May 25, 2007

The Model Graduation Speaker

By JAY PARINI

I tend to cry at weddings and graduations, though rarely at funerals. There is something so final about funerals that emptiness itself seems the only place to occupy. Weddings and graduations, on the other hand, mark beginnings, and usually hopeful ones; they move me powerfully. I like to see young people (and older ones, too) take a step forward, putting behind them a certain discrete period in their lives, moving with the world all before them.

Graduation is not a ceremony that, as a

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