Continuing Education

Graduation season is winding down and, having stuffed more graduation cards with Walmart gift cards this year than ever before, I found myself remembering the commencement address I delivered at Georgia Southern in December, 2015. I wondered if I still stand by the advice I shared in my five allotted minutes. After re-reading it, I found out that I do, so in the spirit of lifelong learning, here is that advice, slightly edited, for all of us:

KEEP READING. Over the course of your college education you have read a lot of books. Reading is a good habit. Don’t break it. Keep a novel in your briefcase or a biography in your backpack. Keep a book of poetry on your nightstand. Keep pouring into your brain ideas that challenge your assumptions. Keep expanding the boundaries of your cerebral geography, stretching your intellectual muscles, and feeding your imagination with thoughts and ideas, with words and stories that make you exclaim out loud, “That is amazing!” Or “How can that be?” Or, best of all, “Me, too!” It is quite possible that civilization depends upon it.

SAY, “I DON’T KNOW.” You’ve learned a lot since you arrived as freshmen, some of it about history and psychology and literature. A great deal of it about yourself. The true value of an education, however, is the realization that, despite all we learn, there is always going to be a great deal that we don’t know, can’t know. And that’s okay. But because the world outside the academy can be a little perfectionistic, obsessive, and downright demanding about such things as knowing and certainty and being sure, it’s probably a good idea to start saying, “I don’t know” whenever, wherever, and as often as possible. Because, it should be noted, “I don’t know” is where curiosity is born and curiosity will feed you when nothing else will.

TAKE SOME CHANCES. Not the race-the-train kind or the intentionally-stupid I-dare-yous, but the ones that push your out of your comfort zone, the ones that require you to recognize, articulate, and face down your greatest fears. The ones that come to you like the voice of Gandalf or Yoda or God. Take those chances with no guarantee that the result will be what you wanted or planned. Take those chances because otherwise you will waste far too much time, spend far too much of your beautiful, beautiful life having drinks with regret, a conversation that consists of little more than the endless repetition of the unanswerable question, “What if?

REMEMBER FROM WHENCE YOU CAME. Yes, that means Georgia Southern and the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, but, more importantly, it means the place from which you came to get here, the people and places that formed your own personal history – the voices and the stories that were the soundtrack of your childhood, the lessons and experiences that were the foundations of your character, the people and experiences that form your cultural DNA. In an increasingly multi-cultural, cross-cultural world that knowledge is what will enable you to remain an individual and offer your unique contribution to society.

And, finally, PAY ATTENTION. Because you know how to footnote, you know the importance of details. Because you know what a primary source is, you know how to sift through the chaff of information overload to find the kernel of wheat that is real nourishment. Because you know how to construct a real sentence – one with actual parts of speech and one that follows established grammatical and syntactical rules, one that other people actually understand – you know how to communicate. To connect. To share. And since you know how, your job from this point forward is to make sure that what you communicate is true and good and beautiful and eternal.

So, pay attention. To everything. Beginning today. When you walk out of this gymnasium and go to meet your families, notice the color of your father’s tie, the scent of your mother’s perfume. When you pack up your apartment, take a minute to absorb its emptiness. Say something and hear the echo of your own voice. And do that every day from here on out. Paying attention is a skill that will make you a valued employee, a trustworthy companion, a nurturing parent, and a human being who will one day be able to say, like poet, author, and scientist Diane Ackerman, that you have lived not just the length of your life, but the width of it as well.

Congratulations. And Godspeed.

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