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June
1, 2007
Commencement Speaker: Marti Calderwood,
Upper School English Teacher and Associate College Counselor
 Members
of the dais: “Kalispera”
Members of the Board: “Bonjour”
“Guten Tag” to
the assembled faculty.
Families and friends of the graduates: “Buenas
Tardes.”
First graders: (Chinese for
“Hello.”)
And “Ave,” Class
of 2007! “Hail!”
In any language – and we have many
here at Collegiate School “Welcome”
and “Good Afternoon.”
I am honored to be here today.
It’s finally happened! After years
of coaching others, I have to give a senior speech! When Mr.
Hobert invited me to speak today, I decided to take my own
sound advice: “Try to make it coherent; look’em
in the eye; and say something of merit; and keep it short.”
Time me. This speech is exactly 12 minutes, 15 seconds.
All over the country this time of year, both
high school and college seniors are hearing exhortatory words
of advice, caution, and – I hope – good humor
– about being diligent, forthright, and committed. And
my address will be no different. Forty-three years ago, in
1964, I stood at my own high school graduation and gave a
valedictory address, to speak for my class as Carl as so ably
and eloquently managed today. I did not recall that text at
all until three weeks ago when I visited my mother –
now 91 years old – who calmly repeated to me the last
three sentences of my speech! Moms never forget!
My mother, herself a teacher – started
her own career in a one-room schoolhouse where she taught
all subjects to grades first through eighth grades. She also
– she reminded me – stoked a coal furnace and
wrote out what she called “seatwork” by hand for
everyone! That school building still stands today, its slate
blackboards part of the inner walls of a renovated home.
My visit there recently prompted me to consider
what I might say to you as a send-off: something that matters,
something to consider. Writing a commencement address is not
an easy matter, for one has to remember that the audience
is out there and the class is back there. So, let’s
consider the options: I could speak FOR you, but Carl has
already done that; I could speak TO you (and I will); or I
could speak ABOUT you. Those pesky prepositions always get
in the way.
So here’s the ABOUT part –
T.S. Eliot wrote in “Little Gidding,”
one of the “Four Quartets”: “To make an
end is to make a beginning,/The end is where we start from.”
Apparently, T.S. had no problem with using a preposition at
the end of a sentence. So, I will begin with using the line
that I ended with in that valedictory 43 years ago: “I
shall pass this way but once/Any good, let me do it now/For
I shall not pass this way again.”
In 1964, those lines prompted in me a sense
of urgency. “Any good, let me do it NOW.”
And you have done good things, Class of 2007.
You have racked up 3100 hours of community service; read hundreds
of pages in countless history, literature, math, science texts.
You have scored goals in soccer, basketball, field hockey,
and lacrosse. You’ve logged hours in the swimming pool,
and rowed on the Ohio River, paced off many golf courses,
batted in runs on the baseball and softball diamonds, learned
and sung beautiful songs, played for concerts, argued before
recalcitrant judges in the Kentucky Supreme Court, painted
murals and self-portraits, entertained the community in drams
– both tragic and comic – cheered on our teams,
hosted foreign students, and somewhere in there, you managed
to have a social and family life, too! Amazing!
But, you have been prodded, coaxed, lectured
to, and coached by these teachers who you see seated before
you. They have set the bar for you, a standard of excellence
that you may not yet understand. Make no mistake about it:
The Collegiate Faculty is the “value added” in
the Collegiate education.
Teachers teach from their hearts. Teaching
itself is a work of heart. And the teachers whom you have
seen every day have imbued in you – if nothing else
– a passion for what they do. They bring to Collegiate’s
classrooms zest, intelligence, good humor, patience, and tenacity.
And – on the side – they have smuggled in life
lessons for you. Lessons like:
Imagination:
Remember sitting under the rainforest in Ms. Temple’s
room, your own stuffed animals captured in its branches? Remember
creating your own planet in Mr. Haas’ classroom or learning
15 words of Swahili to explain yourself to the class? Do you
remember sitting in the middle of the Falls of the Ohio, writing
in your journals?
This faculty has
also taught you what patience looks like:
By explaining over and over the calculus and geometry problems,
chemical bonds, or by repeating more than once that “affect”
and “effect” are not the same part of speech –
usually. Or, by waiting by the side of I-64 for a replacement
bus to arrive after your own bus burned on the way back from
an adventure trip to North Carolina?
They have demonstrated
creativity: By dragging into the lab six frozen rats
so that you could feed a snake, lugging a human torso down
the hall, so that you might have a lesson in human anatomy.
Or – created an entire book, “The Story of the
Caveman,” to help you remember the syntax of the English
language.
For this faculty, you have witnessed intellect,
cleverness, tenacity, but mostly heart, passion, and zest,
with a generous serving of relish! Now, I myself don’t
care much about his stuff, but I think it makes a dandy metaphor.
All that stuff in their adds zip and zest to whatever it touches.
It flavors everyday food. Henry David Thoreau knew about the
value of relish. In his second chapter of Walden, he wrote:
“To affect the quality of the day is the highest of
arts.” Please commit to doing the same in your lives.
Add passion and enthusiasm to your lives everyday. Passion
will carry you through areas where you are unsure; it will
flavor the strongest of doubts.
Let’s think
about how to affect the quality of the day. It may
seem like a huge challenge.
First, learn! You’ve already started
educating yourselves, and next fall, you will continue. But,
beyond the next four years, never stop learning. Be inquisitive.
Strive for excellence. Tennyson, in his poem “Ulysses,
wrote, “How dull it is to pause, to make an end/To rust
unburnished, not to shine in use!” Try to shine in use
everyday!
Which brings me to the second point about
adding quality to your lives. The first line of Tennyson’s
poem is “I cannot rest from travel.” Class of
2007, travel – widely. It is true, as Voltaire said,
that everyone should travel. Be good ambassadors for our country.
Many of you have a head start on this part, for you have several
languages that you can use to build bridges of communication
in a foreign culture, not to mention creating tolerance and
understanding.
Lastly, connect! When someone asks you to
volunteer, be the first person to jump is, willingly, with
a smile in your heart. Cicero, in his treatise, “The
Duties of the Individual to the State” remonstrates:
“Keep the good of the people clearly in view, care for
the welfare of the whole body politic.” Class of 2007,
create “social capital” in your communities. Connections
within your community create interdependencies that provide
a strong root system for vital growth. After college, consider,
please, a year or two in Ameri-corps or the Peace Corps.
When I stood before my own graduating class
of 231 in 1964, I did not know then that there was a war brewing
in Southeast Asia, and that – for the next six years
– I would lose classmates in that – then –
faraway land. Your class, two generations apart from mine
– is not really that different. My friends, the front
edge of the baby boomers, glutted the colleges that next fall.
No one was ready for us. The same is true this year. A New
York Times’ article recently listed colleges that have
seen their application numbers burgeon, creating a logjam
in the admissions process. Then, as now, my classmates went
to college in large numbers with some trepidation, but mostly
with great enthusiasm and hope.
There is no doubt that we live in a troubled
world today. We are coping with poverty worldwide, potentially
catastrophic ecological problems, class struggle, medical
dilemmas, economic woes, and religious strife. But, we’re
in luck! Class of 2007, I checked you all out on the Chinese
zodiac, and I found out that you were either born in the Year
of the Dragon or the Year of the Snake (sometimes called “little
dragons”). Good news! Dragons and Snakes are full of
enthusiasm, intelligence, and perfectionism. They have a good
sense of humor; they are romantic, deep-thinking, with good
intuition.
Dragons will be editors, priests, politicians,
or economists. Snakes are suited for teaching, philosophy,
writing, and social work.
Together, Class of 2007, you and thousands
of other graduates can address the current ills of our world
and bring new thinking to the table on all issues. We need
you all! We need the traditionalists, the free thinkers, the
tenacious, the impulsive, and the cautious and the courageous.
Receiving your diploma today, like T.S. said, may be an end,
but it is also a beginning.
So, always, buckle your seatbelts, be informed
stewards of Mother Earth, conserve fossil fuels, sing like
there is no one else in the room, dance like a “Senior
Bird,” and live your lives with passion, honor, and
RELISH!
Thank you.
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