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Graduation is one of the few genuine rites of passage left in our society. You are, individually and collectively, passing symbolically from one place to another, from an old to a new status. And, like all such rites, it is both retrospective and prospective. You are graduating (or being graduated) from college, which is the end of something. But the ceremony we are participating in is called commencement.
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Barbara Bush Wellesley Commencement |
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That necessarily seasonal, minor literary form called the “commencement address” also faces in two directions. It usually starts with an analysis of the society or the era—appropriately pessimistic. It generally concludes with a heavy dose of exhortation, in which the young graduates, after having been suitably alarmed, are nevertheless urged to be of good cheer as they go forth into the arena of struggle that is your life, and this world. |
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