If I'd Just Waked Up From a Thirty-six-year Sleep

Chancellor Leutze, distinguished members of the platform party, my faculty colleagues, parents, kinfolk, friends, and those who are receiving graduate degrees today--I hope you'll understand if I address my remarks to the members of the Class of 2000. You're welcome to listen, of course.

Graduating seniors: It's great to see so many of you here today. The surf must not be up. It's an honor to speak to the Class 2K. I expect you're tired of being reminded that you're the class of the millennium, but surely there's some significance in the fact that divine whim or evolutionary accident gave us ten fingers, not eight like Bart Simpson, which is why you all got the triple zeros--like three cherries on the slot machine.

Obviously you have a special destiny. Now all you have to do is figure out what it is.

Of course every graduating class has that problem. All the traditional pomp this morning inevitably reminds us older folks of other graduations. Certainly I remember mine today. That was back in 1964, back in what my daughter calls "the dork ages."

One thing I don't remember, though, is who spoke or what was said. I find that comforting, actually. I've been to dozens of these things since then, and the only speeches I remember are the handful that were really awful. I'll try not to give you a memorable address this morning.

I do remember that the weather that day was a slow, cold drizzle. I hope you'll remember how splendid this day is, here on what may be the state's most beautiful campus. Even a Chapel Hillian has to acknowledge that. "UNC-Wonderful," indeed.

I also remember the faculty at that graduation of mine, looking strangely impressive in their glad rags, unlike the seedy characters I'd spent four years listening to. Many of them taught me skills I'm still using, and I'm grateful. Even more important, a couple made me want to keep learning, and they gave me models for how to do it. I hope you've had that kind of teacher. I know a few of them here: you've had the chance.

I remember the parents at that graduation, too-especially my own, of course. Now that I'm a parent myself I have a better idea of what they were feeling: proud, of course, but also a little sad--and glad to be getting us off the payroll.

I do remember how we graduates felt. We were proud, too, and happy, and eager--ready to get on with what we saw as "real life." Maybe we were more eager than we should have been. I think it was Meryl Streep who most memorably observed that the real world isn't like college: the real world, she said, is like high school.

For most of you, your time here has been a golden interlude. If you don't know that now, you will. You've had the resources to explore any subject your heart desires. You've had a degree of freedom you won't have again until you're too feeble to enjoy it much. You've been with interesting and diverse and downright strange people who've expanded your horizons in incalculable and unpredictable ways. If you've been lucky, you've made friendships that will last you a lifetime. If you're really lucky, you've found a vocation, or true love.

I hope you've made good use of your college years, because the real world isn't like this, not at all. You should thank the parents and taxpayers who made it possible. And when you're rich and successful you should remember this university not just...