May 17, 2019
Graduation is not so much an ending as it is a beginning. As each and every one of you leave this hill that you’ve called home over the past four years taking classes and making friends… Oh, that’s not today, right?
Tomorrow...?
I’ve always wanted to use those lines. And since I retired from Denison at the conclusion of last semester, I’m pretty sure that this would be my last chance to do so.
Tomorrow you will become Denison alumni. I joined that group when I graduated from Denison in 1981 with a major in Cinema. I recall little of my own graduation other than it took place too early in the morning in the old Livingston Gym on a rainy day in late May. Our commencement speaker was an esteemed judge who shall remain nameless mainly because I don’t remember his name. However, I have a pretty good feeling that you won’t have any difficulty in recalling your college commencement speaker in years to come. I remember only one thing the judge said in his address to our class, and that was “in years to come you won’t remember a thing I say today.” Well, I guess I proved him wrong.
Herr Rettman, my high school German teacher for four years, once mused before giving our class an exam that if we were to receive a 50% on any assignment it would be considered a failing grade. He continued by stating that if we were to remember half of everything we learned throughout our lives we’d likely be considered geniuses.
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| Dave enjoying the sunset, as he does |
Apparently, everything is relative.
I’m grateful to Dr. Lall for asking me to speak today. It’s truly an honor to be here standing before you. Congratulations on your accomplishments and I hope that you’ll bear with me as I meander through my prepared remarks.
When Dr. Lall asked me if I’d speak today I readily admitted that I wasn’t a member of Phi Beta Kappa. In fact, it would be stretching it just a tad to say that my Denison GPA just shy of a 3.25 made me a solid B+ student. To be honest, GPAs have little currency outside of academia. While they are certainly a marker of past classroom success, they are not necessarily a predictor of future successes. At least this is how I excuse my B+ tendencies. Your future successes will have to be earned in a variety of ways through work, play, family, and friends.
All of you have achieved so much. You’re not just outstanding in your major fields of study but also in your electives and General Education classes. For some of you, but not all, you’ve already made early career choices. While all of you will end up with at least one career you might want to consider exploring several fields before settling into the one that you think will be the most rewarding for you. Don’t forget, you get to define “rewarding” however you’d like.
I recently asked a dear friend of mine who is a Denison alum from 1985 and a member of Phi Beta Kappa what advice she would have liked to have received when she was graduating. Rebecca was a Psychology major with a Math minor. Having grown up in Ohio she eventually moved to Manhattan after working in Denison’s Admissions Office for a couple of years. Rebecca was always good with numbers and quickly found employment as a numbers cruncher. But she always enjoyed cooking. And Rebecca was a good cook. Well, she enjoyed cooking so much that she enrolled in night culinary school while keeping her day job. To make a long story just a bit shorter, she now works for the Food Network copywriting recipes. Apparently, celebrity chefs don’t necessarily measure ingredients when they’re cooking. It’s Rebecca’s job to make sure that these recipes are foolproof so that those of us at home who aren’t expert chefs can make dishes that closely approximate the ones seen on TV or written on the web. Rebecca’s advice is to not listen to others when leaving this hill but to follow your heart and passions. You can learn to be good at things you like to do. It just takes time. And just because you’re seemingly good at something doesn’t mean that you should make it your life’s work.
As time goes on you’ll find passions that you might never have considered. One must remain open to the possibilities. Passions don’t necessarily jump out at you or come easily. Passions are learned. One of my passions is baseball. I like all things baseball but I love the New York Mets. My passion for the Mets began in the fifth grade and has only intensified through the decades as I came to understand the nuances of the game better. I was never good at playing the game but through thousands of hours of watching baseball and reading about it I can no longer imagine a life or a world without this sport.
Earlier this week I received a text from a recent alum. In part he wrote, “I need to hear about how you cope with baseball failures. I’m not a child anymore, and the torture the Pirates have put me through is starting to wear on my poor heart. I’m interested in your coping mechanisms.” As you can see, sometimes passions lead to disappointment, too. But that’s OK. Because for that fan, when the Pirates do eventually win the World Series again his passion will have paid off handsomely. And then again, if they don’t, sometimes the process is its own reward.
My advisor in graduate film school once told our class that since the dawn of time there have been thousands of great artists but only a handful of great critics. He told us this to encourage us to take risks as filmmakers and not to listen to harsh criticism. If truth be told, all criticism in graduate school seemed harsh if not well intended. As I’ve grown older I’ve come to interpret my advisor’s words in another way. To me this now means that I should hold my own critical views close on a whole range of subjects as in the end my words are subjective and possibly not appreciated or even warranted by the party hearing them. And I’m not talking about filmmaking or art here. Criticism should be constructive or not at all.
I took a class in graduate school titled Film Now: Sex, Violence, and Exponential Nirvana. What I can say? It was the early 1980s. And I was in southern California. This was a seven-hour class of roughly 75 students where we viewed a feature-length film and then discussed it. On this particular Friday, yes, a seven-hour Friday afternoon class, the film screened was Sergei Eisenstein’s October. Don, our instructor asked for a show of hands as to who had seen this film before. I raised my hand as did most of the class. Then he asked of other Eisenstein films telling us to keep our hands up if we’d seen them. Potemkin? Strike? The General Line? Alexander Nevsky? Suffice it to say, that once he’d completed his litany of titles mine was the only hand still raised. He then asked me where I saw these films. Keep in mind home video was in its infancy and to see these films one had to view them on, well, film. I responded to his question by saying I’d seen them all as an undergraduate at Denison University. My alma mater prepared me well for graduate school. Keep in mind that my alma mater is soon to be yours, too.
I tell you this anecdote not only to give props to this college’s cinema department but as an example of something that can’t be taught, and that’s experience. You can’t watch a two-hour film in less than two hours. Like art, music, theatre, and dance, film has to be experienced. And that takes time. Knowledge is a wonderful thing to possess, though coupled with experience it’ll make life more enjoyable.
A couple of months ago I had a text conversation with a graduating senior and the subject of his college career came up. He suggested that friends of his have intimated that these past four years will be the best time of their lives. I immediately dissuaded him of this notion. Believe it or not, all of you are still being formed. I’m still being formed. If you do this life thing right, you won’t peak until you’re in your last decade.
There actually is something to this life-long learning thing. Experience along with knowledge and critical thinking make life more enjoyable with every passing year. The trick, as I stated earlier, is to remain open to the possibilities. Don’t stagnate; move forward. Reflect, but always move forward.
I’ve never been one to give graduating seniors too much advice, but since I almost have your undivided attention… well, here goes.
Follow your heart. Follow your heart while using your brain. Don’t feel compelled to do what others expect of you. Do what you expect of you. Try to live up to your own expectations. Have few regrets. Some are inevitable, but try to minimize their damage. You’re too young to be bored. Slow days last longer. Enjoy them. Celebrate their longness. Read a book. Listen to music. Take a walk. Or simply daydream.
If you can possibly avoid it, don’t go home to live after graduation. What you consider your home is now really your parents’ home. It’s a great place to visit but you don’t want to live there. And if your parents are anything like mine were, they’ll have questions. Seemingly innocuous dinner time questions such as “What did you do today?” or “How’s that job search coming?” take on greater significance than they did over Winter Break.
Believe me, I speak from experience.
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| Glenn and Dave in Vineyard Haven |
OK, back to baseball for just a moment. Dan Quisenberry, a relief pitcher for the Kansas City Royals back in the 1980s was known for his witty quotes, my favorite being, “I’ve seen the future, and it’s much like the present, but only longer.” And while these words may seem amusing upon first hearing them, there’s more than a bit of truth underlying them. In a sense, all there is, is the future. The present is always fleeting and the past is always, well, in the past. Yesterday can’t be lived again. So, in essence, it’s the future where we think about living our lives.
Unfortunately, experience can’t be taught. But if it could, I'd teach you my past 38 years since graduating from Denison. And while college isn't the best four years of your life your record of achievement at Denison strongly suggests that you did college right. If you continue to learn and truly experience life, every day after tomorrow’s graduation will be better than the preceding one. Though impossibly fleeting, live in the moment.
Revel in it. Savor it. Give yourself license to be happy. Plan for the future by doing the right things today, tomorrow, and throughout the coming years. And if you do, I think you’ll agree with me, that it's a pretty good life.
