Posted 9-14-00
photo by Mike Sands/IRIS |
CLEVELAND -- In his keynote address at Case Western Reserve University's Fall Convocation, which was held August 31 to mark the beginning of the academic year, faculty member Ted Gup extolled the virtues of viewing life experiences as an enlightening journey of personal growth, rather than the drudgery of calculating success with temporal, short-sighted measures. "Let me say a word in praise of indirection, instability, and intellectual vagrancy: Take courses that mean something to you -- that lead nowhere except perhaps to the awakening of personal passions. The purpose of college is not to prepare you for a job, nor to prepare you for life. Free yourselves from this preoccupation with preparation that infects everything we do. Do something for the joy of doing, not for the opportunities it creates in some indeterminate future. This is the future. This is your opportunity. Nothing is more habit-forming than the deferral of personal satisfaction," said Gup, the Shirley Wormser Professor of Journalism.
"We are taught that it is sinful to waste time, but no one tells us how to define waste," Gup added. "I encourage you to learn to waste time fruitfully -- to invest in today, not the mirage of tomorrow, to spend time with those you care about, to do the things that make you feel whole. Be responsible, by all means, but to yourselves, first and foremost; Be on your guard. Do not confuse making a living with living."
He added, "Someone once remarked that most spills are caused by the rider pulling back on the reigns mid-jump. They doom themselves with fear of failure. Complete your jumps. If you fail, so what? ... Failure is a part of the landscape of any successful life. Its absence is evidence of a more profound failure -- the failure of will."
Click here to view the full transcript of Gup's address.
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