Ran across this recently and am posting here because I felt it deserved a wider audience.
Am posting in CS because Mr. Serling is best know for his work in television. It is a transcript of a commencement address he gave back in the early seventies.
Relevant even today.
Approved.
Holy crap !!! That was one of the best speeches, commencement or otherwise, I’ve ever read ! I am jealous of those who got to hear it delivered.
Very relevant today (and a little sad that so many of the same issues still exist today)
Thank you for posting that !
Yes, thanks very much for sharing something I never would have otherwise come across or benefitted from. Very well said, Rod. Something to consider beyond the moment, a charge for life.
I must confess myself disappointed- not in Serling, whose words are eloquent and beautiful, but in the common mass of American humanity, which has apparently been calling graduations ‘commencements’ far longer than I had thought, and seemingly have never had it cross their minds that a beginning and an ending are two different things.
If only he’d left out Sacco and Vanzetti- but that was a great speech, and admirably concise. He said what he wanted to say, and nobody was looking at his watch!
it would be irregular for people to go up on stage and look at Rod’s watch.
But what if his watch stopped time?
I’ll bet he smoked at least 3 cigarettes while giving that speech.
You end your school days, and commence your adult life. What’s wrong with calling it a “commencement”?
No you don’t, because (a) you’re generally and legally considered an adult well before that time, and, (b) even if that were not so, as Recusant is pointing out, the ceremony marks the end of undergraduate life and not the beginning of whatever phase is to come (which might even, for some, be more college).
School is the training ground for real life. Graduation is the end of the less-important part of life, and the beginning of the more-important part of life.
“They thought they were examining the speaker’s watch, but they were looking into-The Twilight Zone.”
The real puzzle is how are you supposed to look dignified when you’re wearing a nightgown and a square hat?
There are other folks dressed like that, your fellow students and teachers, and their families.
It is easy. 
Well, no. Graduation is the end of that first part, yes. But it’s not the start of what comes after. What comes next (job, further specialized training, whatever) is what comes next. Consider reincarnation: you die in this life, you move on to the next one. That doesn’t mean a beheading is a conception. I suppose the argument could be made that any transitional phase is both a beginning and an ending, but a graduation isn’t- it’s just an ending.
When I was contemplating Graduate School-Carnivorousplant, MInSc- :rolleyes: an attorney friend of mine told me to never stop being a student; it was infinitely better than working.
The key here, I think, is to not think of graduation as an end, but think of it more as a very effective way of cutting down on your expenses.
I’ve never heard of a graduation being called a ‘commencement’.
The ceremony is the Graduation, the address is the Commencement Address. The CA addresses the future(which is where ‘commence’ ties in), with little reference to the past.
The two go together, and I think that that’s where you are confused.
And, beside being incorrect, you are being petulant and pedantic. Needlessly.
Except for Serling!