President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of
Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all,
graduates.
The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has
Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and
nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement
address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have
to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself
into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter
convention.
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I
thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The
commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher
Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me
enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t
remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me
to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to
abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy
delights of becoming a gay wizard.
Read and watch J.K. Rowling’s Harvard Commencement Address.
Apt. 11d 
That was really good. Thanks for the link to the text as well. 🙂 I liked what she said here: “I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.” I’ve been thinking about academia lately and how it can be so much about a certain kind of status seeking and posturing, and I remember applying for the job I have now and thinking in the middle of the interview, Oh fuck it with trying to figure out what they want. I’m just going to tell them who I am. And that was the ticket out of the hellhole that I was living in (Maine, in case you’re interested; if you think I hate Coach bags, well, you’ve never heard me talk about Maine ;).
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Don’t tell me how it ended. I’m waiting for the movies.
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I actually read it earlier today, pretty soon after it was posted, because that’s just the kind of geek I am. A very good, unpretentious, thougtful speech. I hope we never hear that she had a speechwriter help her polish it, because I want to use the speech as further evidence that, whatever else one may think of the kind of stories she wrote and how she chose to tell them, she really is a fine writer.
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RAF,
I still remember your giant Deathly Hallows prediction post. A bit off, but still very interesting.
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Oooh, just saw this. I’ve been away for days. As it happens, I went to my Harvard reunion last week. I was sitting on stage with my classmates, right there when Rowling spoke. We spent the rest of the weekend commenting to each other about the speech (well, also catching up with friends after so many years, but that’s not relevant to this). I’m very glad to see it had a ripple effect outside the Yard.
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