Touching a Nerve
By Carole Ashkinaze
Chicago Sun-Times
May 20, 1990
So here we are again, at that time of year when schools and colleges all over this country provide captive audiences for "distinguished" speakers who will very likely bore them to tears.
How we came to lock ourselves into such a curious tradition, I don't know. The last thing a stampede of seniors, with exam week behind them and diplomas at long last within their grasp, wants is to sit through one more lecture that they're not even going to be tested on. In some medieval getup. WIth a mortarboard that keeps slipping down over one eye. As a condition of release. Parents, faculty and trustees are, very often, grudging participants, too. You wanna graduate, or see your kid graduate, you gotta listen to a speech. Maybe a whole series of speeches.
But traditions are hard to break. With one last shot at a group that may think it has already absorbed everything one needs to know about life or the application of knowledge, we pin a lot on commencement. And hope springs eternal, to cite a phrase that is destined to appear in hundreds of speeches over the next few weeks. However trite and predictable, maybe one of those speeches will actually contain something new, memorable or useful. Which is why Time and Newsweek routinely report the remarks of the rich and famous, and why a lot of us never grasp it until decades later, when it is probably too late.
All any speaker worth is or her salt can do is point to the existence of a deadline: The race is on and, whatever you hope to accomplish, you'd better get on with it. All commencement speeches, regardless of their content, tone or embellishments, are variations on that theme. Before you know it, the race will be over. It may even be called before you've left the gate. But it's just getting under way. Which is why these events are called commencements, instead of completions. So, you're on. Now, get going. And good luck.
But a lot of us have our attention on other things: graduation parties, summer vacations, shopping for wedding or career clothes, the long drive home. We're just not listening. So we may spend our whole lives training, dreaming, looking for inspiration or trying to find the right shoes--instead of trying our for the Olympics, writing that book or asking the girl out.
Which is why I sat up and took notice when Frederick M. Thrower, a 1990 graduate of St. Lawrence University, talked about the limit of a lifetime recently in a way I hadn't heard before.
With just a few minutes to address his classmates, in a program headed by the U.S. ambassador to Canada, the 21-year-old class president from Fairfield, Conn., looked ahead to a point 10 years in the future when, he expected, many in his cohort would have failed to make much progress towards their life's ambitions, and back again.
Then he spoke, like an emissary from the future:
"Ten years from now, you were all given a very special gift," he said. "You looked back on you life and realized you wanted to start again. You made a wish upon a star. You wished that you could go back and relive everything, without making that mistake this time. Then you could go back to you college graduation day and start again."
He had touched a nerve, because parents, teachers and trustees were stirring, and his classmates were on the edge of their seats.
"To make it simple," he went on, "your wish was granted, and when you walked down that aisle, you stepped back into your past, right to this point, and here you are.
"Your member of what happened is buried deep inside your mind.
"Welcome back."
Chicago Sun-Times
May 20, 1990
So here we are again, at that time of year when schools and colleges all over this country provide captive audiences for "distinguished" speakers who will very likely bore them to tears.
How we came to lock ourselves into such a curious tradition, I don't know. The last thing a stampede of seniors, with exam week behind them and diplomas at long last within their grasp, wants is to sit through one more lecture that they're not even going to be tested on. In some medieval getup. WIth a mortarboard that keeps slipping down over one eye. As a condition of release. Parents, faculty and trustees are, very often, grudging participants, too. You wanna graduate, or see your kid graduate, you gotta listen to a speech. Maybe a whole series of speeches.
But traditions are hard to break. With one last shot at a group that may think it has already absorbed everything one needs to know about life or the application of knowledge, we pin a lot on commencement. And hope springs eternal, to cite a phrase that is destined to appear in hundreds of speeches over the next few weeks. However trite and predictable, maybe one of those speeches will actually contain something new, memorable or useful. Which is why Time and Newsweek routinely report the remarks of the rich and famous, and why a lot of us never grasp it until decades later, when it is probably too late.
All any speaker worth is or her salt can do is point to the existence of a deadline: The race is on and, whatever you hope to accomplish, you'd better get on with it. All commencement speeches, regardless of their content, tone or embellishments, are variations on that theme. Before you know it, the race will be over. It may even be called before you've left the gate. But it's just getting under way. Which is why these events are called commencements, instead of completions. So, you're on. Now, get going. And good luck.
But a lot of us have our attention on other things: graduation parties, summer vacations, shopping for wedding or career clothes, the long drive home. We're just not listening. So we may spend our whole lives training, dreaming, looking for inspiration or trying to find the right shoes--instead of trying our for the Olympics, writing that book or asking the girl out.
Which is why I sat up and took notice when Frederick M. Thrower, a 1990 graduate of St. Lawrence University, talked about the limit of a lifetime recently in a way I hadn't heard before.
With just a few minutes to address his classmates, in a program headed by the U.S. ambassador to Canada, the 21-year-old class president from Fairfield, Conn., looked ahead to a point 10 years in the future when, he expected, many in his cohort would have failed to make much progress towards their life's ambitions, and back again.
Then he spoke, like an emissary from the future:
"Ten years from now, you were all given a very special gift," he said. "You looked back on you life and realized you wanted to start again. You made a wish upon a star. You wished that you could go back and relive everything, without making that mistake this time. Then you could go back to you college graduation day and start again."
He had touched a nerve, because parents, teachers and trustees were stirring, and his classmates were on the edge of their seats.
"To make it simple," he went on, "your wish was granted, and when you walked down that aisle, you stepped back into your past, right to this point, and here you are.
"Your member of what happened is buried deep inside your mind.
"Welcome back."