Commencement addresses..........

    Spring is a great season for many reasons.  One of them being it is the time for commencement addresses.  Some of the all-time great speeches have been given at graduation ceremonies.  I'd like to tell you that I remember the one delivered when I graduated from Dension (1973, since you asked), but I don't.  Too much going on.
     Aaron Sorkin graduated from Syracuse in 1983.  He was invited back to speak to this year's graduating class.  His full, excellent and read-worthy, address is here.  A few excerpts here:

"I ran into a woman who'd been a senior here when I was a freshman.  I asked her how it was going and how she felt Syracuse had prepared her for the early stages of her career.  She said, "Well, the thing is, after three years you start to forget everything they taught you in college.  But once you've done that, you'll be fine."  I laughed because I thought it was funny and also because I wanted to ask her out, but I also think she was wrong."


"I've made some bad decisions.  I lost a decade of my life to cocaine addiction.  You know how I got addicted to cocaine?  I tried it.  The problem with drugs is that they work, right up until the moment that they decimate your life.  Try cocaine, and you'll become addicted to it.  Become addicted to cocaine, and you will either be dead, or you will wish you were dead, but it will only be one or the other."


"Don't ever forget that you're a citizen of this world, and there are things you can do to lift the human spirit, things that are easy, things that are free, things that you can do every day. Civility, respect, kindness, character."


"Rehearsal's over. You're going out there now, you're going to do this thing. How you live matters. You're going to fall down, but the world doesn't care how many times you fall down, as long as it's one fewer than the number of times you get back up."