A Glimpse of Graduation

Profile Photo of Bradley Wallace Fellow graduates, faculty, family and guests, President Daniel, Dean Coleman, Judi, Danielle, Dale and to all watching on YouTube, thank you for joining us. It’s always nice for an engineer to give a speech to literary arts majors – not intimidating in the least. I’ll just surreptitiously use big words and fit right in.

I am honored and privileged to stand with you today, joining the hundreds of graduation stories on the floor before me. We carry our diplomas with distinctive curriculum, personal job prospects and unique life circumstances. In a way, our diplomas represent the chapters of our lives to the present. And looking around, I see that we all seem to be on the same page of the story. No one wants to sit through another lecture from a podium, though, so I’ll keep this to a footnote.

As we pause here before turning that next page, take a moment to look around. Graduation is one of those rare occasions when we sit surrounded by loving friends and family, all united to celebrate our successes. We may be the ones wearing caps and gowns, but the accomplishment has not been a sole effort. Graduation is an opportunity to publicly acknowledge those whose support helped us get through. Parents, professors and peers, you have taught us, pushed us, tested us and supported us, and we have become better individuals because of you. You are our dedication page. Thanks for carrying us through.

We may be the ones wearing caps and gowns, but the accomplishment has not been a sole effort. Graduation is an opportunity to publicly acknowledge those whose support helped us get through. Parents, professors and peers, you have taught us, pushed us, tested us and supported us, and we have become better individuals because of you. You are our dedication page. Thanks for carrying us through.

We can all agree college was a testing time, but bad puns aside, these challenges help us shape our identities. Morning classes after all-nighters teach us whether we can drink coffee. Computer crashes during last-minute deadlines show us how we work under pressure. Electromagnetics allows us engineers to relate to the opening scenes in Saving Private Ryan, and I hear you lit studies majors had to read Jane Austen; my sincere condolences.

Commencement is a time to reflect on how far we’ve come and to evaluate our progress in dealing with life’s challenges. How did we act toward others when we had reached our last straw? Did we set aside our textbooks the night before a test if a friend needed someone to talk to? Did we stop to help those confused, lost freshmen find their classes even though it made us late for our own? Did we make a life-saving difference at a blood drive even if it sapped us of our energy for the rest of the day?

If we don’t like the answers to some of our questions, we mustn’t despair; our test is not over. Today’s ceremonies are not only our official graduation, they also define our commencement. I used to marvel at the irony of the terms used for today’s event: Graduation, ending; and commencement, beginning. But then again, I’m still marveling that a computer science major headed for medical school was chosen to speak to arts and humanities majors. How ironic is that?

I’m no stranger to irony. When I graduated from high school, I knew everything, so it struck me as ironic that I would learn anything at college at all. Once here, I was positive I would become a researcher, so I worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, hoping it would provide a steppingstone into the cutting-edge world of technology. This was my niche, where I would finally make that difference in the world.

Unexpectedly, a moment made the difference in mine.

It happened one lazy Sunday in a park when an asthmatic child in front of me landed a hard hit from a foam boxing glove at a local carnival. He started panicking, hyperventilating, and I was the closest one there. I didn't perform a life-saving tracheotomy or give CPR, merely cleared a space and delegated teenagers to bring water and get his mother. But I was there, calming the child, wiping his tears and staying with him until his mother arrived with the rescue inhaler.

I wasn't a hero, just there.

We each sit here with similar moments that fall between the bullet points of our résumés. Moments minuscule to the world, yet enormous to ourselves. Embrace those memories. All too often while focusing on the big picture, we forget the importance of the pixels that compose it. I urge you to find ways to grab hold of your memories of life-changing moments. Keep a journal. Take a picture. Write a poem, or maybe we CS majors should just start with a haiku. Put those refrigerator magnets to good use and hang up those memories where you can see them every day. Remind yourselves of the sense of purpose that led you to this time and this place and that sense of purpose will lead you where you go tomorrow.

Ironically this is an age where we type a few keys to speak with colleagues across the world, yet we walk past others with iPods in our ears and eyes on our cellphones. I’m afraid I’ve posted thousands more updates to Facebook whenever friends (and even friends of friends) asked, “What’s new?” than I ever gave my mother when she asked me the same question. Fellow classmates, I hope we don’t allow the lure of technological shortcuts to disengage us from the flesh-and-blood world around us. Choose to live with purpose.

Before I close, I’d like us to add one more challenge to our list. You know the saying, “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” I double dog dare you to break that cliché. Make the effort to look at yourself from your neighbor’s point of view. We are graduates now, and the grass is greener on our side. Our educations give us the skills and opportunities to break down the fence and respond with compassion to those whose grass is dying.

The world has labeled us “the apathetic generation.” Let’s prove them wrong. Let each of us, in our own unique way, use the unique experiences and skills we’ve acquired during our time on this campus to step with purpose out these doors and help change the world for the better.

I can think of only one thing that hasn’t changed since I first stepped into this gymnasium for Freshman Convocation. It was a way to tell the world I was proud to be a student of this great university, and from this moment on it will be a way to tell the world I am proud to be a graduate of The University of Texas at Dallas. Let’s end our college career and begin the next chapter of our lives by whooshing here one last time, loud and clear. So when I shout UTD, please stand and whoosh together, with our left fists ready at our mouths, our right fists pointed ever upward and our voices in celebration.

Fellow graduates, faculty, family and guests, the graduating class of 2009 has one last thing to say: Here’s to the adventure we are honoring today, and here’s to the adventures yet to come.

U-T-D! WHOOSH!

Bradley Wallace graduated summa cum laude with a computer science degree from the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science.

While at UT Dallas, he was a McDermott Scholar, a Student Ambassador, a member of the Collegium V Honors Program and a member of Student Government. He also was active in Destination Imagination, Meteor Theater and A Modest Proposal.

Wallace studied abroad in Morocco and Egypt. He conducted research both on campus and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Wallace and two other undergraduate students were largely responsible for helping create a new academic minor in nanotechnology.

This fall, he will be a first-year medical student at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.