To the graduates

The end of the school year is always a time of transition, particularly for those who graduate from one level of education to the next – or, more so, those who leave the life of a student behind entirely. Graduation is one of the few cross-cultural rites of passage, and while the trappings may vary, the significance is largely the same.

As the respected American writer and critic Susan Sontag once said in an address given at Wellesley College, a graduation ceremony is the ending of something, but also a beginning – hence the reason why speeches delivered on the occasion are called “commencement” addresses, for they are just as much beginnings as endings.

This is why, Sontag says, a typical commencement address faces multiple directions: the past and the future, the past and the present, or the present and the future. It makes sense when you think about it: most of our formal education was about preparing for the future, and now that we leave school behind, we see that the ‘future’ we were being prepared for starts in the present and stretches out before us into indeterminate tomorrows.

To those of you standing at those crossroads now, may I offer an address of my own to add to the pile of advice that you are no doubt receiving in abundance. On the day you cease to be students, the most important advice I can give you is this: Never stop being students.

There’s a common recurring nightmare that adults have, in which they dream that they are still students and realize they’ve forgotten to study for a big exam – before waking in a cold sweat. The end of formal examinations, for the most part, is something that most students look forward to. But all this really means is that the tests we are subjected to as adults will not have clear rubrics, nor be bound by academic rules of fairness or equity.

The bad news is that the tests do not stop when you step out into the “real world.” But the good news is that you cannot “flunk” out of the real world – which means that you can always try again; you can always find a way forward.

“Forward” here is the key word. I’ve noticed that in today’s interconnected, always-online age, there’s a paralysis that comes from the idea of making mistakes. With the Internet, nothing seems ever to be truly forgotten, and the mistakes of the past are buried in very shallow graves.

Yet one of the best things to take away from your time in school is the realization that mistakes on their own are nothing to be ashamed of. Mistakes, in fact, are only natural when one is constantly trying to learn new and different things.

When we are in school, we are constantly forced out of our comfort zones by the constant forward momentum of formal education, and once free of its confines, one of the most dangerous temptations is to never willingly leave our comfort zones again – to stick with what we know, what we are used to, what we are comfortable with. That’s the surest way to stagnation, if not boredom. We don’t grow if we stay where we are; we don’t improve if we don’t reach for more.

Growth begins the moment you choose challenges that push you out of your comfort zone. Apply for that job you think you are not ready for. Speak up when you have an idea or suggestion. Scale up your existing initiatives. I have to remind myself of these because I am often afraid of taking risks. We must take that step forward despite the fear.

Growing and learning require venturing out, trying new things, and yes, failing – making mistakes. But what being a student for all these years should have taught us is that mistakes are how we learn. It’s how we learned to speak, to read, to grasp concepts in math and science. It’s how we learned the technical skills we hope to apply in our chosen careers and vocations. The heights that we have ascended to, on our graduation days, have been made possible by a staircase crafted from the steps of our mistakes.

No school can teach us all the rules we need to know to have a good life. No textbook can guarantee that the knowledge within is enough to achieve success. But what our years in school should hopefully have taught us is how to apply ourselves when something needs to be learned: how to listen to experts, how to research rigorously, how to think critically, how to devote time and energy to mastering something new.

How to try, and fail, and get up to try again. And again. And again.

Perfection, it has been said, is the enemy of the good. And in this age of fabricated perfection – whether through abuse of AI technologies or the age-old art of lies by addition and omission – there will always be those who want to give the impression that they are ahead of you, better than you, living the life you can only dream of.

Don’t be distracted, don’t be fooled – your only opponent worth confronting is yourself. There is nothing wrong with imperfection, with mistakes and flaws. What matters is that you are learning, that you are growing. That you are still – even out in the ‘real’ world – a student of life, a seeker of truth, a pilgrim en route to your chosen destination.

During this time of commencement, I wish all new graduates the very best. I hope that you all learn from what is behind you as you look toward what is ahead; that you learn from mistakes but never believe that you are a mistake; that you are able to graduate and yet remain committed to learning and to growth.

I wish you all success, but the kind that you have defined for yourself. And in your journey, may you always remain kind. Your degree might open doors for you, but your character will decide whether they will remain open.

Congratulations, all you who were once students. May you remain students of life and of the good and just, all your days.