First Person

A Good Speech

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By James M. Lang

My wife's fourth pregnancy, like the three before this one, had heightened her sense of smell, and when we walked into the massive hall where a baccalaureate dinner was being held, she began sniffing almost immediately, wrinkling up her nose at some strange scent.

When we sat down, one of our tablemates explained that for the past several hours cooks had been pushing carts of frying garlic around the room, while students lit scented candles on every table -- all in a desperate effort to mask the scents of a circus that had been performing there earlier in the week.

"I knew it," Anne said. "I can smell the elephants."

I could definitely smell the garlic and the scented candles -- a pretty overpowering combination -- but I was too distracted to smell the elephants even after I heard the story, since I was busy studying the room, counting the tables, trying to estimate the size of the crowd I would be addressing later that evening. I had been told it would be 1,200 to 1,500 people, and I guessed it to be at the lower end of that range.

I had been elected by the senior class to serve as the baccalaureate speaker at the dinner, an honor that pleased me greatly, since I was finishing my fourth year at the college. These graduates were the first class that I had been able to follow from orientation to graduation.

I very much enjoy public speaking, and usually jump at such opportunities, but that night the size of the crowd was making me nervous. Before this speech, the largest crowd I had ever addressed was a mere 250 people, and I had set that mark just six weeks previously.

My nervousness intensified a hitch when I saw that not only would I be addressing a crowd of 1,200 students and parents and administrators from an otherwise naked platform, but that the image of me addressing 1,200 students and parents and administrators would be projected behind me on a 30-foot screen in real time as I spoke. I found disconcerting the prospect of this Goliath-sized Jim Lang booming out his speech confidently to the back of my head as I stumbled out my modest little address below his necktie.

I picked at my dinner for 45 minutes, watched a lot of students receive awards for what felt like several hours, and then my turn came. A student who was clearly more nervous than I was gave me a nice introduction, I walked up the stairs without tripping, set my speech on the podium, and looked out at the crowd.

But let me pause here, and take you back in time for a few paragraphs, to the moment in late April when I received the phone call from the administration informing me that I was one of the top vote getters for this year's baccalaureate address, and asking whether I would be willing to give the speech if I were elected?

I agreed immediately, though I will confess I hoped that I would not win. I felt honored enough to have received the votes; winning the election carried with it an obligation that would add considerable stress to my life.

But I did win the election, by a narrow margin, at which point I felt a bit like the title character in J.M. Coetzee's novel, Elizabeth Costello, a writer who, as she prepares for an award ceremony, wonders aloud why she came: "It seems a great ordeal to put oneself through, for no good reason. I should have asked them to forget the ceremony and send the check in the mail."

To which her son responds: "It doesn't work that way, I am afraid, Mother. If you accept the money, you must go through with the show."

I had accepted the privilege of putting my name on the ballot, and now it was my turn to go through with the show.

I felt a little relieved to be told that the speech should be no more than seven or eight minutes long, and that, in fact, the shorter the better. Seven or eight minutes meant four double-spaced pages of text, and I thought I could handle that pretty easily.

During the final days of the semester, and through final exams and the week I spent grading final papers, I thought about what to say, and slowly drafted my speech. It began as a ponderous manifesto about why college mattered, finishing with a fervent pitch for the students to carry with them into the world their love of learning and literature. This, I thought, will be the last opportunity I have to impart my wisdom to these students. I must deliver profundity.

But then I began reflecting on the speeches I had sat through on such occasions.

I thought back to the commencement address I heard as an undergraduate, and realized that I didn't remember a single word of it. The woman who gave it was someone whom I hadn't heard of much then, and whom I still don't hear much about. I wish I could recall even one idea or sentiment from her speech, but I can't. I remember thinking at the time that it was probably profound, intelligent stuff, but that I just wanted to get it over with and get out of the sweat-box in which we were seated.

I thought back to the commencement address I heard in my first year as a faculty member, which was delivered by a poet who spent much of the address expressing surprise that he had been asked to deliver a commencement speech (by the end of his speech, I was wondering the same thing).

But the one part of his speech that made an impact on me was the poem he read at the end, which finished with an image of him packing lunch boxes for his children, and writing them notes on their napkins. Since I am the lunch-packer for my children, and sometimes write them little notes, that part of the speech hit an emotional chord with me.

As I thought about his address, I realized that the poem was the only part of the speech I really remembered, and I began to wonder what part of my speech, if anything, the students would remember. Would they walk out of the auditorium inflamed for the love of learning by my speech? Would they immediately begin shooting off graduate-school applications? Would they rush to the bookstore with tears of regret and buy back their books?

The unlikelihood of those scenarios, and the memories of my own experience as a listener at formal academic addresses, convinced me to chuck my ponderous first draft, and start all over.

But what to say?

As I was musing upon this question, I ran into a faculty member on the campus who had heard about my election, and who had once delivered the same address himself.

"Just remember," he told me, "this thing is for the kids and their parents. Make them feel good -- that's all you have to do."

I was struck by the simple wisdom of that advice, and by my initial blindness to it; the elephant in the room had suddenly become visible -- or, more appropriately, smellable -- to me.

I had written a baccalaureate address that was about me: about my desire to teach them, about my own passion for learning, and about my usually impossible-to-suppress impulse to argue and persuade whenever possible. I had written a baccalaureate address that made an argument, that appealed mostly to the brain.

Wrong organ. I needed to address my speech, I saw, to a muscle about a foot south of the brain.

So I wrote a new address, one with a lot more jokes. I compared experiences I had had in my first four years to ones that most college students have -- like getting stuck with a trying new roommate, for example, which in my case was our third daughter. I mentioned as many specific and beloved elements of the campus and campus life as possible, ones that I hoped would tug at their nascent nostalgia for the college. I kept it short.

In the end, I couldn't resist a little persuasion, but I boiled it down to three paragraphs -- three paragraphs which expressed my dedication to this profession as eloquently as it gets for me:

"For the past four years, my colleagues in the faculty and the administration have asked you to respect, to accept, and to make a part of your life a fundamental belief that we all share: that books and ideas matter in this world. That books and ideas make a difference in this world. That the world would be a better place if more people read books, thought about ideas, and wrote and talked to each other about what they read and what they thought about.

"That a life spent with books and ideas is a richer life than one spent without those things.

"Caring about books and ideas is easy when you are taking classes, and living next to a library, and surrounded by people who are studying the same things you are. It can be difficult to do when you are out in the working world, and come home exhausted after a long day of work, and have a spouse, and children to take care of. But I can promise you that if you can find time to read, find time to think, and find time to share your thoughts with others, that you will be a wiser, a more interesting, and a more satisfied human being than you would otherwise be."

A bit heavy-handed, maybe, but it probably passed unnoticed. If the volume of their reactions during the speech are any indication, the most memorable moment of my speech was the joke I made about the chicken patties at the dining hall.

If I had been able to think more quickly on my feet, I would have worked in a joke about the smell of the elephants somewhere.

It's OK, though, because someday I may be called up to the podium again -- if not for the baccalaureate address, then perhaps for a talk at freshman orientation, or for the student honors society for my discipline, or for any one of the many formal academic occasions which call for someone to lean on a podium and pronounce words of wisdom.

I'll know a little better, next time around, how to write those words.

Make them laugh; make them cry. Tug at their heartstrings. Read a poem. Reminisce about chicken patties at the dining hall.

Make a joke about smelly elephants.