David Foster Wallace's Address to Kenyon College

This was my favorite piece of reading that we have done thus far in this course! I loved that Wallace used a no-bullshit approach to the speech, going against all the stereotypical commencement speeches. The part that particularly stuck out to me was the analogy of the working individual in his day-to-day life, specifically at the supermarket. The scenario of him seeing all the people around him, in his way, and him choosing how he wants to think of them is a really great example of the fact that we, as individuals, do have control over what and how we think.  We can see the "fat, dead-eyed, over made-up lady" or we can see the woman who has "been up three straight nights holding the hand of a husband who is dying of bone cancer." Unfortunately, our tendency as humans is to be completely self-absorbed and only see things the way that we want to see them, but the way we want to see things is certainly not always the right way. It is important to think about what could be going on in a person's life in all situations, because it will enable us to be more understanding or empathetic when an individual isn't acting like him/herself. We never know what is going on in someone else's world, so we need to choose to think more creatively, instead of thinking things from a self-centered and completely self-absorbed point of view. According to Wallace, this is the real purpose of education.