Proposed Spring 2011 Commencement SpeechJason Kopp4/18/11

Many people are losing faith in this country, a country that appreciates the top 1% over the education of its children, and as graduates, maybe you are all losing faith in it too. Or maybe you are just glad to be getting out. Tuition will soon start to skyrocket, employee benefits cut, class sizes increased, and hiring frozen. In the face of these challenges, we must not be cynical or regretful, we need to remember all the opportunities and experiences that this University has provided us with, we need to remember where we are, and we need to remember all the places we are bond to go.

I can tell you right now that I don’t remember all the economic benefits of natural resources that many of us learned about in Professor Kilgore’s class. And in a few weeks I probably wont be able to tell you what step of glycolysis “dihydroxyacetone phosphate” belongs to. I have crammed and forgotten a lot of the facts and figures I learned about in many of my classes.

However… I have not forgotten what it feels like to be standing in the canopy of the tropical jungles of Costa Rica. I have not forgotten what it feels like to be apart of something bigger than myself while living in the Students’ Coop on frat row. I have not forgotten late night philosophical chats with my friends while laying on the ground of my duplex listening to music. I have not forgotten my UROP mentor and how he taught me what deleterious mutations are while we sat in his office drinking tea. I have not forgotten about the professors and advisors who have taught me how to think and guided me along this four-year path. And, of course, there are other experiences I have forgotten, some I have even forgotten the morning after. But I think they were probably great too.

College isn’t only about the things you learned while staring at all those PowerPoints in your classes, college is about the people who are sitting next to you and the doors that are now open to you, doors that are closed and bolted shut to so many others. We have all been given a gift. Take the skills you have gained and do what is meaningful to you. Travel the world and spread your knowledge. Or plant some seeds and nourish your community. Follow your heart and do what you love, never look back, and don’t look too far forward; if we all live in the now, we will flourish.

And now, your obligatory commencement speech quote: Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh once said, “We cannot enjoy life if we spend a lot of time worrying about what happened yesterday and what will happen tomorrow. We worry about tomorrow because we are afraid. If we are afraid all the time, we cannot appreciate that we are alive and can be happy now… Life is available only in the present moment.”