milestones

It occurred to me today that 2012 is a monumental year in a lot of ways. As we are all too aware, it is the last year ever (although National Geographic reports that we may have misinterpreted the Mayan calendar...go figure). And if the world fails to end in December, 2012 will be my first year filing an independent tax return. (Death and taxes both certain, but mutually exclusive? There's a brain-bender for you...)

But no, what really sparked this epiphany was my Facebook post in honor of my middle sister's 18th birthday this morning. I remembered recently posting for Asha's sweet 16, and realized that I have long launched the countdown to my brother's 21st (assuming the apocalypse slips by unnoticed). Maria will also be graduating in less than two weeks, and in a mere 4 days I will be four molars shy of wise, and no doubt in a considerable amount of pain. So among us, we mark a lot of rites of passage this year.

Speaking of rites of passage, it is OFFICIALLY Graduation Season! While I don't remember anything our speaker said at graduation last year, or even who our speaker was, I love watching commencement addresses by illustrious, intelligent folk at other colleges and universities thanks to youtube. And because I have an awesome job, I got to spend some time today watching commencement addresses and ferreting out nuggets of wisdom from them.

Without even neglecting my day's work.

I would like to share a few of the best I found today, in case you have a few hours to spare, or you have a few hours that would otherwise be spent languishing in an ambient lack of inspiration. I will leave my mined nuggets--inspirational ore, as it were--off the table so you can enter the fray tabula rasa. (Not sure I used that right, but it's so beautiful and you get the picture.) If you don't have hours, or would rather your time outside (no judgment, trust me) then watch the last 5 minutes or so of the first two. My keen research skills tell me that a lot of chill-inducing advice gets relegated to the last few minutes of speeches, and these top two are just great.

1. Neil Gaiman at Philadelphia's University of the Arts, and a really great roundup of this address by the Christian Science Monitor. For ye readers fighting the Economic Forces Against the Arts (EFAA), this might give you a little shot of hope. Also he's just dry and hilarious.
2. Aaron Sorkins at Syracuse University. What I like about this one is that he talks about struggles. It's a little dark at times, like when he talks about his cocaine addiction at around 9:43 or one of his roommates who later died of AIDS somewhere in the 10:00-11:00 minute range. But he pulls it up for the end.
3. Am I about to share something from Sports Illustrated? Yeah. I am. It's a Monday Morning QB of highlights from commencement addresses across the country. Definitely a few gems, even though Peter King, who compiled the list, offers the disclaimer that he pretty much just writes about football. Which I neither understand, nor care about.
4. An awesome blog post by my friend and St. Olaf classmate Liz Lampman, about where she is (meta)physically almost a year after graduation. Framed like a commencement address. I majorly dig this post.
5. Aaaaand back to the root: the speech I hoped would make me senior speaker, but instead became the first post of this blog, back on May 29, 2011. In retrospect, it's probably better that I didn't have to deliver this at graduation, because I was falling asleep through most of the ceremony. I really didn't think I would make it. I feel mildly sheepish admitting that fact, but I wouldn't reorganize my priorities at that time for the world. My speech was about celebration.

If you're still reading, or if you scrolled down in hopes of unearthing some profound wordbombs, I would like to leave you with a video I think is hilariously fitting to my (and my general peer group's) current stage of passage. Not sure being 22-24 can technically be considered a rite, but it's relevant. So enjoy. And please share your favorite commencement clips. I need them for work.

P.S. While I was finishing putting this post together, Maria walked in and asked for advice writing graduation advice for her creative writing class, a la Sunscreen (1998). Apt.