...Commencement Address: Elon Musk at Caltech (California Institute of Technology) Elon Musk is a extaordinary billionaire with a innovative vision. He made a speech in Caltech in 2012, where he told a story about his business history. That involves getting to America, studying in Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania, his first steps in business and which difficulties it brought. The inventing thing started, when he read a quote from Arthur C. Clark, 'A sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' If you go back say, 300 years, the things we take for granted today, you'd be burned at stake for. Being able to fly. That's crazy. Being able to see over long distance, being able to communicate, the Internet as a group mind of sorts, and having access to all the word's information instantly from anywhere on the earth. This really would be considered magic in times past. So he thought, If he can do some of those things -- if he can advance technology, that is like magic and that would be really cool. The first serious product of Musk’s was PayPal. Initially, the goal with PayPal was create a conglomeration for financial services, so all financial services could be seamlessly integrated to work smoothly. They had a little feature, e-mail payments. Whenever they would show the system off, they would show the hard part, the conglomeration of financial services, which is difficult to put together. Nobody was interested. Then they showed people e-mail payments...
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...JON BON JOVI MONMOUTH UNIVERSITY Commencement Address May 16, 2001 Good afternoon… and congratulations to the graduating class of 2001. President Stafford, faculty, alumni, parents, family and friends. I’m humbled and honored to have been asked to give this commencement speech on this, one of the most special days of your life (so far.) I’ve had to think hard over the last several weeks about what information I could offer you that you might find useful in the years to come. Though the book of my life isn’t yet finished at 39 years old, I am a few chapters ahead so maybe there are a few lessons I can share. Right now I’ll bet there are a multitude of emotions running through you - from sheer joy to trepidation, from anxiety to anticipation. Don’t worry -- that’s normal. And it’s something you’ve faced before. When you went from kindergarten to elementary school and then from junior high to high school to college… it’s all been a series of NEW BEGINNINGS. Now, some of you have chosen to continue on with higher education, and others are jumping out into the “real world.” But YOUR schooling isn’t over. Treat the workplace as another school and learn all the lessons you can from it. Don’t be afraid to start from the bottom. Be humble and stay humble. No job is beneath you if you use it as a lesson. I may have been very successful in my music career – but when I started a film career, I was just another actor looking for work. My fame wasn’t a help –in...
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...President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates. The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion. Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard. You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self improvement. Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that...
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...The Way of Life The 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address was given by David Foster Wallace, a commencement speaker and a graduating student. DFW states stories that would happen realistically in anyone's lifetime due to the choices of one another. He points out certain flaws that each person has done but didn't realize it. He also explains the rules of patience, everyone has done it and repeats it; your actions influence another's mindset similar to yours and inflicts it on another individual who's innocent of his/her flaws. Although, people bring much negativity in the air, there is still room for positivity and that’s the drive of what keeps people going in life. In the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address by David Foster Wallace, he preaches about the blockades that may be upon the path to your success after graduate school. DFW elaborates realistic conflicts throughout adulthood that brings about a whole other situation to achieve. For instance, "They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing" (Wallace 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address). DFW demonstrates that one action would lead to another, it may be positive or negative, but that's how the way life goes. As flaws fade, don't look back and keep pushing forward. DFW states, "To have just a little critical awareness about myself and my certainties." He...
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...In his Commencement Address, Because We Can We Must, Bono Vox, Co-founder of DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa) and lead singer of U2, employs repetition, rhetorical questions, humor, and similes to persuade his audience that they can make a change using what they have been taught. Bono’s speech is full of passion and hope meant to inspire people; in this case he is speaking to a group of college graduates. During Bono’s Commencement Address he conveys that every generation can recognize what is going on in the world that needs to be changed. He says to them, “Betraying the age means exposing its conceits, it’s foibles; it’s phony moral certitudes. It means telling the secrets of the age and facing harsher truths.” This implies that we realize that there are problems, like poverty and AIDS in Africa, and even though we have the money to change it we choose not to do anything about it. But that is not enough. He challenges them to realize to make change happen. In Because We Can We Must Bono adopts an informal and colloquial tone to help set the mood and establish a relationship with an audience of young adults. He does this by stating, “I read the declaration of Independence and I’ve read the Constitution of the United Sates, and they are some liner notes, dude.” Throughout the speech Bono introduces repetition to place emphasis on certain factors for example he says “We’re the first generation,” “We can be the first generation,” and “It might take a while,...
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...WELCOME ADDRESS Honored guests, / beloved parents/, teachers,/ fellow graduates,/ friends, /ladies and gentlemen, /good afternoon. Today /is a celebration of God’s grace/ in the recognition of our accomplishment. /The academic journey has been demanding/ but it only made our graduation ceremony /more precious and rewarding. /I would like to acknowledge /the presence of everyone. /Thank you /for sharing /and making this day memorable. On behalf of the 2011/ graduating class/ it is a great privilege to welcome all of you/ to the Commencement Exercises./The celebration/ is to give reverence to God’s blessings /and gratifying those who believed in us/ and our potentials./ I extend my salutations to our parents,/ family,/ and friends. /Thank you/ for the unconditional love and support./ You deserve the same honors./ We offer our diploma. To our mentors/thank you for the wisdom/patience /and guidance. To the school administrators and guests,/ thank you for recognizing /our accomplishment. For the graduates, /today/ is both hello and goodbye. / Goodbye to elementary days, /hello to the new segment in highschool. /Goodbye to our childish ways/ and hello to the next level of learning./ As we move on /to the next phase of our lives,/ let us welcome the new challenges /with enthusiasm/ and optimism for a new day. That is why/ we call this a commencement ./ It points the beginning/ not an end./We are about to start a new journey,/ a journey that includes /being a part/ of the positive...
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...Steve Jobs Steve Jobs, a name synonymous with success and wealth, gave a commencement address to the graduating class of Stanford University in 2005. During his speech he spoke to the new graduates about the obstacles and hardships he faced throughout his life, and how he pushed through it and kept doing what he loved through three personal stories. Most people would look at someone like Steve Jobs and think, “This man has had the perfect life.” Little do they know that even some of the richest and most famous people in the world face hardships in their life. In Steve Jobs’ address to the students at Stanford, he portrayed emotion, credibility, and logic through sharing his life experiences. Steve started out is speech very differently, he came out stating that he dropped out of Reed College after just six months. Stating this to newly graduated students was very bold. It almost showed that you don’t need a college education to become successful, not something college graduates who just spent four years studying rigorously. But he quickly changed the mood of the speech by rewinding to his birth. Where his mother gave him up for adoption even before his birth. She clearly wanted the best for Steve when she only would let him live with a family with college graduates as parents. His mother thought that by giving him to college graduate parents would make him go to college. Yet later she found out that the people that were adopting him were not college graduates. In fact...
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...“This is Water” Close Reading Analysis: The Fluidity of Life “This is Water,” written by David Foster Wallace, is a commencement address he gave to a graduating college class in 2005. In this text, Wallace uses water as a symbol for life. As a result of water referring to life, the theme of “This is Water” is the fluidity of life. He shows this to his audience through short stories within his speech. Wallace begins his address with a story about fish. It is mainly about three fish, two young and one old. The two younger ones do not realize they are swimming in water when the older fish asks them “how’s the water” (Wallace X)? They do not know they are submerged in water because they are young and inexperienced: they have not practiced everything...
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...David Foster Wallace was the commencement speaker for the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College. Throughout his commencement speech, he made certain he entertained the young college students and not bore them with his speech. He does this by first telling a story that would first attract their attention and after he has caught their attention, he gives them information that would help them understand his speech, he talks about different extreme situations, he uses the phrase capital-T twice to gain attention and importance, and then proceeds to telling stories that the audience can relate to. Wallace’s main point he wanted to get across was that we should not live our live with a blind certainty and we should not live our lives based on assumptions. We should not live in a way that our default way of thinking can imprison our choice to choose what we want to think and that we should not live our lives thinking we are the absolute center of the universe and everything revolves around us. When we do this, we become imprisoned and start to think that we are the only one that has a problem but when we don’t live that way, we soon realize that we have a choice to think about everyone else’s problem and how it can be worse than ours. In his speech, Wallace talks about how someone can commit suicide and shoot themself in the head. If by any chance, the audience were not listening through his speech, when they heard that, they surely would have listened up again just because of how...
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...Steve Jobs’ Stanford Commencement Speech In 2005, one of the great entrepreneurs and inventors of the 20th and 21st century, Steve Jobs, gave the commencement address at Stanford University. Speaking to the graduating students at Stanford and their guests, Steve Jobs desired to provide the new graduates advice and motivation as they began to go into the “real world”. No matter where, why, or when a speech is given, in order for the speech to be good, it must use contextual and textual rhetorical analysis such as ethos, logos, pathos, and have proper structure and style. Structurally, Steve Jobs had an extremely well formed speech. Jobs related three stories he felt had taught him major life lessons which helped form who he has become today. These stories are related by him in chronological order of his life. His first story was about “connecting the dots”. He explained some of his struggles in regards to the successes of his early life and ended this first anecdote by saying, “Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something -- your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever -- because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well-worn path, and that will make all the difference.” Jobs’ second story is about “love and loss”. He shared...
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...Unit Six: Globally vs Locally Lorri Wyndham Marcellino Kaplan University SC310-33 Science May 2011 My Memorial Day Meals Lunch: Kroger brand white bread - US Kroger brand Concord grape jelly – according to the Concord Grape Association, these grapes are raised in the northeast US. Kroger brand peanut butter – from Georgia, US peanuts Frito Lay mixed nuts – distributed by Frito Lay – Plano Texas Dinner: Dominos pizza with olives and sausage – US . My lunch was purchased at Kroger and all items were Kroger brand (white bread, peanut butter and Concord grape jelly). All of the packages were listed that they came from the Kroger distribution center in Cincinnati, OH and the mixed nuts were distributed by Frito-Lay in Plano,TX. The ingredients for my meals were probably grown on large corporate farms, or as part of a co-op of smaller farms. The produce was then taken to a factory where they were processed into the final product and packaged. The products were then shipped to Cincinnati where they were then sent to my local Kroger grocery store. If everything was delivered to the store in a separate truck that is 3156 miles for the Kroger items each, and 258 miles for my nuts . My pizza was delivered from my local Domino’s pizza. I do not know where these ingredients came from expect on their TV commercials they say local farms, but by local I believe them mean within the US According to economist Michael A Walker in a lecture delivered November 2010 at the...
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...State Trade and Convention Center in Seattle, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. School buses will leave the MIHS bus loading zone on 92nd Ave SE by 9:30 a.m.sharp [following the senior breakfast] to take you to the rehearsal. Buses will return to school by 1:00. EVERYONE WILL RIDE THE BUS TO AND FROM COMMENCEMENT REHEARSAL. In order to prevent embarrassment to yourself and to your class, you must be familiar with your role in the commencement ceremony. IF YOU DO NOT ATTEND THE REHEARSAL YOU WILL NOT BE ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN COMMENCEMENT. Please wear usual school clothing to the rehearsal. At rehearsal the commencement ceremony will be explained and you will slowly "walk through" it [more than once] in its entirety. This will be your only chance to learn your role in the program. DO NOT BRING CAPS AND GOWNS TO REHEARSAL. Use of alcohol or any controlled substance will not be tolerated, and anyone violating this policy will be dealt with as follows: • You shall be taken from the immediate area, your parents will be contacted and requested to come and pick you up. • Those not participating in the commencement rehearsal shall not be allowed to participate in the commencement ceremony that night. 2. Where is the Ceremony? How do we get there? Where can we park? The Washington State Convention & Trade Center is located in downtown Seattle with the main entrance on the corner of 7th and Pike Streets. Public parking is available there and in neighboring garages. For directions...
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...Homework 1 Hua Jin Ling 305W August 31, 2011 1. I wrote a diary on my blog on the commencement at Grossmont College on May 31st 2011. I had waited the graduation ceremony for a long time. It was a very special and significant day, since I came to the United States. Also, it was a kind of accomplish for studying in the abroad. My short plan was to graduate community college and transfer to the 4 years university when I started the first semester at Grossmont College. During the college period, I tried my best to attend every class, do homework, and prepare exams. Almost three years studying in the foreign country was not an easy thing. After some endeavor, I graduated with honor. After the commencement, I had an unknown feeling to push me write something on the blog. 2. The feeling to write was very strong that night; therefore, I decided to write something to memorize the wonderful day in my life. I wanted to retain the moment and stay in that moment. In the several years later, when I read the diary, it will take a journey to that moment. Probably, I will have the same feeling as I had on the commencement. It was the best way to keep memory perfectly. 3. My purpose in responding to the call to write was to take down the beautiful memories of life and to share the experience with my family and friends. I wanted to let them know I really made great efforts. Moreover, give them a message that if you are willing to put in the effort, their goals can become within...
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...Islam Meligi English 1A Richard Compean Ph.D. Sep 10, 2015 Kenyon Commencement Summary It’s well known that most of the commencements that are held after four or more of hard working years will congratulates the graduates for being successful and show them the value of the degree that they are about to receive. Wallance considered the day of the graduation as a start, not an end, for a new life that he referred to by “day in day out” term. He focused about giving the fresh and new people to the real world some tips in order to help them dealing with the reality in the world that no one can see easily. Math, science and all other subjects that they got in school teach them how to think, how to solve a problem how to think about what’s inside themselves, but they do not teach them what to think about during a regular day in the up coming boring and hard life that they almost face. Being in the shoes of a speaker in a graduation speech looks too hard to decide to give an advice for people who feel that they are unique and have no need to get an advice from anyone to show them what to do and how to think. They have already achieved a big mission by themselves and they know exactly what to do in their life. Wallance avoided being in that position by confirming more than twice that he will not take the wisdom position, but he will explain something that he just did experience it before them, not because he knows more. He declared that in order to minimize the gap between the speaker...
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...2008-06-05 J.K.罗琳在美国哈佛大学毕业典礼的演讲 The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination --Harvard University Commencement Address J.K. Rowling June 5, 2008 失败的额外收益与想象力的重要性 ——在美国哈佛大学毕业典礼上的演讲 J.K.罗琳 2008年6月5日 President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates, 福斯特校长，哈佛董事会和监督委员会的各位成员，各位老师、家长、全体毕业生们： The first thing I would like to say is "thank you." Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindors' reunion. 首先请允许我说一声谢谢。哈佛不仅给了我无上的荣誉，连日来为这个演讲经受的恐惧和紧张，更令我减肥成功。这真是一个双赢的局面。现在我要做的就是深呼吸几下，眯着眼睛看看前面的大红横幅，安慰自己正在世界上最大的魔法学院聚会上。 Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay...
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