Commencement 2011 - Graduating Senior Reflections
Reflections by Courtney Connell Baxter '11
B.A. Women's Studies and International Studies; Wyoming, Ohio
There are moments when we are forced into being retrospective. Whether we want to or not, life creates situations in which we are made to pause from the day to day and ask, what does the day to day even really mean? Birth, death, graduations, weddings- these are the prescribed times in which we are practically forced into reflection. I have felt it the most strongly in the recent past when flying across the world to study abroad in Cameroon. I remember looking out the plane window and seeing the desert below me and feeling this sense of physically being vaulted into a newness. A definite grand-scale moment that forced me to pause and take a few deep breathes.
For the most part, however, these moments of pause tend to manifest themselves for me the most consistently when using some sort of public transportation or in moments that similarly require us to pause together on any given day, such as when an ambulance drives down the street and everyone pulls over to the side. Or when it’s 4 a.m. and the Shorney fire alarm has been pulled for the third time and you find yourself lingering half asleep outside with everyone in the same frustrating situation. While seemingly insignificant, I have found a knack for being able to pinpoint these situations as noteworthy. It is during these times when our vastly separate and individual lives are inspired to remember that we are part of something bigger than us. Today, as we sit around together, nearly 500 graduates and family and friends, we find ourselves in a situation that forces us to look upon our last four years, to find some meaning as we spend our last few hours as students at Denison. Yet I find this to be all a little unnecessarily dramatic and big-picture. It’s almost like the culmination of angst from all those questions that have been thrown at us over the last year, “Soooo, what’s next for you…bad time to get a job with this economy eh? Any post-grad plans? So can you explain to me again exactly what you’re going to do with a liberal arts degree?”.
Sitting here today I feel like what’s asked of us is to finally have those answers while simultaneously processing what just happened to us in the last four years. I don’t know about you, but I just don’t know if asking all those big questions at the same time is really good for me or anyone, which is why I like to focus on the small and seemingly insignificant. I can’t really tell you in a concise 5 minute speech what it means to be a Denisonian and a give a big-picture inspirational charge for the future. Who am I anyway to do that? Anybody could be up here telling his or her story of what it means to be finishing his or her time at Denison and I don’t really feel any more worthy than you all to be sharing my understanding about what it means to ‘graduate’. Actually I think that’s one of the most important thoughts to leave with here today. We all have experienced immeasurably different Denisons. Our stories and memories reveal that though we all just spent four or so years living a semi- remote Midwestern existence, we spent those years creating incomparable Denison experiences. But at the end of the day, we all were eating Sodexo food and at the end of four years we’re all sitting here today. We are now being threaded together with all the other past graduates who have felt a similar angst and uncertainty about the age-old question, “what next”.
We are transitioning into alumni, into a network of people who share that common thread. And this is where I see the beauty of what it means to have a Denison degree. It’s not necessarily about the big picture, but instead a multitude of tiny pictures. A tiny picture such as going into the one restaurant in my hometown and running into an alumnus from the class of 1957, Mr. Bob Stewart, shaking his hand, and feeling that thread. We are being solidified into a connective web of people around the world who have also felt this thread. We all have history here and our future now will consist of small reminders of this history, and I believe it will be in these small moments, the tiny pictures, that will help us to understand the importance of our time here.
I have no idea of how to understand, let alone speak to this final transition away from life on the hill. I can tell you, however, what I’m going to do myself to help with conceptualizing that idea. Poet and author Maya Angelou once said “Each of us has that right, that possibility, to invent ourselves daily. If a person does not invent herself, she will be invented. So to be bodacious enough to invent ourselves is wise.” For me, it has been challenging to be retrospective in a “big picture” way; tomorrow, I’m going to wake up and start day one of this next chapter by borrowing Maya Angelou’s wisdom and finding the joy in the daily possibility.
Finding the connections everywhere in this life, in a metro bus, or restaurant, that reminds me that I am part of something bigger. While I don’t want to minimize the importance of today’s graduation, for me I have to keep in mind that tomorrow is tomorrow. I’ve tried to live a bodacious life here at Denison, and I think we have all been immeasurably impacted and challenged during our time here. So tomorrow, let’s not panic. Let’s simply move forward with the knowledge that the next steps are all about re-inventing ourselves. Not in a grand-scale way, but in a simpler, more habitual way, like Maya Angelou suggests. There’s no reason that we should only have to question our place and understand our experiences at graduations and funerals. We’re ready to wake-up tomorrow as alumni, as part of an interconnected history, and to work towards extending our bodacious attributes into new lives off the hill.
Reflections by Mark James Heckmann '11
B.A. Sociology/Anthropology and Communication; Pittsburgh, Pa.
Our self-narrative is a tale of hard work, strong friendships, and due preparation for what lies ahead of us in our families and careers. Society’s narrative is far more difficult to digest. In this story, hard work is at times trumped by politicking. Friendliness is quickly countered by competition. The value of our degrees may fluctuate with time. And so I must ask, which narrative should we dwell on today: the story of our triumph at and after Denison, or a tale of good work that does not fully translate into the real world?
Both narratives are rooted in a common element that is of interest today. Perhaps more than any singular topic of study, we graduates know conflict quite well. In fact, our acclimation to conflict may figure more prominently in our futures than will our diplomas. I speak of a world that requires graduates who will think differently about conflict: what it does developmentally, and how it must continue to confound us in the future. This address is my attempt at explaining why.
The world tells us that higher education is fundamentally a grooming process, where students invest in notions of fairness, equity and hard work paying off. Yet there are no reliable rules for fairness or equity once we leave Denison. That post-Denison world can be unkind to idealists, for we are shaken by the scope of society’s darker moments. Conflict is not an aberration in the next chapter of our lives – it is its hallmark. The world lets us believe that our work ethic correlates with advancement. We at times lie sweetly to ourselves, convinced that unemployment, foreclosure, crime and other hardships stop just short of our doorsteps. Our millennial inclination is to deny conflict’s existence, an inclination that operates in parallel with our achievement complex.
But here we discover the bridge to our self-narrative. We students have been acclimating ourselves to conflict our entire lives. Philosopher Martin Heidegger argued that to exist at all, we must be in conflict with our physical and ideological surroundings. We would not have developed our own belief systems, our intellects, had we not come into conflict with the thoughts and theories of others. What, if anything, would our degree be worth if it was simply conferred without a tasking expenditure of effort and resources?
Our narrative suggests that we learn civility, we learn community, only when conflict presents itself. We can remember when the habits of a new roommate clashed significantly with our own. Parents may recall a late-night phone call when college was just too rough on your son or daughter that day. Those all-nighters in Fellows, the cold walks back from the library, the unexpected grade on an exam, all instances of conflict upon which our successes are dependent.
And at times during our four years together, our narrative included conflict on a tragic scale. Our class has witnessed the recent passing of Denisonians Julie Karmann and Lindsey Gund. And we cannot forget our classmate Maria Toledano, who would have traversed this platform with us today had tragedy not struck. We have experienced racial tensions, class differences, even the loss of Denison faculty and staff. For all of those devastations, personal and shared, we stand today as stronger, more durable women and men.
Our Denison story can be summarized in an infinite number of ways. It is my belief, however, that the experience gained from our many conflicts here attest to our accomplishments far more than our transcripts or résumés. Anthropologist Robert Ardrey shares that “[humans] were born of risen apes, not fallen angels.” To anticipate, dare I say expect perfection in our lives denies an essential aspect of humanity—the inclination to err. It sounds odd, but we should depart today earnestly seeking moments of discomfort and risk. Susan Sontag writes that the people who are “perennially surprised that depravity exists…[have] not reached moral or psychological adulthood.” This is to say regardless of our degree, we are not fully prepared for the pangs of adulthood until we stare conflict down unflinchingly. The freedom afforded by this maturation is vast, and provides a more fulfilling, more courageous future for us all.
Graduates, be excited by today’s ceremony, for graduation marks the day that we publicly celebrate our narrative and tell the world what it can do with its own.
B.A. Philosophy; Rockville, Md.
It’s a bit ironic that, considering my complete disinterest in the "Humanimal" theme during the summer before our freshman year, that I spent last summer researching the concept of personhood and thinking about what separates us from other animals. While the philosopher in me would love to talk about the results of my research, the classmate in me feels it’s more relevant to talk about a conversation I had with my roommate.
One afternoon, as Grant and I were watching a History Channel special on theoretical physics (because we know how to party), we began talking about truth in science and that quickly led us to the topic of morality. In our highly scientific culture we tend to think that the empirical sciences can explain everything. The fact is that science doesn’t even have a way to begin talking about morality. Science is about laws. It explains effects by their causes. Agency is granted about as much credibility and relevance as fairies. Morality and responsibility on the other hand are predicated upon their distinction from strict causality. We blame people for choices they make but science tells us that choice is an illusion.
At Denison, I have often heard different disciplines juxtaposed against one another as if only one could be true. A philosopher might mock physicists for their lack of concern for certain skeptical doubts; the sociologists might not grant biological classifications much credit because they don’t appreciate cultural contingency; the novelist might chide the mathematician for being too detached from human emotion. But we do not need think of these approaches as competing. They are simply complementary descriptions of the world, each of which shows us some things only because it hides others. That is the way language works. The way we talk frames our experience and constructs the world we live in but it is impossible to describe something truthfully. True with a capital "T" just is not an option in language.
Imagine trying to talk about what it means to be a good person if you have only read bio textbooks for your whole life, talking about carbon dating if you have only read the Bible, talking about neuroscience if you've only read modern philosophy, or thinking about what it means for something to be funny or inspirational if you only have the tools of a chem lab. It doesn’t work. By committing ourselves whole heartedly to a certain vocabulary and a particular way of thinking, speaking, justifying and explaining we gain incredible insights available to that paradigm, but a hard headed commitment could prevent us from seeing the richness of our world.
This is a point relevant far beyond the ivory tower. For example, every person here is in favor of self-determination and choice. And everyone here thinks death is at the very least unfavorable. But no one here is both “pro choice” and “pro life.” As soon as we talk about abortion in terms of choice or life we have predetermined the relevant issues and settled upon our conclusion. The words we use set us in our opinions. The point to remember is that we choose the way we talk. Choosing to talk about life or choice is not choosing between true and false. It’s just choosing between which set of words and perspectives are most important to us. No different from choosing between physics, computer science and creative writing. Each one emphasizes a different aspect of something in the world that is important to us. The vital thing to remember is that we have the power to choose how we speak, the power to choose how we describe and thereby construct our world, and those choices are exactly that. They are choices that arise out of our personalities and what we happen to believe to be important.
To talk about taxes in terms of the individual right to non-interference versus a responsibility to a society sui generis is a choice. Talking about the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq in terms of combating terrorism versus imposing Western morality is a choice. Talking about the death tax or the estate tax, death panels or health care spending controllers, freedom or responsibility, innovation or destabilization – it’s a series of choices. Our choice of words indicates our values and determines our conclusions. Those choices make us who we are. There is no way to avoid it and there is no need, either. What is important is that we acknowledge and embrace it.
As we enter a national community that is desperately in need of a sense of irony and humility it will serve us well not to take ourselves too seriously. They way we as individuals think and speak is analogous to the departments in which we majored. We think we are on to something good and useful, but as much as we like to give each other a hard time for our choice of academic focus, our community needs the painters as much as the environmental scientists, the black studies department as much as planetarium, and the gaming club as much as the football team. We all live our own lives and value our own things and that difference is essential to any learning, any progress, and any society; particularly to our own country.
It is that difference and tension which Denison forced upon us. The future doctor has no choice but to take a fine arts class and the physicist will learn a language whether they want to or not. Our curriculum combined with the small number of people forces us to encounter new perspectives and ways of speaking regularly. We should not lament sitting listening to things we think are irrelevant because the simple fact we feel that way teaches us something about ourselves and our own highly personal and highly subjective values and perspectives.
Throughout my research on personhood last summer I ran into a motif. Almost every thinker I read valued language and choice as uniquely and essentially human. The power to conceptualize, reconceptualize, and reconceptualize our world is at the very foundation of humanity and progress. So let’s free up our language and free up ourselves. Having more ways to speak and choosing consciously between those ways make us more human. We are better people for acknowledging our choices regardless of what choices we make.
I suppose I should end this with some intense, potent, memorable, schmaltzy thing so here’s my best shot. Life is serious, the problems we face are serious, the problems our loved ones face are serious, the problems strangers face are serious, our world is serious; but don’t take yourself too seriously. Just because you are right doesn’t mean your opponent is necessarily wrong. We need to think about who we are and be conscious of those choices which we may not even acknowledge as choices. There are so many ways to come to terms with the world. So choose the terms you use purposefully and always be open to possibility of change.
So thank you professors, classmates, and all of Denison for helping me grow, for pissing me off, making me happy, convincing me that I’m right while reminding me I’m wrong. As I grow into the person I want be I will always remember that I decided who that person was and acquired the tools to transform into him when I was here. I would not be me if I did not go to Denison so I will love Denison as long as I am me.
As we graduate and probably wonder what the point of all this learning was; the point of the late night studying, the stressing about grades, the hitting the library instead of the bar, I’d like to leave you with one final thought.
Intelligence is the ability to perceive the complex in what appears to be simple. Wisdom is the ability to perceive the simple in what appears to be complex. And ignorance, ignorance is the failure to acknowledge that everything is both far more simple and far more complex that you can ever comprehend.