December Commencement speech by Steve Daley-Laursen
Commencement Speech - MediaSteven B. Daley-Laursen, Dean and Professor Graduates, Families and Friends and Colleagues and Special Guests….I add my own sincere welcome to commencement at Idaho’s first and foremost … and to those visitors from away, I welcome you to our Great state, a place that will live on in the souls of your sons and daughters; and with deference to Lake Wobegon, a place where all the opinions are strong, all the landscapes are good looking and the fish weigh in above average. I extend a heartfelt thank you to President White for the invitation to provide this commencement address. Speaking on this occasion is an uncommon and exceptional opportunity. Opportunity is defined as “a chance that offers some kind of advantage”. It’s my hope that my thoughts and sentiments will actually bring our graduates some advantage. Graduates; I’m going to reflect today on the value of your living and learning experience at the U of Idaho and make suggestions to support your leading in the life that awaits you. I have some empathy for your life in college. I walked the hallowed halls as you did and graduated from this great university over thirty years ago. I sat on the threshold where you currently sit, feeling bitter-sweet; giddy about what was behind me and anxious about the unknowns ahead, and with regard to your future, I’ve spent 30+ years post-college rattling about in life in my family, community and profession. Like any good Eagle Scout, I’ve prepared myself for this chance though I didn’t know it would come. First, Let’s Reflect Together on Your Experience of Living here at the University of Idaho and do it through a lens of irony. A question for you…Is this a big university or a little university, a big U or a little U? And has living here in this big place had an affect on you the individual, and your potential for influence in the world? Has it made a little You into a big You? Think back to your first visit and your arrival here as a new student. Little old you saw a vast, big U, with lots of people, places and programs. That initial impression either excited you or overwhelmed you. In either case, it felt big and you felt small. But it didn’t take long for you to realize the real irony of this situation – that this institution that seemed so complicated and looked so large in physical size actually felt and acted truly small in size. As your living here progressed, you discovered its intimate, little school style, with open doors, caring people and a focus on your personal development. Over your years at this university, you were but one individual among thousands, and now one graduate in a sea of black robes, but the transformational aspects of your education here, your opportunity to be mentored in research as an undergraduate, your alternative spring breaks where you changed others lives and so our own, your bonds with friends and mentors that will endure and serve you in all the passages of your lives ahead….these things, each so small in space and time left a big mark on your otherwise singular lives and will increase the chance that you will have a big positive effect on the lives of others. Isn’t it a wonderful irony that being a big resource-filled U in size and a small sized U in nature prepares the single individual to make a big difference? Truth be known, this is the primary reason why I returned to this University. Borrowing from the genius of Mr. Disney in Anaheim, in the end, what seemed at first a really big U, turns out to be a small U after all (whistle, It’s a small world after all). I dwell on this irony of living at the U of Idaho because it’s a close to home example of how irony makes you pause and learn. Like the first time you experience the grandeur of a vast geography like Alaska or the Grand Canyon, OR experience being a minority and awaken to oppression or discrimination. In these experiences, you feel emotionally large, moved by the enormity of the geography or depth of the inhumanity, yet you feel physically small in a vast new landscape or seemingly helpless to affect the injustice. Your life will be loaded with experiences of contradiction: Strength arising out of defeat; facing a fear to gain courage; distributing power to gain power; facing your dark side to bring your life into new light; or accepting your vulnerabilities to gain unforeseen strength and advantage. Your consciousness raised to contradiction and irony is pathway to new perceptions of the world. These will affect the way you conduct your relationships with others, and the way you feel about yourself and your potential to make a big difference. Now let’s explore Learning… Three things we have taught you here are: 1) vast new knowledge, 2) the ability to apply knowledge, and 3) a sense of enthusiasm and responsibility for your own continuous learning. The last of these, being the director of your own continuous learning, is your real key to success. Sure, your diploma signifies a package of learning under your belts…that you passed. In the code of Indigo, You’ve spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, now you’ll get your paper and you’ll be free. But, your diploma is not an end. Commencement denotes a beginning. Author John Updike wrote: After four years of college I felt like I’d been here long enough. I still have much to learn and always will. But I’ve now been given the liberating notion that I can henceforth teach myself. Indeed, what you have learned here at the University of Idaho is only the beginning of what you must learn to succeed. The half life of a college education is decreasing with regularity. Our faculty and staff have tried to prepare you for an increasingly flat world of speed and complexity, by teaching you to learn and be adaptable, and now it’s your turn to manage your own learning. A U of Idaho alumnus who been in the workplace for five years, recently said to me, Wow, I’ve learned that being successful is about continually educating myself. I admit that as an academic in the field of natural resources, I worry about rampant land development. But, I submit to you, the greatest undeveloped territory in the world is under your hat and I encourage you to keep developing it! Here are some tools that really work: Learn methodically by doing, reflecting, assessing and adjusting. The next twenty years will expose you to life contexts that you’ve not experienced before, and each of these contexts can be a catalyst for learning and maturing. As you live with yourself, with nature and with others, if you are reflective you will experience dramatic increase in self awareness and definition. By experiencing yourself in working, community and other contexts you will discover your values and beliefs and why you have them; what has influenced you to be this way. It’s important to know the origin of your values and beliefs because they, more than anything, will drive your decisions…decisions that will affect you and possibly many others. Learn by listening and hearing. The mind of a smart person is ready to receive knowledge. The wise person listens to learn more. And, the person who talks to you may be smart, but the person who listens to you is a genius! In the wise words of Percy Biche Schelly, Hear the Intellect, ideas and insight of others. Experience another’s mind in our own. The more responsibility you have in your life, your family, your community, your job, the more you need to listen and hear others. Learn through difficulty and adversity. Pay attention when life slows you down. A cursed crash or difficult time ought be taken as a blessed opportunity for reflection … loss of a loved one, a terminal illness, loneliness, unemployment, or a personal spiritual crisis are all chances to reflect on how you have been doing life and how you might simplify, refocus and adjust it. When you hear a message of mortality, listen especially hard…little moments of mortality are big moments of relativity. In them you will hear questions like: what will really be important as I lay dying, am I on the right path, and what in the world should I be doing instead or next? Equal in importance to having knowledge, is the ability to apply it to decision making, the most difficult of decisions in life are the ones about opportunities that seem to fit you but also surprise you and seem out of time. Beware that the timing of opportunities is seldom on your terms…it is not predictable or under your control. The big moves you make are seldom ones you plan completely. Opportunity is not on your calendar, but it is in your future. This is rich territory for philosophers because it is such poignant stuff in life...the business of knowing when to pursue an opportunity. Hear the prophesies of playwrights, songwriters and catchers…. "There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune… and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures." (Shakespeare). Life is what happens while you’re making other plans. (John Lennon). When you come to a fork in the road, take it. (Yogi Berra). Think through your seemingly untimely opportunities with care, not control. Pasteur advised, Chance favors the prepared. Consider if you will, that the difference between salad and compost is nothing more than timing. Page 1 | Page 2 |
