Tuesday, May 23, 2023
Graduation advice
Other than at my own schools, I have given two graduation addresses in my life-- and they were both on the same day, in May of 2010. One was for an elementary school and the other for a high school, both in Waco.
I remember very consciously avoiding saying "Follow your dreams!" or "To your own heart be true!" My reason was clear: I did not want to make it seem that at such a young age you were supposed to have found your passion. I didn't find mine until I was well into my 20's, after all.
The danger is making kids feel like something they like-- basketball, music-- must be their "passion" that they are duty-bound to pursue. That's wrong because kids that age, for the most part, are generalists. They do a lot of things, some well and some badly. In high school, for example, I was a mediocre hockey player, an ok runner, a decent writer, and a failure at STEM subjects. That didn't mean that any of those things were my "passion" in life-- I had a long time to figure things out.
There is a good, and slightly different, critique of "follow your dreams!" in the New York Times today, by Sapna Cheryan and Therese Ann Mortejo (you can read it here).
I suspect that many of the graduation speakers spouting this commencement orthodoxy are thinking "Hey! I followed my passion and I turned out ok!" But if they examined their own lives closely, they might realize that their passion was not yet identified when they were the age of the people in their audience.
Basically, I think every graduation address should be about love. That can't fail.
