Posted on 05/21/2012 12:48:39 PM PDT by matt04
A whimsical student address, forgetting the national anthem – then remembering it after the commencement began -- and a stellar list of honorary degrees recipients were part of Amherst College’s 191st graduation ceremony Sunday.
San Francisco native Elias R. Johansson-Miller, summa com laude with a bachelor of arts double major in English, and Theater and Dance was selected by his peers to speak for the senior class. His thesis is “Creating and Believing in Going Public.”
Though he had some serious things to say at the tail end of his speech, Johansson-Miller spent most of it making jokes, talking about a time machine and sharing a tongue-in-cheek vision of a wedding between newly-installed college president Carolyn “Biddy” Martin and her predecessor, Anthony W. Marx.
At one point the graduating senior chose bawdy humor: “I learned to make realistic goals…by deciding to pee on every college building before I graduate.”
Johansson-Miller also recited a snippet from Michael Cunningham’s award winning novel, The Hour: “There's just this for consolation: an hour here or there when our lives seem, against all odds and expectations, to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined, though everyone but children (and perhaps even they) know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult.”
...
President Martin gave the commencement address, telling graduates their “challenge is to embrace reality” while avoiding narcissism. She also expressed skepticism about online learning regimens, saying “there is no replacement for active learning.”
Martin said failure and disappointment can be applied to improving oneself.
“Learn from uncertainty, bad luck, rejection from one’s own kin and failure,” she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at masslive.com ...
“Fourteen members of Shanika Audige’s family attended the graduation ceremony. She earned cum laude in her double major, Black Studies and Sociology.”
Truly destined for greatness...
In other words, now that you've graduated college, it's time to stop being a liberal.
Amherst is one of those small, elitist, over-priced puppy-mills that has lost any roots and tradition it had - and that will disappear when the “great reset” happens.
Oh that's really embracing reality. Indoctrination bubble: meet pin.
I earned my masters online from a very rigorous program. I was one of few who compleated the program. I’m thinking about moving from the brick and mortar and teaching online instead. “Traditional” education should go the way of the buggy whip. This person is clueless.
Amherst has too much money and name recognition to disappear. I wish it would, but it won’t. Martin is a sodomite, and it’s hilarious that she is telling the graduates to avoid narcissism. Narcissism is, after all, the main component of the sodomite personality structure.
The alumni should stop giving, but they won’t (but I have).
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