WORDS OF WISODM

The summer of 2009 has been rather mellow. While the world is reeling with the recession cacophony, top institutions have been churning out promising graduates who have dared to walk out of their hallowed portals under the dark clouds of unemployment and uncertainty but not before they have heard the commencement speeches delivered by the glitterati and the pundits of the real world. Most of the commencement speeches this year gyrated around ‘being recession- resistant and upbeat’ and have invariably been ‘words of wisdom’ heard by students and scholars after years of toil and labour. These sermons have not only played the role of parting messges but have also been a cynosure in the education and media square. These speeches have hundreds of thousands of hits on Youtube and they definitely are a timeless treasure.

‘Stay hungry. Stay foolish’. Rings any bells? These resounding words echoed first in the lawns of Stanford University on a sunny commencement day in 2005 and then the word spread across the educational landscape of the planet. It was a person of the stature no less than Steve Jobs who gave the graduating class the lesson of life woven around three stories and one deep message to which he claimed no originality. His fifteen minute speech has more than one million hits on Youtube and he shares this ‘millionaire’ platform with the likes of the legendary ‘Last Lecture’ professor – Randy Pausch. The Carnegie Mellon computer science professor’s surprise appearance at the 2008 commencement ceremony, where he shared the dais with Al Gore, was witnesses by thousands at the Gesling Stadium and later watched by millions using the prowess of Information Technology. Those eternal words about ‘achieving your childhood dreams’ still reverberate in the minds and hearts of many people who may or may not have met the man who was once denied admission to Carnegie Mellon but perseverance brought him back to the same place where he created history in the midst of adversity.

Harvard has interestingly invited speakers from across the pond in the last few years. Last year Harvard was charmed by the magical words of JK Rowling four years after Sacha Baron Cohen a.k.a. Ali G appeared in his gangsta regalia to teach the class of 2004 a lesson or two about ghetto culture. Definitely taking the road less travelled, Ali G laced his speech with sex, drugs and scatological functioning. On the other end of the spectrum Rowling mesmerized her audience with her classical and posh accent in true spirit of Harry Potter. She recalled the picture of the 21 year old lass she was at her inconsequential graduation and twenty one years hence, here she was delivering words to arguably the most coveted graduation ceremony in the world. The journey of her life where she dealt with poignant issues like poverty, breakup, extended failure and the discovery of the harsh world through the eyes of her job at Amnesty International were carefully marked in her speech titled ‘The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination’. Of course, life was never the same again for many and especially for her, after she had met Harry Potter. Her crafty speech had a class of intellectual humour with sentences like, ‘There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction’ and sharp messages like, ‘You might never fail on the scale I did. Unless you live so cautiously that you might not have lived at all, in which case, you failed by default’.

Not to forget the splendid Eric Schmidt (CEO Google) commencement address I attended as a graduating student from the Class of 2009 at Carnegie Mellon. He expressed his special admiration for the parents of the students and suggested that the students may actually listen to them, now that they have graduated. ‘We got our news from newspapers, your generation gets it from blogs and tweets, and for those of you who don’t know, that’s not what you hear in zoos... We just didn’t tell anyone about our most embarrassing moments, you record them and post them to Facebook and YouTube every day’ reflected the oracle’s passion and inspiration towards technology that drives the world today. His repeated mention of Facebook, Twitter and his ‘favourite search engine’ enthralled the crowd largely composed of students with an above average geeky index. His words oozed optimism as he spoke about the amazing resilience of the human spirit’- ‘it’s what got us through World War I, World War II and it will get us through our current challenges just fine.’

Last but not the least, his last words underscored the two fundamental facets of life – ‘always remember to be nice to your parents and true to your school’.

Abhinav Charan