KEYNOTE GRADUATION SPEECH
Good evening everyone,
First of all, thank you so much for giving me this honor. I certainly don’t take it for granted that you asked me to give this speech. It means a lot to me. That said, this was not all your doing. You might not know this but I had planned for this outcome all along. Let me tell you how: You see I knew that I wanted to be here today but there was a small chance I would not be the one you invited. So I thought to myself “well if you say something really nice about them on Twitter they’re bound to invite you” So I tweeted about how you are my faves, and here we are! :D
Anyway, I want to begin by reminding you that you ought to be proud of yourselves for this achievement. A few days from now you will have an undergraduate degree in law! I know that it may seem like no big deal, perhaps because you think they’re so many other people who graduate with degrees in law. But this is a degree that you went through blood, tears and sweat for. Remember all the weekends you gave up, all the meet-ups you put off, all the crying you did, all the feelings of inadequacy that you went through. Remember the terror that I put you through in Advanced Legal Research & Writing. Remember all of that. Yes, a sizeable number of people could get law degrees every year, but this is special to you and you should treat it that way. Please give yourselves a hand!
These days I teach intellectual history and one of the major issues we think about is the usefulness of studying history in general. We’ve debated it for a while but I think we mostly agree that understanding history is useful to give us perspective about our progress, and to help us figure out how to move forward. In the same vein, I hope you will take a moment to reflect on your recent history — 4 years of law school. When you do, you will find that there is a lot to be proud of yourself for. You might have started out as a scared and shy person who thought their brains were too small to handle all of the stuff that was being dumped on you. You might have started out as someone who only loved sherehe and cared about little else. Or you might have started out as a superstar student determined to be the best at everything. With time there were probably dips and peaks, but I think that when you reflect back you will get a sense of equanimity. I think you will see that you now know a lot more about yourself. I think that you will see that you now know how to relate with others better, how to handle disappointment, and what it means to succeed in this world.
Which brings me to the question of success. There is a lot of stuff I could speak about, but I have elected to focus on this one because I’ve thought about it a lot. Let’s be honest: A vast majority of people equate success to the accumulation of material goods. And in some way this can be success. But I want to urge you today to genuinely expand your understanding of success to fit other people. I use the word genuinely for good reason. Don’t just give this lip service. As you continue on with your life, take active steps to put yourself in situations that allow you to help other beings in some meaningful way. Only 3.5 pc of your people in this country have university degrees, and less than 0.6 pc of them have law degrees. Not only are you about to be one of these few, you also got a pretty good education. You didn’t see a Prof show up only 3 weeks in a semester, and you generally had people who made a real effort to teach well. My point is that even if you might not see it, you are part of a very privileged group. I strongly believe there is a moral obligation for those of us in such a privileged group to think about how we can help other people and other sentient beings. Perhaps for now you will be very preoccupied with how you can get on the right career track, and that’s totally fine, but please don’t forget my exhortation. I hope that it always stays at the back of your mind. In fact, I hope that it haunts you. Whenever you can, think about how you can do more to help. Maybe it can be through consistently giving part of your time or money. Maybe it can be through joining the public sector, or maybe it can be through actively fighting for certain ideals in society. Don’t just use your education to pursue what that famous economist Adam Smith referred to as “the most sordid of vanities”. You’re privileged because you have an education that allows you to think about major issues affecting a lot of people at scale, and I hope your communities can also benefit from that.
A few other short points: To have the most impact that you can on other lives, I think you need to be especially competent. I mean that you need to be very good at something, or — better still — at several things. Spend these early years of your career trying to achieve exactly that. Build your skills as much as you can by constantly being curious, observing keenly, doing and seeking feedback actively, and by trying to get into spaces where the best people are. This last one is responsible for a lot of remarkable and unexpected things that have happened in my own life so far and I’m certain it can be in yours as well. Finally, I wish you courage. I wish you courage to believe that you can occupy the spaces you want to be in, I wish you courage to jump when a decision starts eating you up, I wish you courage to chart paths that may seem lonely, dumb or unknown.
I want to finish with a very personal reflection. You are a special class to me. In fact, you are the most special class to me, at least until the next one comes along :p You joined law school when I was starting as a Graduate Assistant and we met again when I returned as a lecturer. I really loved being in your class. So many of you were keen on learning, even if what occasionally made the difference was my constant threats. I always felt like so many of you really appreciated my work and my efforts, and that special feeling is irreplaceable. I made so many personal relationships with so many of you, and I watched so many of you grow and come into your own. You made me love my job, and you will always have a very special place in my heart. Class of ’22 I wish you only the very best always.
Thank you so much. PS LinkedIn is not real life, so stop worrying. Look at it for only 10 minutes a week.