http://pcnhhalifax.com/archives/txt/2007/05/22/GOLD0034.TXT

Speech to graduates by Damon LaBarbera, 1992

my old column in Panama City News Herald, June 2. 1992

Damon LaBarbera

My Speech to the High School Graduating Class.

Thank you for inviting me to speak at your graduation. The last high school graduation I attended was my own. I remember two things: The principal telling the audience not to clap until everyone received their diplomas, but everyone clapping. Also, the principal mispronouncing my name. He thereby demonstrated the authority and literacy that education bestows.

I guess I’m supposed to congratulate you, and say you are the hope of the future, and that you can change the world. Well, relax. You can’t. You don’t have the intelligence, the power, or the money yet. Just swim or goof off for a while.

 By and by, however, you will be the hope of the future. That is why $68,000 has been spent educating each and every one of you. How did I get that figure? Well, I wrote a lot of big numbers down, and that looked about right. 

We pay happily because we know that a stupid person is a dangerous person. Say he is unloading rocks for your rock garden. “Lay that one there,” you say. Then you say, “Lie that one over there.” He thinks, “Lie? Lay? Which one is it? He’s making fun of me!” He pulls out his gun. Blam!

Your education has barely begun. Proud as you are of your 10th-grade reading level and solid grasp of sums, you will probably not have a sound opinion until you are at least 25. Sorry to be so pessimistic on a spring day. True, Jefferson was only 19 or so when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. But he didn’t spend his teen years dueling with Bunsen burners with his lab partner, or joining extracurriculars like the Future Car Warranty Owners Club. He didn’t ignore lectures to flip ahead to the reproductive section of the health book. Cars and Bunsen burners and reproductive organs had not yet been invented. But be sure that if he lived today, he’d be meticulously dissecting frogs and getting glop all over his hands. Because that’s educational.

You must strive to emulate Jefferson. Any lack of education is partly your own fault. For example, I'll bet you’ve used Cliff Notes. It wasn’t that way when I was in school. We had to read the whole of Moby Dick. I can remember to this day the scene on the boat where the camera pans up to Gregory Peck and —  never mind. Or I bet you bragged before a test about not studying at all. Boy, aren’t you the rebel.

Be comforted that a poor high school record does not mean you will fail. Poor students succeed all the time—an lesson that becomes more apparent as you get older. One day you will read that girl in the third row in orchestra who always had trouble with her folding chair is negotiating a missile treaty. Scary, isn’t it?

To avoid such mediocrity, you must become more educated. This does not necessarily mean college. Plenty of intelligent people who aren’t academically oriented lead productive, creative lives. There are many potential career paths to choose from.. But if you want to be somebody real important like an orthodontist with gold chains, or a pear-shaped accountant with a big pinkie ring, you’ll have to go to college.

What should you study? It’s a hard choice. You must look into your soul with a microscope. Not just any microscope, but one of those snazzy ones with the two eyepieces. If you can’t find a soul, maybe you should consider prelaw studies.

 Should you study liberal arts or the sciences? You will stand at a crossroads. The road of liberal arts leads to generally useless knowledge and low wages.  The road of science leads to mind-deadening memorizing and tedious calculations. Choose wisely. But if you plan to take a lot of drugs, a philosophy major is best.

Be bold and original in your intellectual pursuits. Don’t be afraid to seem foolish to lesser minds. If you feel like studying in the library wearing scuba gear, a lobster bib, and dragging along a penguin on a skateboard, so be it. Study hard, or they may make you stay on as a graduate student until you get it right.

Once you have achieved your education, you will be the hope of the future. You, and you, and you over there with the haircut that looks like a rooster. Well, maybe not you. Or the guy with the hip flask hidden in his graduation gown. Well, at least a few of you are the hope of the future. Also very scary, isn’t it? Maybe it’s scariest too for you to consider that you, yourself, will one day be a leader, and maybe standing here where I am. Because you know how you got through algebra class.

Bro