This is water

Graduation season is almost upon us. All over the country, students are finishing up years of study and will be going into the world to begin their adult lives. But before they can do that they have to endure the tradition of the commencement speech.

Most of those speeches are instantly forgettable. I certainly can't remember anything about mine that I heard all those years ago. But occasionally someone makes one that is worth remembering.

In 2005, the writer David Foster Wallace made such a memorable speech to the graduating class at Kenyon College. It has become something of a phenomenon and has been widely disseminated through audio tapes and videos.

Now someone has made a short movie utilizing long excerpts from the speech and, frankly, it's a gem. There is a lot of wisdom there. Watch and enjoy.




Hearing these words and watching the film make one even sadder to contemplate that wisdom from this man, juxtaposed against his own tragic end as a suicide three short years later. In his own life, it seems that he was unable to make the fortunate choice.

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