Graduation Advice
A collection of reflective videos and maybe the best commencement speech ever
Many folks have just graduated this past weekend and through activities continuing until Wednesday at UC Irvine, and in the past few weeks across countless schools, colleges, and universities. All of our graduates deserve great congratulations! As tribute and guidance, commencements come with plenty of advice, so I collected some myself. This was originally collected for my last year’s upper-division quantum mechanics course, which includes juniors and graduating seniors. I feel the last item, David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech, is the best commencement speech I have ever heard. This year, I added a Bertrand Russel quote at the end. I hope you find them all as inspirational as I did!
Kurzgesagt: “What Are You Doing With Your Life? The Tail End“
Academy of Ideas: “Life as a Quest - The Antidote to a Wasted Existence”
“This is Water” - David Foster Wallace’s Impactful Commencement Speech
The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell
And, for this year, I am adding an excerpt from Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness:
“The world is vast and our own powers are limited. If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give. And to demand too much is the surest way of getting even less than is possible. The [person] who can forget [their] worries by means of a genuine interest in, say, the Council of Trent, or the life history of stars, will find that, when [they return] from [their] excursion into the impersonal world, [they have] acquired a poise and calm which enable [them] to deal with [their] worries in the best way, and [they] will in the meantime have experienced a genuine even if temporary happiness. The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.” [emphasis mine]
— Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness (1930), Part II. Causes of Happiness, Chapter X: Is Happiness Still Possible?
Best wishes for your summer and beyond!