Some thoughts after reading book: "10 1?2 Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said"

As the spring semester is about to come to an end, it is the graduation season again! We started to see graduation ceremonies around the world. Commencements are significant events as graduation with a degree do mark an important educational and career milestone in one’s life, every college graduate looking forward to. Graduation and commencements are events worth celebrating, and commencement speeches usually reflect these festivities with generous praises of the students’ hard work, a quick overview of various challenges they have overcome. These speeches usually end with encouraging remarks about a bright and promising future waiting for the students. Consequently, the majority of commencement speeches tend to paint a rosy picture of the past and future, which is somehow understandable because almost nobody wants to ruin these happy moments by saying relatively true but negative stuff like, “graduation with a degree doesn’t entitle you anything” and “most of you will face looming unemployment and worsening economic prospect”. Over the past weekend, I had a chance to read a pretty short book titled “ 10 1?2 Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said” (Wheelan 2012), by Charles Wheelan. I really enjoyed the entertaining ways the author shares his experience surrounding a speech he gave during a 2011 commencement weekend at Dartmouth College.  In the book, the author shared “10 ? ” points that are not commonly mentioned in commencement speeches (like marry someone smart, take time off, don’t always live based on others’ expectations, etc.), and readers can check out the original book for the details. I thought it doesn’t hurt sharing them with the graduating (or any of those who might be interested) cohort in my network some of the points I personally found intriguing:

·        Your time in fraternity basements was well-spent (Chapter 1)

In other words, the meaningful and lasting relationship you built on different social occasions more than worth it. The author keeps referencing a study conducted by Harvard researchers about what matters to happiness. Among many things that could contribute (or undermine) one’s happiness, the single one that stood out was the meaningful relationship one builds throughout his/her life.

·        Some of your worst days lie ahead (Chapter 2)

Life is not a smooth ride for most of us, and therefore, we should expect challenges.  If you have come this far in your schooling, you probably have overcome many challenges in your studies or personal lives. However, compared to the would-be challenges life would be throwing at us in the future, what we experienced would be rather insignificant. Having some mental preparation for the possible obstacles one might have to overcome could go a long way when it comes to gracefully navigate through one’s life.

·        Read obituaries (Chapter 6 ?)

This might sound like a gruesome thing to recommend at happy occasions like graduation ceremonies. However, as the famous saying goes, “there is nothing new under the sun”, almost all of our problems have been encountered and tackled by others lived before us. Reading about and learning from our predecessors’ lives would help us gain some wisdom. Obituaries tend to be the condensed version of life stories where only the gist and what matters most are included. Reading obituaries is not only an efficient way of learning from the past but also a great reminder of what matters most. I think this is great advice as we tend to be carried away by relatively trivial and mundane things and oftentimes forget what’s most important in the end.

·        Don’t try to be great (Chapter 10 ?)

As the author noted, this does sound counterintuitive at first glance. However, there is some profound wisdom in it. As the saying goes, “you tend to be happier if you stop focusing on being happy”, the same is true for being great in whatever you do.  While there is nothing wrong with being ambitious and setting high goals for oneself, focusing merely on being great is least likely to make you great. Most of the time, being great is a by-product of working passionately about something one loves.

PS, For readers interested in all of the “10 ?” things the author,  Charles Wheelan, has discussed in his speech, you can refer to his book in the reference.

Reference:

Wheelan, C. (2012). 10 1? 2 Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said. WW Norton & Company.