Convocation 2015 |
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September 1, 2015, Volume 62, No. 03 |
On Tuesday, August 25, the University of Pennsylvania’s Class of 2019 Convocation was held under clear skies on Blanche Levy Park in front of College Hall. Below, President Amy Gutmann accepted the baton— symbolizing the Class of 2019—from Dean of Admissions Eric Furda. Click here for President Gutmann’s remarks to the 2550 incoming students.
Below right, Provost Vincent Price applauds the incoming class; click here for the Provost’s remarks. University Chaplain Charles Howard gave the Invocation. The evening also included music by the Penn Band, the Shabbatones and the Penn Glee Club.
Welcome to Endless Discovery, Amy Gutmann
Members of the Class of 2019 and transfers: Welcome!
Tomorrow, you face your first day of classes. You’re ready, you’re excited and you’re committed to achieving great things. Tonight’s a perfect chance to look and see just how far you’ve traveled as a class to be here—from across the country and around the world:
From California to Illinois to Massachusetts;
From Texas to Florida to New York;
And, of course, from the great state of Pennsylvania.
You come from Canada and from Korea, from India and the United Kingdom and from 74 countries far and near.
You come from many cultures and many different walks of life.
No matter where you come from, I want you to know this: We are thrilled you’re here! Today you join centuries of Penn explorers, engineers and entrepreneurs, playwrights, professors, physicists and physicians, nation builders, nurses, novelists and Nobel Laureates. You join the likes of Benjamin Franklin, W.E.B. DuBois and six signers of the U.S. Constitution.
And you share something very special with all these Penn people—past, present and future. You share in the pursuit of discovery.
The pursuit of discovery is the very essence of the Penn experience. It will require you to recognize how much you don’t know but are perfectly positioned to discover—about your major, about your world, about yourself. You are on a journey of discovery to grasp unexpected insights and bring new understanding to light.
Your journey of discovery officially begins this evening as we formally welcome you to your new home with this tradition called Convocation. Convocation—from the Latin convocare. The root, vocare, means “to call.” Together with the prefix, con, the Latin term for this event very roughly translates “to get up the nerve to call that person I don’t know who is sitting near me.”
So that is precisely what you are about to do! But not with your cell phones.
I want everyone to stand up. Yes, go ahead and stretch your legs.
Good. Discovery begins now. I want you to look around and greet somebody near you whom you haven’t met before—someone you didn’t come here with, someone you’ve possibly never seen before.
Learn their name, shake hands, ask where they’re from and of course, exchange a big smile. Come on now, no exceptions—even me!
OK, great! Please have a seat. I see a lot of smiles, and that’s good.
I will hazard a guess that no one here tonight introduced themselves by the name of Copernicus. Yet each of you just engaged in a small act of discovery. And it went well, notwithstanding the fact that, if you’re like most of us, you first had to overcome something.
You had to overcome the discomfort of leaving behind the familiar and stepping out into undiscovered territory. As the map makers of old labeled it, you paid a visit to terra incognita—the unknown land. And that can be unnerving.
It’s frightening to put ourselves in a position where we don’t know what happens next. When we consider out-of-the-blue introducing ourselves to a total stranger, our minds so often play tricks on us. We construct imagined scenarios of being rejected or scorned or even humiliated.
In exactly the same way, we human beings tend to create imagined barriers when introduced to strange new ideas. New ideas upend the status quo and force us out of our comfort zones. As a result, new ideas are too often met with dismissal and disdain.
The single greatest impediment to discovery is our natural inclination to believe we know all there is to know about something. So often, the obstacle to discovery is the illusion of knowledge.
A case in point: If you saw the movie Jurassic World this summer, as I did, then you know what the great predatory dinosaur Tyrannosaurus Rex looks like. You know they were smooth-skinned reptiles with big teeth and sharp claws, powerful legs and a swinging tail. They are creatures of nightmares. You know that when they look at you, all they see is lunch.
But in the past couple of decades new ideas have emerged. There’s a theory that these dinosaurs were the ancestors of modern birds and were in some important ways bird-like.
With the work of leading paleontologists like Penn’s own Professor Peter Dodson, evidence has grown, and today, this theory is widely credited.
Recently, we also have made some incredible fossil discoveries, especially in the northwestern region of China. There is now a growing body of scientific evidence that this family of dinosaurs were quite likely covered in feathers.
So here is an experiment in getting past what we think we already know: I want you to imagine T. Rex covered in feathers, bright red and blue plumage. It’s now a P. Rex: Pennosaurus Rex.
Not quite so frightening, is it? You are seeing it in a different way. You are seeing something new. Congratulations—you are on the road to discovery.
When we make that leap and add the feathers it frees us to imagine the T. Rex in new ways. We can break away from what we thought we knew. We can leave behind the Hollywood images of the great gray-green lizard roaring through the Jurassic jungle. We’re ready to make true discoveries.
We become open to the very real possibility that there is more—more to learn, more to know, more to discover. We open ourselves to a true education of the highest order—the Penn order.
There will never be a better time in your lives or a better place than Penn to explore new ideas in this unsettling yet uplifting way.
Here, you will be surrounded by people who have dedicated their lives to the possibility of more—to the challenging and pathbreaking work of discovery.
You will ask hard questions and shake off what you think you know to discover truths about yourself and the wider world that you could not have imagined before convocating at Penn.
Your Penn experience will be challenging. It will be exhilarating. In turn, you will be inspired, confused, uneasy and delighted. That is exactly why you are here. You are on the road to terra incognita. Down this path lies discovery.
But you don’t tread this path alone.
Just as every one of us must fight the belief that we know everything, so too do we have to ask for help when we need it.
Here at Penn, you are surrounded by a community of friends, mentors, professionals and excellent services, all committed to your success and wellbeing. Challenges are inevitable. Setbacks will occur.
But you’re not alone in navigating them. We are right here with you and ready to help. Never ever hesitate to ask for help. That’s what we are here for. Asking for help—far from signaling weakness or failure—is a most positive sign that you appreciate something very profound: no one, and that includes you and me, ever makes it through college, let alone life, on our own. The sooner we learn that lesson, the stronger and more successful we are likely to be.
And so, from the small discoveries you’ve made today, to the amazing revelations you’ll enjoy during your years at Penn, you are in for a time that will transform your life.
Welcome to endless discovery.
This is your time. Penn is your place.
Let us begin.
Embrace the Unfamiliar, Vincent Price
As Provost—the University’s Chief Academic Officer—I have the great pleasure of welcoming you to Penn.
Though we probably haven’t met, my face may be familiar. I recorded a video for New Student Orientation that you may have seen. Maybe you watched on your phone…which is fine. I’m much taller in person.
This evening, what I’d like to talk about is not the familiar, but the unfamiliar; not what you know, but what you don’t know; not what’s comfortable, but what makes you uncomfortable.
Unfamiliar. Unknowing. Uncomfortable. Intimidating words, perhaps. They shouldn’t be. They simply describe what it’s like to be a stranger. Not The Stranger of Albert Camus. Just a person in a new place. A person like you, today.
My hope for each of you—and my message to all of you this evening—is that over the next four years at Penn, you embrace the unfamiliar.
What does that mean? It means enjoying being the person who doesn’t have all the answers. (That may be a little difficult for some of you.) It means joining a group where everyone may not look like you, or talk like you or sing as poorly as you think you do. It means taking a class you thought was Japanese but is actually Organic Chemistry. It means reaching out, beyond your comfort zone.
Consider what a thoughtful stranger does upon arriving in a new place. You look up, and out, seeing things the rest of us don’t. You take in others’ opinions before forming your own. You respect others to earn their respect. You value your freedom and independence, yet seek out new connections. After all, who wants to be a stranger forever?
At Penn, you will find much to love. You will also encounter ideas you might not. They may seem outlandish, offensive or just plain wrong. You may be confused at some point. Embrace that confusion. A thoughtful stranger welcomes uncomfortable situations and disagreeable opinions. It is through this very discomfort that we learn the true value of intellectual freedom: Not just the ability but the absolute necessity to challenge our assumptions of what we know.
Penn as an institution is centuries old. But this community is not hemmed in by time or place—by this street, or that degree program. It is an ever-evolving mixture of knowledge, people, experiences and worldviews. At some point, everyone arrives as a stranger here.
What makes friends of strangers—what makes this campus a community—is our embrace of those differences. We celebrate them. We want all voices to be heard. This is a critical aspect of the Penn education.
Now, I’d venture to guess that most of you think you’re here to receive that education. Is that right? Can I have a show of hands? It’s true. That is part of why you’re here. But there is another part. You’re here not just to get something, but also to give—to contribute to our community. Each of you is a distinct piece of the Penn puzzle: your knowledge and ideas, your performances, your groups and games…even your disagreements and demonstrations. You make Penn what it is…and what it will be.
This is a new role for you. Embrace it. Make your voice heard, but with a caution. Do not drown out the voices of others. They, too, are part of this community—your community.
In that orientation video, I noted that, each year at Convocation, I offer one piece of advice that is always the same. It has nothing to do with classes or majors or roommates. It is simply this: Make time to recharge…and I don’t mean your cell phone. Life in college is wonderfully liberating. With that freedom comes a tendency to try to do everything, all the time. You can do a lot, but you can’t do it all. You will function best here—in all respects—if you’re energized but not exhausted. Get some sleep.
Work at bringing balance to your life. Test your balance, and be ready to feel a little wobbly. But you are not performing without a net. I’ve encouraged you to embrace the unfamiliar; but too much confusion can be bewildering…even a little scary. If at any time you feel estranged—disconnected, depressed, or, to paraphrase Camus, like a person with no place in this community—if you feel you are really losing your balance, please reach out to a professor, a staff member, the Chaplain’s Office or a friend. We all need help from time to time. We are truly all in this together.
One closing thought. A moment ago, I referred to each of you as pieces of the Penn puzzle. Like any good puzzle, this Penn puzzle will begin to take shape over time. Through trial and no little error, scattered pieces will start to fit. Connections will form; confusion will fade. And when the Penn picture comes into focus, you will sit back and settle in. You won’t feel like a stranger. You’ll feel like family. The unfamiliarity will fade, and you’ll begin to lose that sense of wonder.
Please, try very hard not to lose it all. Hold on to the stranger in you. Remain curious, questioning, ready to be confounded. Because one of life’s great joys is seeing things again…for the very first time.
Members of the Class of 2019—Welcome to Penn. |