The Universe Awaits.

A lot of you have heard this really cliche speech that always happens in movies, where the speaker says, what exactly does marriage/graduation, etc mean, and then reads you the dictionary definition. I didn’t want to give that speech tonight. But I faced the problem that the vast majority of us don’t have a precise idea of what scholarship means — we’re all so used to it referring to the object (a monetary scholarship) and not the quality (of individuals who demonstrate scholarship). So, I looked up the definition, and it led down a pretty inspiring path. Scholarship is a fund of knowledge and learning. A sort of piggy bank filled with information and understandings, which we have gained through experience. Funds which we certainly add to over our time at JMM. Today, the word scholarship, at first glance, seems to be often seen as boring — but that’s actually an incredibly false assertion! Scholarship is synonymous with learning — and everyone in this room should know the excitement and success and satisfaction of learning! We experience learning new techniques and formations with friends. And we experience the sometimes secret satisfaction of successfully learning something challenging on our own and being absolutely proud. Learning, it turns out, comes from lerniean which predictably means to know, but also means “to follow or find the track”. Learning literally comes from the accumulation of information and understanding about our universe, that allows each to forge our path of individuality and excitement. Scholarship itself, we sometimes forget, is really meant to be the quality of being a scholar — being wise, being smart, being knowledgeable about the vast universe that lies in front of us. Being acknowledged as scholars for the past year, or the year to come, or any time in the rest of your lives is a great achievement — because it makes you part of an exclusive knowledge-seeking group including the likes of Aristotle. An ancient concept, yes, but placing learning and knowledge at a forefront of your life seems to be far more than ancient — it seems timeless, powerful, and extremely exciting. I wish you all the best in continuing to be life-long demonstrators of scholarship — continuing lerniean — using knowledge and studies to find and follow the track — the track of the universe and the track of your life.

What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.

I’m about to throw down some wisdom: Life is about the transitions.

Phew. What a whirlwind of year so far. It’s been unique. Amazing. Surreal, even. Breathtaking, heart-stirring, spectacular. I think that’s how I want to describe it.