Dan Whaley

May 15, 2010, Foellinger Auditorium

Thank you Curtis—administrators, esteemed professors, guests, parents… and thank you, Class of 2010.

Go ahead . . . make some noise!

Yes that’s right, I graduated from this great institution—and in Rhetoric no less. Actually I was a
townie—which means that my first time here in Foellinger Auditorium was probably in the ninth grade
when my friend Forest and I broke into the steam tunnels somewhere around Engineering and got lost
under this stage on our way to sneak in to the Journey concert over at the Assembly Hall.
So some of you may have been wondering why they asked me to come speak today. I mean who is this
guy whose collected works are 21% twitter, 55% blog and a couple dozen dog eared college-rule
notebooks packed away in a dusty storage unit somewhere. This guy who never even got a job in
English. (does such a thing even exist?) I’ve been wondering the same thing. Clearly they didn’t go back
and read any of my term papers.

Well, It probably has something to do with the fact that you have about a 2% chance of getting a job
where anyone actually cares that your degree is in English, much less Rhetoric, whatever the hell that is.
Join the club. The story has always been about the same as far as I can tell—though certainly the job
market today could be straight out of some kind of Dickensonian plot from hell. Why sugar coat it?

Continue reading Commencement Address (“Convocation”) to English Dept graduating class of 2010 (PDF)