Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Draft commencement address

The following is a crack at a speech I wrote to read at graduation. I’m posting it to get it off my desktop. I’m cleaning my desktop to avoid doing real work. I need to finish my Olin Self Study and I am a long way from doing that. It has caused me by far the most stress of any class this semester and I have very little to show for it. Of all the things I have done in my senior year my OSS is the least favorite of all the stuff I have had to do.

2006 Commencement greeting

"On behalf of the Class of 2006, I welcome the students, faculty, staff, our partners family, and friends to Olin's first commencement.

By an interesting coincidence it was 1735 days ago when I stood behind a microphone under a different tent at 1735 Great Plain Avenue and like the other 30 first students who were first on campus, I had to introduce myself. Naturally I talked about how anything could be fixed with duct tape or WD-40. Today after what is probably the most unothodox engineering education attempted in modern history I can stand here and admit I know better.

For all of us in the Class of ’06, whether we were the 30 here opening day, the 14 spread around the world or the 32 still applying to colleges who were drawn to the shiny static-proof envelopes, it has been a long journey.

While I may have counted the number of days I can’t count how many hours of sleep were lost or how many romances began and ended during my time here. I can’t count how many times I forgot a negative sign, how many times the magic smoke got out, how many cups of caffeine were sacrificed for the greater good or how many times I cried.

This won’t be one of those.

These last few years in a word, were intense. But as the student greeter I’m not here to dwell on them. We’ve known since we’ve been here this day would come, and we’re never going to forget it. Nostalgia will come soon enough without my help.

We may be making history but history in my eyes isn’t made by people who dwell on how big what they are doing is. History is made when people are not content to sit, think, complain and settle but by people who for some reason cannot live with themselves unless they stand up and do something.

I have a moment here to do something meaningful so let me thank all of you for doing whatever you have done to be a part of this. Thank you for helping every one of us who called Olin home to become harder, better, faster and stronger than we were when we moved in.

Thanks for trusting a bunch of kids to help build a college and for giving us a hand when we needed your experience, your wisdom, or the listening ear of a friend. Please don’t get too comfortable and don’t let this be the end. Continue to do the crazy things you do for as long as your body and your spirit will allow.

Once again welcome, thank you, and for as long as you ARE, may you continue to DO.

2 Comments:

Blogger Sarah said...

Hey, you're giving away your hand! I like it though.

The only "huh?" moment was when you said that you can't count how many romances began and ended... it's not clear whether you're talking about your own romances (probably countable) or Olin romances (harder to count).

4/26/2006 08:01:00 PM  
Blogger Adam said...

Definately talking about the number of Olin romances and not my personal ones. (that is quite easy to count) :P

4/26/2006 08:40:00 PM  

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