Jon Stewart’s William & Mary Commencement Address: The Entire World is an Elective

in Comedy, Graduation Speech, Life, Television | July 4th, 2012

In 1984, Jon Stew­art grad­u­at­ed from The Col­lege of William & Mary. In 1999, he began host­ing Com­e­dy Cen­tral’s news pro­gram The Dai­ly Show. In 2004, he returned to his alma mater, immea­sur­ably more influ­en­tial than he’d left it, to give its com­mence­ment address. Despite a dat­ed crack or two — this was the hey­day of George W. Bush, the Pres­i­dent who arguably gave Stew­art’s Dai­ly Show per­sona both its foil and rai­son d’être — the speech’s core remains sound. You, Stew­art tells the massed grad­u­ates, have the pow­er to become the next “great­est gen­er­a­tion,” though the chance appears espe­cial­ly clear and present because of how the last gen­er­a­tion “broke” the world. “It just kind of  got away from us,” he half-jokes, his grin com­pressed by seri­ous­ness. That admis­sion fol­lows a stream of self-dep­re­ca­tion hit­ting every­thing from his ten­den­cy toward pro­fan­i­ty to his unusu­al­ly large head as an under­grad­u­ate to how his pres­ence onstage deval­ues William & Mary’s very rep­u­ta­tion.

Whether or not you find the world bro­ken, or whether or not you believe that a gen­er­a­tion could break or fix it, Stew­art still packs a num­ber of worth­while obser­va­tions about the place into fif­teen min­utes. He per­haps deliv­ers his most valu­able words to these excit­ed, anx­ious school-leavers when he con­trasts the world to the aca­d­e­m­ic envi­ron­ment they’ve just left: “There is no core cur­ricu­lum. The entire place is an elec­tive.” Stew­art com­mu­ni­cates, as many com­mence­ment speak­ers try to but few do so clear­ly, that you can’t plan your way direct­ly to suc­cess in life, what­ev­er “suc­cess” might mean to you. He cer­tain­ly did­n’t. “If you had been to William and Mary while I was here and found out that I would be the com­mence­ment speak­er 20 years lat­er, you would be some­what sur­prised,” he admits. “And prob­a­bly some­what angry.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

Jon Stew­art: Teach­ers Have it Too Good (Wink)

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Salman Khan Returns to MIT, Gives Commencement Speech, Likens School to Hogwarts

in Graduation Speech, K-12, MIT | June 19th, 2012


This week, Salman Khan returned to his alma mater, MIT, to deliv­er the com­mence­ment speech to the 2012 grad­u­ates. As you know, MIT helped spark the open edu­ca­tion move­ment when it launched its Open­Course­Ware site in 2002. A decade lat­er, the uni­ver­si­ty has placed mate­ri­als for 2100 cours­es online (find many high­light­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Online Cours­es). So it’s fit­ting that the new face of open edu­ca­tion would deliv­er the big speech.

The talk is a bit inward­ly focused, a cel­e­bra­tion of MIT and its Hog­warts qual­i­ties. But the lat­ter half gets to Khan’s phi­los­o­phy of life, his recipe for liv­ing well in the world. It boils down to 1) being pos­i­tive and smil­ing when in doubt, 2) sur­ren­der­ing your ego dur­ing times of con­flict, 3) lis­ten­ing to oth­ers, 4) down­play­ing mate­r­i­al con­cerns and focus­ing on health and rela­tion­ships, and 5) using a num­ber of thought exper­i­ments to gain per­spec­tive on life. Those he explains along the way.…

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Michael Lewis Tells Princeton Graduates How Moneyball Rules Apply to Real Life

in Books, Graduation Speech | June 11th, 2012

More and more we see a trend — high cal­iber schools are ask­ing celebri­ties to deliv­er their big com­mence­ment speech­es. Conan O’Brien at Dart­mouth. Stephen Col­bert at North­west­ern. Den­zel Wash­ing­ton at Penn. Tom Han­ks at Yale. The list goes on. Admit­ted­ly, the talks can be enter­tain­ing. But, it’s still a breath of fresh air when schools actu­al­ly put an author cen­ter stage. Wit­ness Neil Gaiman at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts and now Michael Lewis at Prince­ton.

Lewis grad­u­at­ed from Prince­ton in 1982, and went on to write many best­sellers — Liar’s Pok­er, The Blind Side, The Big Short, and Mon­ey­ball, a book turned into a Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion by Brad Pitt. You prob­a­bly know the gist of Mon­ey­ball. Major league base­ball clubs have long over­val­ued star play­ers, and under­val­ued ver­sa­tile ones who fly beneath the radar. That only changed when scrap­pi­er, finan­cial­ly-pressed teams start­ed min­ing base­ball data in intel­li­gent ways. Well, it turns out the same log­ic applies to the work­ing world. Cor­po­ra­tions reward exec­u­tives out­ra­geous­ly, while under­valu­ing many con­trib­u­tors in an orga­ni­za­tion, which leads “suc­cess­ful” peo­ple to believe they’re extreme­ly tal­ent­ed rather than gen­er­al­ly lucky. So here’s Lewis’ mes­sage to Prince­ton grads. When you get rich or famous, don’t get too car­ried away with your­self. Your suc­cess might have to do with “being there,” or being in the right sys­tem, more than any­thing else.

And now for anoth­er real­i­ty check for grad­u­ates — this one from Welles­ley High Eng­lish teacher David McCul­lough Jr. (son of the famous his­to­ri­an) who tells grads “You are not spe­cial. You are not excep­tion­al.” The empir­i­cal evi­dence makes that clear:

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Andy Samberg Announces Death of Liberal Arts, Coolness of Science Majors at Harvard Class Day

in Comedy, Graduation Speech, Harvard | May 27th, 2012

Every time Har­vard Class Day rolls around, you can expect a few good laughs from a come­di­an. In years past, Sacha Baron Cohen (a Cam­bridge grad), appear­ing as Ali G, offered some words of non­sen­si­cal wis­dom to Har­vard grads. Amy Poehler and Will Fer­rell have done the same. This year brings Andy Sam­berg, a Sat­ur­day Night Live cast mem­ber and co-star in var­i­ous com­ic films. The high­lights?

  • 4:29 mark: Announces that His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture, any­thing relat­ed to Art, and any­thing that ends with “Stud­ies,” are offi­cial­ly use­less.
  • 5:12 mark: Declares that Math and Sci­ence majors are cool .… final­ly.
  • 9:13 mark: Reads poem by WB Yeats in his own, nov­el way.
  • 10:20 mark: Impres­sions begin.
  • 14:07: Awk­ward­ly comes on to all the moth­ers in the crowd.
  • 15:04: Awk­ward­ly comes on to all the fathers in the crowd.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

J.K. Rowl­ing Tells Har­vard Grads Why Suc­cess Begins with Fail­ure

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Neil Gaiman Gives Graduates 10 Essential Tips for Working in the Arts

in Books, Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | May 21st, 2012

Neil Gaiman, con­sid­ered one of the top ten liv­ing post-mod­ern writ­ers, nev­er went to col­lege. He nei­ther start­ed nor fin­ished his advanced stud­ies, but rather put him­self into the world and start­ed writ­ing. And write he did. He’s now the New York Times best­selling author of the nov­els Nev­er­where, Star­dust, and Amer­i­can Gods, among oth­ers, and he’s also the win­ner of the 2009 New­bery Medal and 2010 Carnegie Medal in Lit­er­a­ture. (We have gath­ered free ver­sions of Gaiman’s writ­ing in audio & text here.) This week­end, Gaiman spoke at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the Arts in Philadel­phia and told the grad­u­at­ing class all the things he wish he knew at their age. The talk runs 19 min­utes. The dis­tilled ver­sion appears below.

  1. Embrace the fact that you’re young. Accept that you don’t know what you’re doing. And don’t lis­ten to any­one who says there are rules and lim­its.
  2. If you know your call­ing, go there. Stay on track. Keep mov­ing towards it, even if the process takes time and requires sac­ri­fice.
  3. Learn to accept fail­ure. Know that things will go wrong. Then, when things go right, you’ll prob­a­bly feel like a fraud. It’s nor­mal.
  4. Make mis­takes, glo­ri­ous and fan­tas­tic ones. It means that you’re out there doing and try­ing things.
  5. When life gets hard, as it inevitably will, make good art. Just make good art.
  6. Make your own art, mean­ing the art that reflects your indi­vid­u­al­i­ty and per­son­al vision.
  7. Now a prac­ti­cal tip. You get free­lance work if your work is good, if you’re easy to get along with, and if you’re on dead­line. Actu­al­ly you don’t need all three. Just two.
  8. Enjoy the ride, don’t fret the whole way. Stephen King gave that piece of advice to Neil years ago.
  9. Be wise and accom­plish things in your career. If you have prob­lems get­ting start­ed, pre­tend you’re some­one who is wise, who can get things done. It will help you along.
  10. Leave the world more inter­est­ing than it was before.

via Metafil­ter

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

‘This Is Water’: Complete Audio of David Foster Wallace’s Kenyon Graduation Speech (2005)

in Graduation Speech, Life, Literature | March 6th, 2012

Last month, on the occa­sion of the author’s 50th birth­day, we post­ed a large col­lec­tion of free essays and sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace. But we missed a rare item: the com­plete audio record­ing of the com­mence­ment address Wal­lace gave at Keny­on Col­lege, in Ohio, on May 21, 2005–three years before he took his own life. The text of the speech has been pub­lished on the Inter­net and as a book called This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Deliv­ered on a Sig­nif­i­cant Occa­sion, about Liv­ing a Com­pas­sion­ate Life, but the com­plete audio ver­sion has been hard to find.

In the speech, Wal­lace talks about the chal­lenge of mov­ing beyond the super­fi­cial kind of free­dom that can be acquired through pow­er and wealth, toward a truer lib­er­a­tion that aris­es only when we become more ful­ly con­scious of the world out­side our “tiny skull-sized king­doms.” He says:

The real­ly impor­tant kind of free­dom involves atten­tion, and aware­ness, and dis­ci­pline, and effort, and being able tru­ly to care about oth­er peo­ple and to sac­ri­fice for them, over and over, in myr­i­ad pet­ty lit­tle unsexy ways, every day. That is real free­dom. The alter­na­tive is uncon­scious­ness, the default set­ting, the “rat race”–the con­stant gnaw­ing sense of hav­ing had and lost some infi­nite thing.

You can lis­ten to the first half of the speech above. And to delve deep­er into Wal­lace’s world­view, be sure to watch the fas­ci­nat­ing 84-minute inter­view he gave in 2003 to a Ger­man tele­vi­sion sta­tion. H/T Avi Burstein.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30 Free Essays & Sto­ries by David Fos­ter Wal­lace on the Web

The 321 Books in David Fos­ter Wallace’s Per­son­al Library: From Blood Merid­i­an to Con­fes­sions of an Unlike­ly Body­builder

David Fos­ter Wal­lace on What’s Wrong with Post­mod­ernism: A Video Essay

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

« Go Back
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.