: a literature review, in which I emulate the styles of many speeches that have come before mine at graduations across the country; a quasi-quantitative section; and a brief conclusion.

Part 1: Literature review.

Some think of graduation as an end – others see it as a beginning. I prefer to think of it as a ceremony. Today, we are made of dreams. Our dreams are lifted on the wings of knowledge – and we will use them to glide across the sky, where we will look down on the valleys of those in need, like boxcar hobos and the rainforest, and where we will look up to see the stars twinkling with promise and potential.

Each new age has had its pioneers. We, the class of 007, became the first explorers in the Joan and Sanford Weill Hall, much like Meriwether Lewis and Dick Clark, when they traveled into the unknown frontier of this great land we call America. (Also, like Lewis & Clark, we were accompanied throughout our journey by a native American woman named Sacagawea, to whom we gave liquor, smallpox, and, eventually, casinos.) We will take this strength with us into the future – our future, the future of dreams, where we’ll be flying around, looking at stuff.

But while we’re in the future, a piece of our hearts will likely remain here in Ann Arbor, here with Michigan – at the MMESS House, at the Big House, at Weill Hall, in the fourth floor of Lorch Hall, at Espresso Royale, at the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus Bar – soon, we will not have enough heart left to go on, but that’s okay, because I speak, of course, of a symbolic heart.

Class of ‘007, we have bonded like really strong glue, and we have come together, like the clasped hands of friendship. We have laughed together and cried together. We studied together and we drank moderately together. We have been intense together and we have been more intense together.

But we can also do things separately. We will all go forth with our own visions of success in mind. I looked up ‘success’ in the dictionary – well, on dictionary.com – and the definition was as follows: “the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors; or the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.” That’s how dictionary.com defines success, but don’t let dictionary.com define success for you! For some of you, ‘success’ may mean choosing a street that is not traversed as often as other streets. For others of you, it might mean winning a bowling trophy at Colonial Lanes with the sherpas with whom you conquered Everest. Some of you might even define ‘success’ as ‘a chair, with or without arms, for reclining, having a seat lengthened to form a complete leg rest and sometimes an adjustable back’, though that would be a mistake, since that’s already the definition of ‘chaise lounge’.

Part 2: Quantitative Analysis

As it turns out, tassle and hood color — go peacock blue! — are better indicators of graduates’ perceptions of the strength of their degree than anything the graduation speakers say to them. This may be because most graduation speakers choose similar themes: 41.7 percent talk about how the graduates will go on to do great things; another 23.8 percent talk about dreams, chasing them, and never settling. Commencement speeches – present company excluded, of course – are often like the cashier at the grocery store asking you how you are. Is it possible that the cashier is invested in your well-being? Along those same lines, do I expect Bob Schoeni to call me in a year to check in on how I’m doing? Will Dean Blank someday be my Facebook friend? Will Dan Glickman loan me movies from his extensive collection of pirated DVDs?

Let’s not be lulled into submission by the formal proceedings that give us structure. I mean, look at us: this is the day when we line up in assigned order, listen to several people with lots of experience tell us all about how amazing we are and how we have the chance to shine, and we all smile and nod while dressed in identical robes and hoods, like we’re in some sort of doomsday cult. Don’t drink the Kool Aid! (Especially not in Rackham Auditorium, where food and drink are prohibited.) I fear we might be getting our master’s degrees in complacency.

I guess my own definition of success might be in achieving a certain sense of disillusionment. In fact, I bet if I don’t talk for the next sixty seconds of this speech, it will be an improvement on what I actually might have said.

[The jazz band plays ‘Well You Needn’t’ for one minute while four people get up and blow bubbles on the graduates and four other people get up and toss them homemade cookies wrapped in cellophane.]

Part 3: Conclusions & Recommendations

During our first year orientation back in aught five, I remember Dean Blank telling us that grades don’t matter. While I took those words a bit literally, I find myself reaching the same conclusion in my own research on graduation speech policy: it’s not that grades are incapable of being important – it’s just not the reason you’re here. Graduation speeches, sorry to say, don’t matter, either. We all get up and encourage you into a life of public service and tell you that you can make a difference – a Michigan difference – but it’s like having someone else make up your own New Year’s resolutions for you. According to my research, people don’t often make career choices based on what we in the platform party implore you to do. You will choose your own path of discovery, or trail of curiosity, or avenue of opportunity, or cul-de-sac of success. So why do we have speakers at graduation at all? It’s probably for three reasons:
1. to entertain
2. to celebrate, and
3. to affirm.
And if the actual content of the ceremony is not that important, allow me to conclude by quoting a famous graduation speaker, who once said, “Blah, blah blah blah – blah blah blah blah.”

Essentially, this student was saying that graduation speeches are meaningless except for the fact that they are given. I heartily and angrily beg to differ. What about Leonard Euler, when he gave the commencement address at the Pine Valley Nursery School graduation exercises and managed to invent his number theory right there on the dais? I can't imagine a more useful school to arm the toddlers for kindergarten.



And how about when Bishop Desmond Tutu gave the address at Brandeis in 2000? His speech was entitled, "Fly, Eagle, Fly." Which of those graduates had ever before considered that they would be able to achieve greatness merely by flying - but not just flying - flying like an eagle? I'll admit it, whenever I thought of flight as a youth, I imagined taking wing as a blue-and-gold macaw. I hear they're gigantic.



The most distressing thing about this wretched student's speech is that he basically left my last several years without much purpose - I mean, what do ex-presidents do besides play golf, pursue whatever causes that interest them, and give commencement addresses? And since I didn't have any causes, well...it means I was just a golfer, which, while freeing, remains just a little depressing.



The other thing is that most guest speakers at commencements, anyway, get honorary degrees. For a long time, this was my plan to help more students graduate from college. I don't see why no one has moved on this.

More soon - promise.

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe,
Gerry