"This is Water": A Message for New Graduates

[gblowfish]

David Foster Wallace was an award winning author who suffered from depression. He gave a commencement speech called "This is Water." This is a part of that speech. It's about first world problems graduates will encounter. This video runs about nine minutes, but is probably the best commencement address I've ever heard.

BTW: Wallace committed suicide by hanging himself three years later after giving this speech. He was 46 years old.

[Marcellus]

Good stuff. Thanks for posting.

You can tell who actually finished the video and who watched a few minutes and then posted bitching about the negativity.

Surprise you missed the ****ing point. Oh wait, no surprise.

[notorious]

When a person is given a choice (or in this case, a person gives themself a choice), they have control of the situation.

My Educational Psychology teacher (by far the best teacher I have ever had) hammered this into our heads over and over. Give your kids and employees choices, but define the consequences. This technique worked flawlessly with my flight students and with my employees.

When someone is given choice, they have a personal investment.

In this case, he tells the kids that they can give themselves a choice. Although it's fundamentally basic it impowers them with choice in a seemingly hopeless situation.

Awesome stuff.

[Aries Walker]

I'm glad he mentioned the non-knowledge-based advantages of a college education. So many people think it's just learning the coursework, and why would I go when I can just read the books, and so on, but it's things like this that you learn along with it. The idea of opening yourself up to see how other people see the world is priceless.

[notorious]

Originally Posted by Aries Walker

The idea of opening yourself up to see how other people see the world is priceless.

"Put yourself in their shoes"

It's amazing how very few can do this.

[Spott]

Originally Posted by Hog Farmer

MAN, If that guy had ever jerked off just ONE animal his whole outlook on life would be different !

[NewChief]

I posted it earlier, but his essay about going on a cruise, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again" is just amazing. It's also the title of a wonderful collection of non fiction essays about topics ranging from lobster festivals to professional tennis to state fairs.

I probably wouldn't recommend his fiction unless you're into really weird, dense shit.

Here's the entirety of "Ticket to the Fair." I'll paste an excerpt below as well:

The livestock venues are at full occupancy animalwise, but we seem to be the only fairgoing tourists from the ceremony who've dashed right over to tour them. You can tell which barns are for which animals with your eyes closed. The horses are in their own individual stalls,with half-height doors and owners and grooms on stools by the doors, a lot of them dozing. The horses stand in hay. Billy Ray Cyrus plays loudly on some stableboy's boom box. The horses have tight hides and apple-sized eyes that are set on the sides of their heads, like fish. I've rarely been this close to fine livestock. The horses' faces are long and somehow suggestive of coffins. The racers are lanky, velvet over bone. The draft and show horses are mammoth and spotlessly groomed, and more or less odorless:the acrid smell in here is just the horses pee: All their muscles are beautiful;the hides enhance them. They make farty noises when they sigh, heads hanging over the short doors. They're not for petting, though. When you come close they flatten their ears and show big teeth. The grooms laugh to themselves as we jump back. These are special competitive horses, with intricately bred high-strung artistic temperaments. I wish I'd brought carrots. Animals can be bought, emotionally. Stall after stall of horses. Standard horse-type colors.They eat the same hay they stand in. Occasional feedbags look like gas masks. A sudden clattering spray-sound like somebody hosing down siding turns out to be a glossy dun stallion peeing. He's at the back of his stall getting combed, and the door is wide open.The stream of pee is an inch in diameter and
throws up dust and hay and it looks like even chips of wood from the floor.A stallion is a male horse.We hunker down and have a look upward, and suddenly for the first time I understand a certain expression describing certain human males, an expression I'd heard but never quite understood till now.