Saturday Night Live Music: "Never Surrender"

Today was my tenth graduation day as a professor here at Friends University--and it also happened to be a day on which I formally bade farewell to the largest single group of graduating seniors that I've ever taught and advised through all their degrees before. Some were driven, ambitious students, who burned through their four years on fire with goals and a grand purposes; others were students that had been derailed along the way, and struggled back, making use of second chances and pursuing back-up plans, just trying to get done, and finally move on to the next stage of their lives. Like the great majority of teachers, no matter how many times I've seen examples of both these types of students, and every type in between, the day in which they all receive their diplomas is a wonderful, hopeful, gratitude-filled experience. It brings out the whole cheesy--but in a way, fundamentally true!--sense of determination and celebration that is part and parcel growing up and growing older (and, we hope, stronger and better and wiser) in our modern age. So anyway, graduating class of 2016: this is for you.