Lawrence Principe's Commencement Address:

When I began to consider what I would say to you this afternoon, I first tried to remember what words of wisdom and what gems of deep thought had been imparted to me at my own graduations. Even though I had four graduations of my own to look back on, I quickly realized that I had no recollection whatsoever of what any commencement speaker had actually said, or in fact, who on earth those speakers were. So it then seemed reasonable enough to me that I might just save you a step by simply sitting down about now without saying anything at all. Unfortunately for you, I then came up with less radical (and more long-winded) ideas that would more adequately fulfill my charge of saying something profound that no one will remember.

A few minutes ago we all marched into this auditorium and to our seats in well-regulated and synchronized motion. Our entrance to this place was a beautiful procession. We followed a plan and a set of paths and trajectories laid out for us by others who are adept at this sort of a thing. But from here on out, that is in your future lives, things will be different--should be different--and by that I mean that your steps will not be--or at least should not be--choreographed and directed by others. If I have any crumbs of insight to offer you from my additional 20 or 25 years of life, it is how crucial and how utterly rewarding it is to set your own paths through life. To do so it is necessary to keep yourselves open to surprise and to the unexpected, and to recognize how important it is to remain open to the transformative power of curiosity and wonder. To do so it is also necessary to struggle to keep the voices of others and most of all of that faceless, overbearing leviathan named “societal expectations” at bay.

The regalia that we are wearing now might signal to some people that we have all successfully followed set programs and rules placed before us by our professors, and fulfilled their expectations. But today these regalia signify more than that. They signify that we have grown and developed in such a way as to be able to transcend external rules and guidelines to a point where we are enabled to create for ourselves our own pathways, and our own set of expectations, both of which we are free to alter and amend as seems best to us. These are part of the “rights and privileges thereto appertaining” that come with your hard-earned degrees.

Having a path spread out before our feet, a goal somewhere ahead, is a necessary thing to keep us moving. You all have been on a trek throughout the past years to arrive at this point. Congratulations on making it thus far! But let’s now take a few moments to sit together to rest and to reflect. This is a time to celebrate your achievements, and also a time to be Janus-faced. For the Roman god Janus--after whom the Romans appropriately named the month of January--marks the time of new beginnings--of commencements, if you will. And Janus is known especially for his strange physical anomaly of having two faces--one gazing forwards and the other gazing backwards. And so now at this Janus moment it is wise and proper to look back on the road you have already travelled to see how far you have come and to remind yourselves of what you have seen, while at the same time looking forward to how far you have yet to go, and what wondrous things you have yet to see and to experience.

Now although paths give us direction from day to day, if we are not careful and alert they can also lull us into a merely routine motion. Have you ever been speeding down the highway at sixty or seventy miles per hour, and suddenly noticed that you have no recollection of the last thirty or forty miles of roadway? You may have just missed your exit, or you’ve missed signposts to “points of interest,” and you’ve certainly missed the view of the landscape you’ve been passing through. (Indeed, in that time you would have missed the entire state of Delaware three times over!) Thus critical reflection--and sometimes simply staying awake--on our individual journeys is necessary to prevent our missing opportunities: the opportunities of divergent paths, or new paths, of the famously-named path less travelled by, and most of all of our own ability to blaze a unique path for ourselves.

In my own path there have been many turnings-aside from the route I thought was so certainly mine. When I sat in my high school graduation I was certain of my future, with the kind of certainty that comes only with blissful ignorance. I was headed to the University of Delaware as a chemical engineer, and then to a high-paying job in industry. But one night--I remember it well--as a freshman in October 1979 in my room in Dickinson B at about two in the morning, I sat bent and bleary-eyed over an Introduction to Chemical Engineering problem set, reading the same refractory problem over and over again. And something happened. I suddenly realized that no amount of money or job security was enough to make me spend my life adjusting temperature and pipe diameters to optimize the flow rates of strawberry jam. Some people can do that and love it--but I realized it wasn’t for me. The next morning I filled out the paperwork and became a chemistry major. And I had to admit, that chemistry had really been my true love all along--I just hadn’t listened to my own heart quietly enough and free enough from external influences.

Thus I came eventually to sit in my undergraduate graduation, once again certain of my future--I was headed to Indiana University as an organic chemistry graduate student, and then to a professorial position in chemistry. But one night--I remember it well--in September of 1987, in the laboratory at about two in the morning, bent and bleary-eyed over the fifteenth attempt at an inexplicably refractory boron trifluoride catalyzed ring closure needed to complete my synthesis project, slightly hypnotized by a spinning magnetic stirrer, I reflected on what my mentor--a great organic chemist to be sure--spent his days doing. And I realized there was a disconnect between what I had thought I would be doing as a chemistry professor and what he was actually doing. In fact, the world had shifted around me, and I hadn’t taken it into account and adjusted my path accordingly. For I realized that managing a large research group, hustling constantly for grants, and never again having the pleasure of staining my fingers and fouling my nose with chemicals was not what I really wanted to do. Some people can do that and love it--but I realized it wasn’t for me.

This was a daunting realization to make after five years of graduate study. But fortunately I had something to turn towards--the work in the history of chemistry I devoted so much of my time to here at Delaware, and that I thought I would maintain merely as a sort of a hobby. Once again, I had to realize that I had not listened sufficiently closely to my true passions, but instead I had compromised by taking a well-marked path rather than blazing a new one with the fire of those passions. Thus I took the unusual step of applying to graduate school all over again. And so I sat at my graduate school graduation certain that I was headed to Johns Hopkins as a history of science graduate student, but to be frank, with the recognition that the future beyond that was considerably less clear and well-marked than the paths I had expected to tread following my other graduations. Yet now--how well I remember--when I sit at two in the morning, bent and bleary-eyed over a refractory line of sixteenth-century Latin, or at two in the afternoon with a refractory organic chemistry student, I think to myself: “Dear God, I love doing this.”

What can be learned from all of this babbling? Well, first of all, it is clear that I have reached that age of blissful self-delusion where I think other people should be interested in details of my autobiography. But beyond that, I’ve given you an example of switching paths--turning aside from what seemed the obvious and the well-marked route--by realizing first that the path was taking me where I really didn’t want to be, and second by charting new paths and directions by following the internal compass of my interests and my true passions. Moreover, if I had it to do over again I would not choose a different or a more direct path to where I am now. Why? Because there was no more direct path. As we progress along our individual paths, if we are awake and alert, we pick up new skills, new outlooks, new understandings everyday. And each one of those new acquisitions changes us a little bit so that our lives and ways of thinking come to reflect the paths we choose to tread; in short, they make us who we are, and enable us to do what it is we do. Plato teaches us that we become the likeness of the things we contemplate--therefore it is important to be consciously aware and to choose carefully what things it is we contemplate.

Forcing ourselves to engage in this sort of contemplation can, however, be difficult. The reason is that our modern world is always in such a hurry that it leaves us little time for real contemplation. The external world constantly heaps responsibilities and duties and its own expectations upon us, so that often we feel satisfied merely to have made it successfully through another week.

But in opposition to that trend, let me leave you with one last thought based on a very usefully iconoclastic fact. Here as you prepare to leave this phase of school, you should reflect on what the word school actually means. In modern European languages, the word for school derives from the Latin schola, which in turn derives from the Greek word scholē (σχολή). And what does scholē mean? You may be surprised to learn it means leisure time: school is leisure. And just as peace is not merely the absence of war, leisure is not merely the absence of work. It is something much more. It is not idleness, snoozing on the lawn chair, as pleasant and necessary as that might be from time to time. In its true meaning, leisure is a quiet and meditative time, it is a time of introspection and development and growth: a time for asking questions and seeking answers. To think of it as merely “time-off” from labor is to invert the proper order of things. Hence, “business” in Latin is negotium, that is, neg-otium, literally “not otium” and since otium is Latin for scholē, what the Latins are telling us is that business is not the norm, the center for our lives, but is instead time taken away from true leisure. Leisure is, as the Jesuit author Josef Pieper labelled it, “the basis of culture.” For it is in leisure time that we are allowed to think and to reflect, to examine and to critique. Think and reflect, examine and critique--these are the core abilities that your education is intended to provide you.

I urge you then to reinvert our society’s backwards and perverse set of values and priorities. To make true leisure time, quiet contemplative time for yourselves--to reunite the meanings of school and scholē.

Return for a moment to the image of a car speeding down the highway. It is impossible to examine your road map when going seventy miles per hour and trying to “get ahead” of other drivers in the “speeding frenzy” so common on our highways. To be aware of the paths and roads open to you, to be aware of possibilities, you have to pull off the road regularly and stop in order to consider your direction and evaluate your options. Following your true passions and your interests--to create a life well-lived and lived to the fullest, and not just a “career”--is generally incompatible with driving recklessly and relentlessly on with the pack.

I have now harangued you sufficiently. It remains only for me to wish you both hearty congratulations on your achievements to this day, and the best of luck and of wisdom in your future lives.