written May 18, 2014

Mick Watson

Greetings to you graduating students, parents, families, friends, and fellow colleagues. It is my privilege to address you this afternoon. I would like to give you three messages—first, some practical advice; second, a message for you parents; and, third, a message about career paths for you students.

Several people have told me that to give a successful Commencement address I should provide some practical advice. So I will get that part out of the way first off. Here it is: When you take a shower and then wipe off with a towel afterwards, start wiping from your head on down to your feet. That way you won’t drip on yourself. Ok, that’s it for my practical advice.

And now on to my message for you parents: I would like to tell you how I feel about your kids. Let me start with an analogy. When our youngest son came along we knew about 6 other families who had babies of about the same age. One time we happened to all be together and decided that a wonderful photo would be of all 7 of them lined up together, sitting on a sofa. As we lined them up, however, they kept falling over or falling to the side. You see, they were about 5 to 6 months old and could not yet sit up on their own. So we crammed them in together and put pillows at each end of the sofa so that they wouldn’t fall off the ends. The pillows and the fact that kids were packed in tightly like a can of sardines provided scaffolding to prop them up. (Incidentally, it turned out to be a terrific photo.) That son of ours is now 18 years old and is 6 feet 4, and he no longer needs scaffolding to sit up.

Vygotsky and Bruner, among other theorists, used the concept of “scaffolding” as a metaphor for how we prop up someone’s skills and understanding at a time when they are just being developed. The idea of scaffolding is that it is temporary and should be taken away when the individual can handle a particular task or can understand something on his or her own. I look at what we do for your children when they come to Brandeis as providing scaffolding—as teachers, mentors, advisers, and more experienced researchers—while they develop skills and understanding for themselves. We are temporary. So, today, your kids can now sit up (and do even more than that) without us. We are temporary…but we hate to lose them. You see, we have grown to like them; so even though our job as scaffolders is finished, we hope that we will continue to be friends with our former students—life-long friends.

I know personally what it is like to send children off to college with the hope that their teachers and advisors will be excellent and that they will watch out for my kids and provide them with appropriate scaffolding. In my 37 years at Brandeis, I have reminded myself every year that each of these students is someone’s precious son or someone’s precious daughter. I don’t want to forget what that means to you.

My last message is for you graduating students. This is obviously a time in your life when you are concerned with choosing a fulfilling and appropriate career path for yourself. Some of you may have chosen one already, but my guess is that you are all still working on it to one degree or another. What should you do that would be most rewarding and successful?

Even if you are dedicated to helping others and practicing social justice, how does that help you choose a career path suited for you? Jerome Kagan, a respected research psychologist, gave this analogy. If by some miracle, you were given a magic wand, and all the people that you touched with it, would have their most severe problems—health issues, depression, poverty, and so forth—cleared up, you might be overjoyed and would probably go around touching as many people as you could. However, after a day or so of this, and maybe after only a few hours, you would probably become bored and find your job tedious. You would find someone to hand off the wand to so that they could go on helping people, while you did--what? Probably what you were doing before. It is not just that we want to help others; it is how we choose to do it.

We try to choose our jobs, our careers, by what we love to do, what we can lose ourselves in. And we usually develop expertise in what we love doing and do all the time. You will be in great shape if you can find something you love doing—something you want to get up Monday morning and do. And if you have it in your heart and mind to help make other lives better and happier, that is where you can do the most good. I heard about a postdoctoral fellow here at Brandeis in Bio-Physics who was considered a rising star in his field, but he up and quit his job and became a car mechanic. When people asked him why, he said, “I don’t know; I just love fixing cars.” I say, more power to him. I want to find a mechanic like that. I think he would make my life better and happier.

Here is another aspect to choosing a career. Let me read a quote from David O. McKay. He said, “The most worthy aim in life is that in which a person can serve best his or her fellow beings. It is not preaching; it is not teaching; it is not medicine; it is not science; it is not engineering; it is not law; nor any other vocation. Each of these, though offering opportunities for service, may be followed by people actuated by the most selfish, the most sordid motives. The noblest aim in life is to strive to live to make other lives better and happier.” Regardless of the career you choose, that striving to make other lives better and happier needs to come from you.

I want to end by telling a story that I am sure many of you have heard before, but it might be worth hearing it again. There was once an old man who was walking on the beach in the early morning. He found that there were countless starfish strewn about on the beach, probably washed up by a storm the night before. Then he saw, off in the distance, a little boy. As he watched him, the boy would reach down, pick up a starfish and throw it into the ocean. He did this again and again. Finally the man walked up to the boy and asked him what he was doing. The boy said, “There are all these starfish that washed up on the beach. If I don’t throw them back into the ocean they will die in the hot sun.” The man said, “That is a nice gesture and thoughtful of you, but you shouldn’t worry about it. This is just nature’s way--things like this happen. Look up and down the beach. You see, there are thousands and thousands of starfish. Whatever you do can’t possibly make a difference.” The little boy looked down at the starfish he was holding in his hand and said, “Yeah, but it will make a difference to this one,” and he threw it into the sea.” If you can’t do everything, you can still make a difference to someone.

So, in conclusion, I wish for each of you that you can do what you love, but also that you will use whatever is yours to give to increase the higher order and happiness and well being of those you can reach in your sector of the world. Thank you.