Reflections on the Semester

1. Reflections on the Semester Feraco Myth to Science Fiction 22 January 2010

2. Note:I try to have different end-of-semester speeches for both the fall and spring. (The second one is a lot harder to write than the first, because I feel like I have to top myself for the sake of the students who have had me before.) I first wrote a variation of this speech at the end of last year’s fall semester. Unbeknownst to me, Malcolm Gladwell had published Outliers, a book that covered the same topic in much the same manner, two months earlier. He sold millions of copies. When I read the book, I was struck both by envy (if only I’d had the idea a year earlier!) and the surreal feeling that I’d plagiarized something I’d never read before. So if this feels a little familiar, Gladwell fans…my apologies. But it’s mine.

3. If James Naismith never invents basketball…does Kobe Bryant lead an irrelevant life?

4. Kobe’s father, Joe Bryant, played professional basketball for years, even continuing his career in Italy after leaving the NBA.

5. When he moved, his young son moved with him.

6. Kobe learned to cope with the pressures associated with fame at a young age, learned to absorb the nuances of other cultures and languages, learned to be flexible; in other words, Kobe was prepared for a larger stage long before the time came for him to take it.

7. But if Joe Bryant never plays professional basketball, Kobe never goes overseas.

8. How does Joe raise his son differently if he pursues a different career?

9. How does Kobe’s life change when he’s not handed the same opportunities, when he’s spending all of those on-the-court hours somewhere else with someone else doing something else?

10. Look back to 1892.

11. James Naismith invents the sport because he decides to throw balls into peach baskets one day.

12. (He hadn’t even decided to cut the bottom out of the basket yet; the defense needed to fetch the ball out of the basket every time it gave up points.)

13. That’s where Kobe’s future starts; it lies rooted in those ancient seeds, in the genius of a dead Canadian he never met.

14. But what if Naismith didn’t invent the game that year?

15. What if he chose to spend time with friends instead on the day he should have made that first shot?

16. What if he decided to sit and sleep under the shade of a Georgian peach tree?

17. What if he went to work and stayed late; what if he kept going to work and staying late?

18. What if he never invented his beautiful game?

19. If James Naismith never invents basketball, maybe Kobe becomes a soccer player.

20. But I’m willing to bet that if James Naismith never invents basketball, we never learn Kobe Bryant’s name.

21. Maybe he just becomes some white-collar worker in a skyscraper somewhere instead.

22. Maybe he becomes a nameless person you stand next to on a bus – a tall nameless person, to be sure (although who says his mother’s the same person if Joe never plays?), but someone you never speak to because he’s just an Ordinary, Anonymous, and Unremarkable Guy. (We’re all OAUGs at one point or another.)

23. Maybe he’s just a guy who passes through life without stopping to live.

24. And maybe the world never knows what it’s missing.

25. Maybe the world never stops to wonder about any of the infinite possibilities that pass unrealized every day when people are too busy, lazy or scared to form dreams and chase them, or when people are too poor, hungry, and tired to chase them without help they’ll never receive and lessons they’re never offered.

26. How many Kobes have we missed?

27. How many Kobes have lived and died without recognizing the incredible depths of their own potential?

28. How many Kobes have led ordinary lives instead of walking on air just because they never knew they could?

29. Your life takes the shape you make, but your ability to shape it depends on what you can access.

30. The choices we make, the opportunities we seize, the connections we form – all of these “shapers” depend on us, our circumstances, and those around us, as well as how the three interact.

31. Kobe Bryant walks on the sky because he can – but he can because he learned the game from an expert, grew up in the company of professionals, and trained perfectly for the moment he assumed all along would be his.

32. Take those away, and there’s no telling what happens.

33. The lesson, of course, is to resist the easy assumption that you already know what you should be, and that you already know your limits.

34. For all you know, your career hasn’t been invented, or your calling hasn’t been established.

35. Perhaps your opportunity already awaits, waiting for you to outstrip predecessors you may not even know.

36. (Without Naismith, Kobe never flies; without Gates, Allen, and Jobs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page never invent Google; without Pasteur, Jonas Salk never invents a polio vaccine.)

37. But the polio vaccine wasn’t developed by uncaring hands, Google wasn’t an accident, and every shot that leaves Kobe’s hands is directed at a specific target.

38. We’ve spoken so often about our morals and actions influence our happiness, about how our goals give us purpose – bulls-eyes for our souls’ arrows.

39. I introduced that simple concept – that you have to chase what you want because life is too short for passivity – and reinforced it with every piece of content I chose for our curriculum.

40. And with that in mind, I wanted to take ten minutes today, on our last day, to urge those of you who dream (and those of you who go through the motions) to stop, look around, and realize what surrounds you.

41. The landscape is undoubtedly mixed – a cloud for every ray of sunshine, a crumbling economy facing every job seeker and college applicant, a rapidly approaching expiration date for many of the bonds you’ve forged and valued over the years.

42. But the point is not to get lost in negatives; rather, I’ve tried to teach you how to think about yourself in a new way, to cope with negatives more healthily and enjoy the myriad positives life offers more thoroughly.

43. In short, I’ve spent this semester trying to help you lead what Socrates treasured most – a balanced, examined life.

44. When my senior classes concluded during my year at Arcadia High, I offered my students ten pieces of advice regarding how to handle graduation, departure, and new beginnings.

45. I looked back at them last year and felt they were worth sharing again; I did the same this year, and felt the same way.

46. These aren’t just any ten pieces of advice; they were my best attempt, five years removed from high school graduation, to look back at what I knew when I was 18, and what I wished someone had told me at the time.

47. So here they are; you can feel free to take or leave any of these, to highlight or reject any nugget your please, or to take the whole shebang and tack it to your dorm wall.

48. 1: Don’t take it personally if people worry about you – because we will worry.

49. You’re about to go through an intense period of transition; even those of you who will remain at home will need to make that final push into independent adulthood.

50. People will worry because you’re entering an uncertain period; it’s a symptom of their affection for you, not their disrespect.