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The novel coronavirus outbreak radically changed the 2019-2020 school year. For students across all grades, closed schools and stay-at-home orders have meant missing out on spring celebrations and end-of-year festivities.

If you are in a transitional period—whether you're moving on to middle school, high school or college this fall—your graduation and commencement celebrations are likely very different from how you imagined they would be.

The Black community was disproportionately affected by the deadly coronavirus. Then, two Black Americans lost their lives at the hands of police—two on a list that has been growing for years. Structural racism and police brutality have always been discussed in the Black community, but now the conversation is reaching people of all colors and creeds. In the last few weeks, tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets to protest these injustices.

It's right to feel sad about the deaths of hundreds of thousands because of the pandemic. It's right to feel angry and frustrated about the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and so many more. And though it might seem like a small loss in the midst of so much struggle in the world, it's OK to be sad that you are missing your end of the school year and all of the traditions that come with it.

You might be feeling nervous about what lies ahead. That's OK, too! Even in years that feel more normal, many students feel anxious about moving to a new grade or school, or even leaving school for good. This is especially true for students in graduating years.

For this reason, many schools uphold the long tradition of having a commencement speaker, a special guest who offers words of encouragement and inspiration to their graduates.

We've put together a list of some of these wise words, to inspire you as you make your journey from one academic endeavor to the next. The speakers whose words we have selected address hardships of many kinds. We hope they might offer you some insight, motivate and move you, and make you feel energized for all that lies ahead. Congratulations to the Class of 2020—don't forget to celebrate, at home or online, with the people who made your journey possible and worthwhile.

On Continuing Your Education

Barbara Kingsolver, DePauw University, 1994:

"Scholarship is not about the information that you can retain in your head. It's about knowing which questions to ask and where to start looking for the answers. I learned that good citizenship means being able to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate authority. I learned things that would eventually lead me to become a novelist and a thoughtful citizen of the world, even though at the time I didn't plan on being either of those things. The best thing about DePauw is that it required me to take courses in poetry and mathematics and biology and history. I was not allowed to be narrow in my interests and I was rewarded for trying really hard to see the fibers of logic and consequence that connect poetry and biology and history. I believe that's the most precious and useful kind of education a person can ever have, and I suspect that the little piece of paper you are about to get today stands for that same kind of education, and I'm glad about that, and I'll tell you why: because to put it bluntly, the world is going to go to hell in a handbasket if we can't figure out how to see the connections between things.

For example, in order to solve a national crisis in health care delivery, we have to understand not just pediatrics and surgery and pharmacology but also things like urban sociology and rural economics and women's studies and law and philosophy and ethics." 

Jon Stewart, The College of William and Mary, 2004:

"College is something you complete. Life is something you experience. So don't worry about your grade, or the results or success. Success is defined in myriad ways, and you will find it, and people will no longer be grading you, but it will come from your own internal sense of decency. …Every generation has their challenge. And things change rapidly, and life gets better in an instant."

On Fighting For Change

Nora Ephron, Wellesley College, 1996:

"I want to remind you of the undertow, of the specific gravity. American society has a remarkable ability to resist change, or to take whatever change has taken place and attempt to make it go away. Things are different for you than they were for us. …

One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is, don't take it personally, but listen hard to what's going on and, please, I beg you, take it personally."

Barack Obama, Howard University, 2016:

"You've got plenty of work to do. But as complicated and sometimes intractable as these challenges may seem, the truth is that your generation is better positioned than any before you to meet those challenges, to flip the script.

Now, how you do that, how you meet these challenges, how you bring about change will ultimately be up to you. My generation, like all generations, is too confined by our own experience, too invested in our own biases, too stuck in our ways to provide much of the new thinking that will be required …

To bring about structural change, lasting change, awareness is not enough. It requires changes in law, changes in custom. If you care about mass incarceration, let me ask you: How are you pressuring members of Congress to pass the criminal justice reform bill now pending before them? If you care about better policing, do you know who your district attorney is? Do you know who your state's attorney general is? Do you know the difference? Do you know who appoints the police chief and who writes the police training manual? Find out who they are, what their responsibilities are. Mobilize the community, present them with a plan, work with them to bring about change, hold them accountable if they do not deliver. Passion is vital, but you've got to have a strategy. …

Have the confidence to challenge them, the confidence in the rightness of your position. There will be times when you shouldn't compromise your core values, your integrity, and you will have the responsibility to speak up in the face of injustice. But listen. Engage. If the other side has a point, learn from them. If they're wrong, rebut them. Teach them. Beat them on the battlefield of ideas. And you might as well start practicing now, because one thing I can guarantee you - you will have to deal with ignorance, hatred, racism, foolishness, trifling folks. I promise you, you will have to deal with all that at every stage of your life. That may not seem fair, but life has never been completely fair. Nobody promised you a crystal stair. And if you want to make life fair, then you've got to start with the world as it is."

On Learning From Failure

Conan O'Brien, Dartmouth College, 2011:

"In 2000, I told graduates to not be afraid to fail, and I still believe that. But today I tell you that whether you fear it or not, disappointment will come. The beauty is that through disappointment you can gain clarity, and with clarity comes conviction and true originality."

On Doing The Right Thing

Oprah Winfrey, Spelman College, 2012:

"You do the right thing even when other people think it might not be, and oftentimes, when you make a decision to do the right thing immediately you're faced with doubt. Was that the right thing? Was that the right decision? I don't know… Was that the right thing? You always know it's the right thing when in the end there is peace. You are rewarded by peace in knowing that you did the right thing."

David Brooks, Rice University, 2011:

"Viktor Frankl had his way of conceptualizing life. It emphasizes that we are not primarily questioning life, we are questioned by life. We are summoned by the concrete realities around us. ...The message of the summoned life is that you don't need to panic if you don't yet know what you want to do with your life. But you probably want to throw yourselves into circumstances where the summons will come. It's probably a good idea to spend a lot of time asking, What are these circumstances asking me to do? What is needed in this place? The crucial tests are likely to be, Have you done enough reading and thinking so you are aware of the summons around you? Do you have the capacities to complete these tasks?"

Wally Lamb, Connecticut College, 2003:

"How to improve an imperfect world, an imperfect nation, our imperfect selves? That question has occupied the minds of scholars, scientists, artists, and activists throughout time – and has sometimes – sometimes – been the pebble in the shoe that becomes the unbearable pain that motivates good minds and generous hearts to bring their gifts to the table, roll up their sleeves, and fix things. Graduates, be a part of that. Find work that adds to the world instead of depleting it. You owe that to yourselves, and to those descendants whose DNA you store inside you, and to the descendants of the un-you, the other."

On Human Connection

David Foster Wallace, Kenyon College, 2005:

"If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won't consider possibilities that aren't annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it. ...Another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now."

George Saunders, Syracuse University, 2013:

"As we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish — how illogical, really. We come to love other people and are thereby counter-instructed in our own centrality. We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, and help us, and we learn that we're not separate, and don't want to be. We see people near and dear to us dropping away, and are gradually convinced that maybe we too will drop away (someday, a long time from now). Most people, as they age, become less selfish and more loving. I think this is true. The great Syracuse poet, Hayden Carruth, said, in a poem written near the end of his life, that he was "mostly Love, now."

And so, a prediction, and my heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love. YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE."

Zadie Smith, The New School, 2014:

"You're connecting to each other, forever communicating, rarely scared of strangers, wildly open, ready to tell anyone anything. Doesn't online anonymity tear at the very idea of a prestige individual? Aren't young artists collapsing the border between themselves and their audience? Aren't young coders determined on an all access world in which everybody is an equal participant? Are the young activists content just to raise the money and run? No. They want to be local, grassroots, and involved.

Those are all good instincts. I'm so excited to think of you pursuing them. Hold on to that desire for human connection. Don't let anyone scare you out of it. Walk down these crowded streets with a smile on your face. Be thankful you get to walk so close to other humans - it's a privilege!

Don't let your fellow humans be alien to you. As you get older and perhaps a little less open than you are now, don't assume that exclusive always and everywhere means better. It may only mean lonelier. There will always be folks hard-selling you the life of the few, the private schools, private planes, private islands, private life. They're trying to convince you that hell is other people. Don't believe it. We are far more frequently each other's shelter and correction, the antidote to solipsism and so many windows on the world."


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