Getting to the Essence of Things
Thank you. Good morning, everyone.
I’d like to echo President Hennessy in welcoming the parents and family and friends with us today and in extending Happy Father‘s Day wishes to the fathers and father figures among us, in person, and in spirit. My own dad is inthe audience this morning. Dad, Happy Father’s Day.
But much as we love you, dads, today is not about you.
Today we gather to celebrate the accomplishments of this starry eyed- okay, maybe it‘s dazed looking crowd of people sitting before us, adorned in black gowns and various other accoutrements.
To the Stanford class of 2001, the graduate students and the undergraduates, I’m honored to be among the first to congratulate you on completing your years at Stanford.
I can guarantee your parents are extremely proud at this moment... proud of your accomplishments, if not your‘wacky walk’. Today they‘re literally beaming, with a little bit of relief and lots of tenderness.
From the looks of it, one of you is wearing the same rented cap and gown I wore 25 years ago in Frost Amphitheater, where they used to hold the graduation ceremony. This one I’m wearing today is decidedly heavier, but it‘s giving me flashbacks nevertheless.
These past few weeks, I’ve been wondering what wisdom I might impart from this podium after 25 post Stanford years.
The most earnest advice I received came from the undergraduate Senior Class Presidents a couple of weeks ago-from Delphine and Brandon and Michael and Lauren. They said,“Make it personal. Tell us what it was like for you to leave this place. Tell us it‘ll be okay.”
I took their request to heart. And I let my guidance for this speech come from memories of how I felt graduating from Stanford as a 21 year old ... and how those early years of seeking and stumbling shaped the experiences I’ve had these past 25 years.
So one day after work a few weeks ago I drove around campus, to rekindle memories. When I was in school, campus life was quite different from what you‘ve experienced-to say nothing of the world beyond The Farm.
I drove by the old“Theta Xi”house. In the 70s, that was the frat for the band guys. I was made an honorary member because I had a man’s name, and could survive an initiation ceremony that involved a stein of vodka and an iron stomach...but we won‘t go into that.
The parents out there might remember this: in the mid-70s, our men’s basketball team was less than championship material-we ranked somewhere in the middle of the Pac Eight, and the women‘s team had just been formed.
Musically speaking, Tower of Power was big. Peter Frampton had just“come alive”, and the“techies”were the ones using their Marantz stereos to copy their albums onto cassette tapes.
While I was here, the Stanford Indians were renamed the Stanford Cardinal, although my buddies in the Band were campaigning for the“Robber Barons”as a mascot, the administration was not amused.
While I was here, Patty Hearst was kidnapped, right across the Bay in Berkeley.
And while much was different about my time here, some things are similar: we were in the throes of an Energy Crisis-in fact, the speaker at my commencement spoke on energy conservation,“Stagflation”confounded the market . Employment prospects for graduating seniors were, let’s face it, rather grim.
While you are not faced with stagflation exactly, your expectations of the job market have no doubt been flattened since you entered Stanford.
After all, Palm Drive was paved with job offers for the classes before yours. If you were a floundering Medieval History major, and you were interested in participating in what you thought might be the latest California Gold Rush, you might have shocked your parents by landing a dot com job with a VP title and stock options.
But here you are, the Class of 2001. And times have changed.
Perhaps it‘s unfair of me to presume, but if Spring Quarter had you feeling anything like I did at the prospect of graduating, underneath that cap and gown(and everything else you have on your heads), your fear is as great or greater than your excitement today.
I was afraid. The truth is, I was afraid the day I walked into Stanford. And I was afraid the day I walked out.
I was scared of leaving the protective bubble of this place for places unknown, during uncertain economic times ... and I was scared of squandering the incredible gift of my Stanford experience on pursuits that weren’t commensurate with expectations I ... and others ... had of me. I was scared of not doing it all, of making irrevocable mistakes.
If you‘re scared today, let me ask you this: What will you do with your fear? Will you let it become a motivator, or an inhibitor?
You are the only one who can answer that. But what I can offer as guidance, and reassurance, is a story-the story of one Stanford grad’s process of stumbling and searching to find a place in the world, oftentimes in the face of her fears.
I‘d like to begin my story at the History Corner.
The most valuable class I took at Stanford was not Econ Fifty One. It was a graduate seminar called, believe it or not,“Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Political Philosophies of the Middle Ages.”
Each week, we had to read one of the Great Works of medieval philosophy- Aquinas, Bacon, Abelard. These were huge texts-it seemed like we were reading 1,000 pages every week. And by the end of the week, we had to distill their philosophical discourse into two pages.
The process went something like this: First you’d shoot for 20 pages. Then you‘d edit to 10. Then five. Then finally, two-a two page, single spaced paper that didn’t merely summarize. It rendered all the fat out of a body ofideas, boiling it down to the very essence of its meaning.
And then you‘d start all over again the next week, with a different massive text.
