Mark Wright  Commencement Speech

Thank you Mr. Marble-

Good afternoon graduates, families, trustees, administrators, fellow faculty.  It is unbelievable that we are even here together like this after the past year, and that very fact is one of the many things today that give us reason for hope.

Like you graduates today, I started here at Sturgis four years ago.  On that first day, in a new school, full of people I’d just met, there was a lot of excitement and apprehension.  Back then, you started that first morning thinking “what the heck is advisory?”  Some of you ended up with a teacher who started that morning also thinking “what the heck is advisory?”  Yet as that year went along and then became these past four years, we all acclimated to and then embraced Sturgis and IB culture.  Acronyms like IA, EE, CAS, or TOK became old hat for us.  Then, over this past year, we had to rethink nearly all of it.

It seemed appropriate, then, that, like all of you, I also sat down to write a graduation speech.  And, like many of you, at first I didn’t really know what to say.  I didn’t want to just give you more of “Dr. Wright’s life advice”—I’m sure many of you can rattle off those aphorisms, just as I’m sure many of you will eventually go on to graduate school, despite what I’ve said.  I also had the sobering thought that today’s graduates were all born when I was a senior in high school 18 years ago.  In search of inspiration, I looked back to the speaker at my own high school graduation, one of my favorite authors, Dennis Lehane.  One part of that speech I still remembered: Lehane’s line, paraphrasing HL Mencken, “if it’s not about the money….it’s about the money.” My father insisted that I include that one in my remarks today.    

What struck me in the speech was Lehane’s ruefulness that we, the class of 2003, were about to go into a world that was, in his description, in some real shambles due to the Enron triggered financial collapse, and the war in Iraq.  In fact, a large part of his speech was a discussion of the central lessons in the Rolling Stones’ classic song “You Can’t Always Get what you want”……but, if you try real hard, you get what you need.”  18 years later, how quaint that all seems.  I mean, you’ve seen the world around you this past endless year.  I wish you could graduate in the halcyon world of 2003.  But, well, you can’t always get what you want.  

Today, rather than Lehane’s calculated Boston Irish cynicism, I am optimistic and hopeful because of you. We have proudly watched you all grow and mature as scholars and citizens.  You have become people for others—not just in the ways that you have engaged with struggles in the world today, but in the daily compassion, generosity and care you show to each other.  Despite that optimism, I’m not here to tell you that you as a group or individually can heroically change the world.  But you can help!  A good place to start is to be an open minded, caring, curious, and reflective person.  These are not just IB Learner traits, they are important attitudes for getting on in the world and getting along with others.  One reason is that they instill a sense of humility—that we don’t have all the answers, that there is still more to learn, that we, with all our intellect, will never exhaust the richness of this world and its peoples.  

Now I have spoken of “helping to change the world” and “getting along with others”, and remarked upon your collective compassion because this idea of solidarity, of working and coming together, is all too absent in the world at large today.  Over the course of my lifetime, people have become increasingly atomized, often under the rubric of “individual responsibility.” This past year, we have seen starkly, and often quite painfully, the limits of this way of living in the world.  This atomization occurred even as technology like the internet served, in some ways, to bring us together.  We could still meet for class, spread out over Massachusetts and sometimes the country, but, paradoxically, I think most of us would agree that remote learning felt very lonely.  There is no substitute for being together with your friends and classmates in person, and thankfully we were able to have some of that the past few weeks.

Individual responsibility and action cannot solve collective problems and issues.  Yet we don’t even have to think at that kind of scale to see the value of solidarity.  Want to make music?  Get a band together.  Want to start a podcast?  You’re probably going to need a co-host and you’ll definitely need some guests.  Want to write a book?  I can tell you from experience that having a co-author makes it much easier!  I’m sure you can all remember things you did together here at Sturgis, whether as a sports team, a class project, or a club.  The important point here is that no one person is going to do the big things that need to be done, we cannot just wait around for some Tony Stark or whomever to solve our problems.  The longest lasting, most durable, most just solutions are built from people working together, meeting others where they are, for a while subordinating their own interests in pursuit of a common greater good.  This should not sound daunting or impossible for any of you.  After all, you just did it for four years, under some incredibly trying circumstances.

Everyone here today is so proud of you.  We are all excited to see what you accomplish next.  It has been a pleasure and a privilege to teach you and play some small part in making you the global citizens that we are going to need.