Thank you for the really great introduction
Dean Detweiler-Bedell. I would also extend
a special thank you to President Glassner
for his remarks. And last, but not the least,
our commencement speaker Mr. Ron Suskind.
Thank you. [Applause]
Good afternoon fellow classmates, faculty,
family, friends, and distinguished guests.
It's my honor to address you as we gather
to commemorate the wonderful years we have
spent at Lewis & Clark. As you hopefully have
figured out by now, I am graduating today.
And if you play your cards right for the next
couple of hours, so will you. This is a pretty
big deal. To put things in context, less than
one in three US citizens over the age of 25
has a college degree, and that's just in the
US. Think about that for a second. I bring
this up to highlight that every one of us
is joining the ranks of a very privileged
minority. Now that's an oxymoron right there.
There really aren't many occasions that allow
using the word privileged alongside the word
minority. But in this case, it couldn't be more accurate.
This isn't to say that hard work wasn't involved.
I suspect that we all worked very hard to
get where we are right now. But as is advisable
for any group of privilege, it's worth remembering
our good fortune. It's really easy to fall
into the trap of believing that everything
you have earned, everything you have achieved
is because you earned it, or because you deserve
it on account of your special talents. But
as an economics major, I can't help but point
out that there is 7.2 billion people in the
world, and even if you are one in a million, the math says
that there is someone out that there that could fit your
shoes as well as you do. For most of us, our
path to and through Lewis & Clark has been
paved with some amount of good fortune. The
families we are born into, the countries we
are from, or in some cases, even the decisions
that we make. Take for instance, my decision
to apply to Lewis & Clark. It wasn't really
my decision, but my friend Rohit's, who
I am hoping is somewhere in the audience right
now. [Applause] Yep, there he is. Prior to Lewis & Clark, I
attended a United Royal college in India,
with Rohit, beautiful campus, with a lot of
snakes, a few scorpions, and even fewer shoes.
That's right, we didn't really wear shoes
at our high school. I guess some things never
change. During the daunting process of college
applications, Rohit said to me, "Hey Yash,
check this school out. I'm applying, so should
you." He went on to say something about
it being hipster. This is a term that takes
on an entirely different meaning when you
are from the land of enviable, hip shaking,
Bollywood dance sequences. Anyway, without
putting much thought into it, I applied to
Lewis & Clark. And here I am. It's both surreal
and daunting to acknowledge that one of the
most important decisions of my life, was not
entirely my own. Thanks for taking it away
from me, Rohit. But what's important is it
turned out well, really well in fact. In hindsight,
Lewis & Clark turned out to be a far better fit for me
than any of the other colleges I applied to.
In economics, there's a concept known as the
random walk hypothesis. It states that prizes
and markets take the form of a random walk
and thus, can't be predicted. In my experience,
this applies to our life as well. Like markets,
they also take the form of a random walk.
Our rationalizations notwithstanding. Research
confirms that there is actually a lot of luck
involved. But if that luck were all there is
to getting ahead in life, that would
be depressing, wouldn't it? It's probably
going to cost me a couple of friends if I
don't clarify my gloomy economic theories.
Fortunately, it's not as simple as that. And as
with most things, the answer lies in the wisdom
of an age-old idiom. This one being particularly
popular in India. It goes >speaking in Indian<
I must admit, that was not English. I promise
that no profanity was involved, I would never
use fowl language in front of my parents.
It translates to, and I'm sure you've heard
of this before: You can lead a horse to water,
but you cannot make it drink. Anyway, it may
have been chance, randomness, luck, destiny,
whatever you want to call it that brought
us all here, but the fact that we fellow graduates
are sitting here today, must mean that
there is more to getting ahead in life than
just dumb luck. After all, we are all gathered
here to collect a piece of paper that we didn't
just win in the lottery, but we earned. That's
right. We earned this. We earned this by pulling
that first all nighter in Watzek. We earned
this with the resolution to never pull another
all nighter. We earned this soon after by
realizing that we were wrong, and that all
nighters were the norm in college. What I'm
saying is that we may have been horses that
were guided, but we sure did learn how to drink.
[Applause] While it's easy and tempting to
reduce the function of our degree, this piece
of paper, to something that merely opens the
door to employment, it's worth taking a step
back to see it for what it really is. Proof. Proof
that succeeding in life takes more than just
luck. Proof that hard work pays off. Proof
that practice makes perfect. Most importantly,
it's proof that I can swim five-hundred yards
because, my fellow graduates, I passed my
PE. [Applause] Our diplomas are proof that
the random walk isn't all that random after all.
With Lewis & Clark as our petri dish, we have
learned not only the skills it takes to succeed
in the real world, but also, the very knowledge
that we can. Because we have made it to this
very moment, we are kids who have become young
adults. Each of us with bare feet, have grown
into their shoes. The question is, what now?
Each of us will continue our random walk.
We will become scientists, entrepreneurs,
mathematicians, philosophers, psychologists,
anthropologists, artists, and actors. We will
become things for which no words exist today.
From where I stand, I see the potential in
each of you to do the greatest things that
have ever been done. But whatever we do, let's
not forget who we are: members of a privileged
minority. That means we, you and I, more than
anyone else in the world, need to create the
most value not just for ourselves, but for
others in whatever we do. [Applause] We know that the
world is not a meritocracy, an astonishing
percent of the world still lives in poverty
and have minimal access to shelter, food,
health care, and education. People fall victim
to everything from prejudice to warfare. Our
systems, each and every one of them, are imperfect.
So it is our job to equalize, to spread that
privilege. Each of us will do this differently.
And even though a lot of us don't know how yet, we
should start by believing that we can. It is that
belief, more than whether we actually succeed,
that will make all the difference in the world.
With that as our first step, the possibilities
to create change are infinite. And no small
part from what is our soon to be alma mater,
Lewis & Clark. Lewis & Clark has been our
home for the past few years, and I hope to speak
for all of us when I say this, it has made
us better human beings. What's more, is that
we have made some of the closest friends that we
will make in this time. So take a moment to
cherish every one of those wonderful relationships
and maybe gather the courage to make ones
you've always wanted to but never did, for
any reason. There's still time. You wouldn't
want to log into Facebook years from now,
to post a missed connection, would you? [Laughter]
I'll take the first step by sharing my missed
connection with you, right here, right now,
wish it could have lasted longer. And on that
note, I will leave with the words of a wise
person. "Look, if you had one shot, or one
opportunity, to seize everything you ever
wanted, one moment, would you capture it?
Or just let it slip? Yo." Congratulations.
Thank you.
