To the Class of 2023
By Hudson Harper
(The following is a transcript of Hudson Harper’s graduation speech to the Class of 2023):
Alright class, there’s just a few minutes left, and I want to make sure we all wrap up together. And yes I mean everyone, please, I want to make sure you hear this too. You know it’s actually a surprise there isn’t a tik tok compilation of me saying that phrase given the fact that you’ve heard me say that on average 197.34 times over your four years. Now, before I get going, I know some of you may be wondering if this speech was written with ChatGPT, after all Hudson is the tech person… and yes, I did use AI but probably not in the way you expect. More on that later.
Seniors! Congratulations on making it to graduation. It’s amazing to think how much you’ve gone through to get here. You know, there are very few lessons that stand out in mind as clearly as the lesson we did in M100 on January 14th, 2020. We were learning about equations modeling population growth, and just a couple of days before I had heard about an interesting real-world example. Excited to discuss a practical example, I pulled about 15 days worth of data from worldometers.com with values ranging from 2 to 437. When we plugged the numbers into Desmos and asked it to fit a logistic curve (that’s one of those s curves that levels out for all of you who don’t consider yourself a math person), we got a very respectable correlation coefficient of 0.97 and a carrying capacity of 1007. Thank goodness I warned you that such models were often too simplistic to be useful and that all models need to be updated over time. If you haven’t put it together quite yet, yes I’m talking about a lesson I made around Covid-19 2 months before we went on lock down. It also reminds me of how many of you as 9th graders said you enjoyed math because there was always a “correct answer”... right. But here you are, 3 years later, much wiser with fewer complaints on the regular like “Hudson you’re muted” or “are you supposed to be sharing your screen?”
Senior families and my senior, senior co-advisors… I’m going to miss you Lupe… congratulations on getting them here! Today is a day for celebration. And there really are so many successes to celebrate. From starting the DTS Ensemble to producing and performing an original play to all the championships, scholarships, and selective internships you’ve received, you’ve managed to accomplish a lot. And trust me… there will be plenty of celebration of your success, especially when Lupe gets up here and is all sentimental. However, I want to use the remainder of my time to celebrate the other thing that got you here. That’s right, we’re going to take some time to celebrate your failures. At this point, I’d understand if some of you who have sat through your fair share of graduation speeches are thinking, “oh no… not another cliche speech about embracing your failures…” I feel you. But don’t worry, this speech is specifically for you, class of 2023. I brought receipts.
This here is a stack of feedback you’ve received over the past 4 years. Actually, this is barely scratching the surface. These are just the unique comments you’ve received on Canvas. This doesn’t count feedback on rubrics, much less the countless feedback you’ve received on the daily in writing and in person. Before I get into my findings, there was apparently some parallel thinking going on in this year’s senior intensive. After collecting samples of student work from the last four years, your own Alex L. ran the combined dataset through a vector database and created an AI that could chat with your essays. The results from talking with this corpus were fascinating and honestly made you sound quite brilliant. When asked to summarize your written philosophies it highlighted how you “draw [sic] from many sources of political philosophy, such as Nietzsche, Hegel, Camus, and Lacan, to explore the complexities of our views of the world. It emphasizes human connection, understanding our place in power dynamics, and working towards unity instead of submission to authority.”
It also pointed out that you might have an unhealthy obsession with Thomas Aquinas.
While self reflection is a skill we’re glad you’ve developed, are you ready to hear what your teachers thought about your work? Some quick summary statistics. In total there were approximately 70,000 comments made on your submissions. That’s an average of 2187 per student. You can particularly thank Brian, your English teacher, for 20,000 of them. And good news! Only 1612 were letting you know work was not submitted, 620 saying something was incomplete, and a meager 227 comments asking you to share access to your paper on Google Drive. Of course, quantity is no substitute for quality. While Brian might have written the most comments on your work in Canvas, the honor of most unique comments goes to George, your History teacher, who wrote a total of 2964 unique pieces of feedback. If you ever wondered why George seemed to be taking a while with grading, it’s because he was writing an essay in response to your essay.
Unfortunately, after hours of prompt engineering and 41 dollars in AI credits, I actually wasn’t able to find that many examples of failure. Your work was too good. That said, your teachers still gave you excellent advice. Now, I know you never skipped over reading your teacher’s feedback to see the grade you received, and you remember every word of wisdom we’ve imparted to you. So for everyone else’s sake, let me read you some highlights:
Time is essential to friendships. Friendships are like plants. They wither without attention.
I'm super proud of the risks you took early on in the term and am seeing you shift more recently into a place of second-guessing your instincts. Bring back the playfulness! You've got it inside you and even if the initial results don't jibe with what you might imagine, if you give it time to vent you may surprise yourself!
When critiquing yourself or reflecting on an experience, you don't need to be so critical of yourself. Instead of making general statements like not up to par or that is a really common shortcoming I have, focus on specific events and/or outcomes. It will help you to focus on the things you can actually do to improve your work, and will ultimately be kinder to yourself.
I was also reminded of the absolute joy you brought your teachers through comments like:
Doing this in Comic Sans was hilarious.
Jesum Crow. You knocked it out of the park.
Nice reflection, thank you. I think meeting with me to talk about your goals would have helped you (though I am biased). I like how you helped to organize your group. Watch Sicario over Thanksgiving. Emily Blunt is just remarkable in it.
Ok, so maybe the feedback you received wasn’t always the best, but there’s no arguing that your teachers know you.
So what was the key takeaway from this exercise? That you’re just too awesome? Psssh.. You are pretty great, but my real takeaway is that you have consistently risen to the challenges placed in front of you. More importantly, you rose to the challenges you created for yourself. And this is the thing I love the most about you as a class. You set yourself up for failure. My last lesson for you as your teacher is that I hope you continue to do so in the future. In the words of the great Michael Scott, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. - Wayne Gretzky.”
More seriously, a professor once told me about a study that concluded that the majority of best friends in college, 62% to be precise, were formed between freshman roommates and 31% lived on the same floor their first year. He said, “What a shame! By simply accepting proximity as the basis of their relationships, students gave up on the opportunity to find an optimal best friend. That’s why you should never sit in the same seat in class or walk the same path around campus twice. Meet new people and see new things.”
Later on, I found out that the study he was referring to doesn’t exist. As an aside: this is why I always say you should be wary of people who use the phrase “studies show…”. However, the sentiment still rings true to me. It’s ok if our beliefs and feelings aren’t based on facts or statistics. I know, shocker right?
Alright, I know I’ve kept you a little late, and I’m sorry but one last thing before you go. Put yourself in different perspectives, walk new paths, and hopefully one day you will finally achieve glorious failure.