If Only They Would Let Me Give the Commencement Speech!

David McGrath - June 10, 2009
Columnist EducationNews.org

          Commencement addresses are the Spam of the lecture circuit: substantively gelatinous, uniformly insipid, and possessed of suspicious nutritional value for the consumer.

          If attendance were not essentially  obligatory for faculty, students and guests, no one would  show up. 

       Having taught at 8 different schools over a span of 35 years, I was required to attend quite a few graduation ceremonies, and all the commencement speakers made the same mistake of trying to reveal some insight about the future.

          When you think about it, telling the future is, by definition, a lie.  But making such a speech is safe, because keynoters cannot be proven wrong on the spot.   Since the speakers do not make themselves vulnerable or responsible for the truth, the audience has no stake or interest in what they say.  A speaker who makes himself thusly unassailable is a bore.

          Several years ago, for example, Jim Belushi, bulbous in blue regalia, told our assembly about the hi-jinks he got into at his alma mater, College of DuPage—his message being, I guess, that you, too, could mess up in college and still end up on a moronic sitcom.

          Granted, a few  speakers I’ve heard seemed to take a different tack,  like U.S. Congressman Julian Bond did at Chicago State University back in 1972, when he accused the sitting  Vice President Spiro Agnew of being a porcine fascist.   Or  tv celebrity Diane Sawyer at a graduation I attended at the University of Illinois ten years ago, who made the audience tear up with a touching story, starring her own compassion.   But both had hidden messages about the future, essentially distracting the audience with artifice to cover their inevitable lies.

          So if I were ever asked to give the keynote address at a graduation ceremony, this is what I would say:

          Congratulations, Graduates!                                   

Today’s special occasion puts me in mind of my own graduation many years ago.

Having had no specific plans to attend college, I spent May of my senior year of high school cutting classes, hanging out in Gerald Candy’s basement, and  drinking his father’s Budweiser.  I spent the remainder of each day, watching the Michau brothers on the next block, tinker with the engines of their Chevies.

          The week before the graduation day, my parents were visiting a sick uncle in Florida, which enabled  me to ditch all the graduation practices.  On the day of commencement, I had no robes and no idea where I was supposed to line up. 

          A student line monitor was kind enough to procure for me a spare graduation gown, after which  I found Candy in the rear of the throng in the gymnasium, and slipped in front of him in the line.

          Instead of marching to the stage as No. 222, with my gold tassel, I  watched, Mary Jane McCarthy (No. 221) accept her diploma, followed by nobody, and then by Carmen McIntyre (223),  thinking all the while how I could have been sandwiched between those two sweet smelling lovelies, instead of sharing a lukewarm can of beer that Candy had secreted in some unthinkable place beneath his gown.

          It was all forgotten come August, when my friend Tom and his brother John  invited me along for a Canadian wilderness fishing trip with their uncle.  I was nuts for such a trip, and I went to the library to get every book  ever published on the voyageurs and their historic Ontario adventures, and on wilderness fishing in the bush country of Canada.  I also loaded up on all the overtime hours I could as a bag boy, in order to earn enough cash  for the two week adventure.

          Meanwhile, my sister Rosie pointed out to me that registration for the college that I was considering attending was taking place during the time I’d be gone.  I said something like, “Big deal—this trip is way more important.”

          And it was.  I learned at the tender age of 18 that traveling into the woods and out of reach of civilization with a red bearded man whom I’d never met, was not the wisest idea.  Tom’s uncle turned out to be the last adult you’d ever want to be marooned with.   And I’m not referring only to the giant sombrero he wore while singing “Fare Thee Well, I’m On My Way,” at the top of his lungs, the day we encountered a traveling party of teenage girls on one of the portages.  For there was also that other pesky detail—his  insistence that we  bathe naked each day, “just like the fur trappers in days of yore.”

 One day when Trapper Red donned his birthday suit and dove under water,  the three of us seriously considered holding him under and ending our humiliation.  We would have, too, had any of us known the way back.

          When we did get back to civilization, I learned that Rosie had driven to the university, registered for me, paid my tuition, filled out my schedule, and acquired all my books.  I said something like, “Thanks, Rosie, maybe I’ll see if I like it,” and thus began my college career.

          There is absolutely no message about your own futures in this graduation memoir, which is probably a good thing.

          But this speech is as true as I can make it, and I thank you for your time.

                                                           ***

Emeritus Professor of English at College of DuPage, David McGrath is a freelance writer living in Port Charlotte.  Profmcgrath2004@yahoo.com