You were never as cool and as popular as you wanted to be, and it bothers you. You had to work an extra job, or two, but you are here.įor a lot of you, not all, but a lot of you, your hardest struggle was social. Every semester of your matriculation you had to stand in one line to get to another line, to get to another line for somebody that might help you. You and your family struggled to make ends meet. You know, sometimes your grades don’t give a real indication of what your greatness might be. You never made the dean’s list, but that’s okay. You did your best, but you didn’t make A’s or B’s, sometimes C’s.
When you hear the words magna cum laude, cum laude, you know that’s not you. For some of you, the challenge was actually academics. Each of you had your own unique difficulties with the hill. Throughout ancient times, institutions of learning have been built on top of hills to convey that great struggle is required to achieve degrees of enlightenment. For some of you, maybe even a little bit more. You have been climbing this academic slope for at least three or four years.
ANDERSON COOPER TULANE COMMENCEMENT SPEECH CENTRAL IDEA FULL
Almost every day I would walk the full length of the hill to Fine Arts, where most of my classes were, carrying all of my books, because once you walked that far on foot, you are not walking back home until it’s time to go home for good.īut beyond the physical campus, the Hilltop represents the culmination of the intellectual and spiritual journey you have undergone while you were here. For those of you who don’t know what that means, that’s at the bottom of the hill where the incline gets real. For those of you… That’s right, Bryant Street. During my junior and senior years, I lived in a house off campus at Bryant Street. It only takes one hour, one tour of the physical campus to understand why we call it the Hilltop. But it has many names, the Mecca, the Hilltop. Howard University, I was riding here and I heard on the radio, somebody called it Wakanda University. I walked away light and ready to take on the world. I walked away amused at him, amused at myself, amused at life for this moment that almost no one would ever believe. His security let the joke play along for a second before they ushered him away, and I walked away floating like a butterfly. His movements were flashes of a past greater than I can imagine. His face was as serious as if I was Frazier in the Thrilla in Manila. What an honor to be challenged by the GOAT, the greatest of all time, for a brief moment. I was game to play along with him, to act as if I was a worthy opponent. He raised his fist to a quintessential guard. Time seemed to slow down as his eyes locked on mine and opened wide. I raised my head and Muhammad Ali was walking towards me. I remember walking across this yard on what seemed to be a random day, my head down lost in my own world of issues like many of you do daily. This is a magical place, a place where the dynamics of positive and negative seem to exist in extremes. It is a great privilege, graduates to address you on your day, a day marking one of the most important accomplishments of your life to date.
, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
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