6. You’ve learned to be intellectually courageous. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. defined intellectual courage well when he wrote: “No man has earned the right to intellectual ambition until he has learned to lay his course by a star which he has never seen—to dig by the divining rod for springs he may never reach. In saying this I point to that which will make your study heroic. For I say to you in all sadness of conviction that to think great thoughts you must be heroes as well as idealists.” Topeka Collegiate has given you the confidence to follow your ideas and your dreams wherever they may lead. The rest is up to you.


Adam volunteering at a medical clinic in Belize

5. You’ve learned a foreign language. Two actually—and don’t write off Latin; as your studies progress, I think you’ll find that Latin has many more uses than you can imagine today. But the real advantage of learning a foreign language is that it helps you place yourself in a global context. In the chaos and comforts of modern life in America, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that we are each but a tiny part of a species with 6.5 billion members and growing. If we imagine humanity as a village of one-hundred people, in our community sixty-five people are illiterate, and ninety do not speak English.
Seventy of us have no drinking water at home. Seven, just seven of us, own sixty percent of the land and consume eighty percent of all the available energy. In our community, only one person is lucky enough to have a university education. So I urge you to continue your study of foreign language, and if it suits you, pursue more than one—but whatever you do, remind yourself occasionally that daily life in America is not like daily life in most of the world.

4. You’ve learned what it means to be part of a community. That’s no small feat when all around us the idea of community—the notion that we’re all in this together and that we share a common destiny—is crumbling. Get involved in your community through participation in organizations and sports clubs. Read the newspaper. Volunteer. Vote—or better yet, run for office. Work always to make your community, however you define it, a better place.

3. You’ve learned what a joy it is to see your friends on a daily basis. And while I’m certain you’re aware of this, you probably won’t fully appreciate it until you graduate from college and discover that the times you’re able to spend with your friends grow fewer and farther between. There is an element of truth in every cliché, and when adults tell you that these are the best times of your life, I think they remember fondly a time when every day included the company of good friends. Don’t take this for granted.

2. You’ve learned how to ‘do’ science. When I say that you’ve learned how to do science, I don’t mean that you can name the six simple machines or list the phyla of the animal kingdom. No, what you’ve learned here is something much more valuable and more beautiful. Science is not a collection of facts, it is a way of looking at and understanding the observable universe.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer a general word of warning without wading into any particular controversy: the very idea of science as objective inquiry is under attack. Part of the beauty of science is that we don’t know where it will lead next—if you start out knowing the answers, you’re not doing science. And when people pretend that non-science is science, when they tell you that they have the answers and that you can stop looking, they deny the very curiosity that lies at the heart of our quest to widen the limits of human knowledge. Intelligent people can and will disagree about the meaning or validity of certain parts of our scientific understanding, but whatever you believe, I hope you will defend science as a process and never lose your own curiosity.

1. You’ve learned why the founders and trustees of this school place such great emphasis on service, responsibility, and humanitarian ideals. These are not mere words—service, responsibility, humanitarian ideals—instead, they describe a vision of the men and women we hope you are becoming.

Forty years ago Robert Kennedy reminded a group of students that “…you live in the most privileged nation on earth. You are the most privileged citizens of that privileged nation; for you have been given the opportunity to study and learn, to take your place among the tiny minority of the world's educated men and women. By coming to this school you have been lifted onto a tiny, sunlit island, while all around you lies an ocean of human misery, injustice, violence, and fear. You can use your enormous privilege and opportunity to seek purely private pleasure and gain. But history will judge you, and, as the years pass, you will ultimately judge yourself, on the extent to which you have used your gifts to enrich the lives of your fellow man.”

Like the students that Kennedy was speaking to, you also have had the privilege of an exceptional education. And just like those students, you too must decide how you will use it. You will soon be adults in a world not terribly different from the one Kennedy described—wrought by war, injustice, and poverty; but within each one of you is the potential to change that world for the better, within each one of you is a reason for hope.

I want to conclude by sharing a single verse from Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy, that has stuck with me since I first read it. “Believe that a further shore / is reachable from here.” Those two simple lines, I think, sum up nicely what your education here has given you: the optimism and confidence to set forth for an unseen shore, the skills to find your way there, and the conviction that it’s worth the effort.

I wish you all the best. Thank you.