mcdspot

If you are a man you will need the skillz to pay the billz.

Slime Mold is beautiful. 

Honesty is so refreshing sometimes.

1. condoms (and instruction on how and when to use/not use them)
2. The Elements of Style by Strunk and White
3. phone number of a super-cool, non-panicky adult (who will get you out of the jams your parents must never learn of)
4. Surfer Rosa by Pixies
5. iPod on which to listen to Surfer Rosa at painfully loud volume

Ok, I confess. I’m a huge fan of commencement speeches. I always read them when my mom or the office manager forwards them to me, no matter who wrote them. I still remember what my college commencement speaker (it was the guy who brought the 1996 Olympics to Atlanta) said: “Never, never, never, never give up” –paraphrasing Churchill, of course. I was profoundly moved by the speech at the time and probably would be today if I heard it again. But then, I’m not 21 anymore.

Nonetheless, I’d love to edit a book of great commencement speeches. Thousands are given every year across the nation and rarely ever are they recorded and circulated widely (although the internet is changing this). Perhaps the majority of them shouldn’t be. But every once in a while someone really nails it, really drives one home. It’s extraordinarily hard to condense a lot of wisdom into a gracefully concise speech, and even harder to stay witty and concrete enough to keep a crowd engaged. Maybe its the atmosphere, the high hopes and untested potential of the moment that makes hearing a commencement speech so moving, but there are those speeches which defy the cheesiness and truly remain inspirational. These should be read regularly.

Here are three that I think qualify. Two are old and one is new. If you know of others that compare with these, let me know.

• Anna Quindlen’s famous “I show up. I listen. I try to laugh” address at Villanova University, June 2000
• David Foster Wallace’s address at Kenyon College, May, 2005
• Patton Oswalt’s address to Broad Run High School, Virginia, June 18, 2008