2011 Baccalaureate and Valedictory Celebrations Speech

As Dean of the Steinhardt School, I am proud to offer formal and official congratulations to you, our graduating class of 2011.

I also congratulate and honor you -- parents, family members and friends and faculty members -- who have supported our graduates. Your belief in our graduates and your hopes sustained them throughout the days of their education at New York University.

We salute you. 

And you, dear graduates, class of 2011, your commencement marks the end of a significant time in your lives.

When you step outside of the Beacon Theatre this afternoon and leave the ceremony at Yankees Stadium Wednesday, after receiving a few words of wisdom from President Bill Clinton, you will be graduated for the first time from New York University.

From now on, you, in a new and "graduated" way, will be responsible from for choosing how you will spend your time.

And it is time, I ask you to think about as you begin your "graduated" lives today.

You have spent the last four years preparing for your future.

No doubt, the years have flown by.

Remember when I warned you about what we call "the New York minute?" Remember how long it lasts?

Except, of course, for those times when there were troubles: those days of worrying about the term paper…not the actually the time writing, perhaps, but the time worrying about writing it.

And there were the "all nighters" you pulled, trying to raise the grade after a bad midterm exam.

Or the time you stayed up with a friend who needed a friend, an ear, a shoulder, someone to help heal a hurt.

What choices did you make about how you spent your time? How long did you spend worrying about a paper or accompany a friend through a hard time.

Time might have a different feeling for parents. Perhaps you know what they say about parenthood; the days are long, but the years are short.

Of course, you can find out exactly what time it is . There is an official time for each second. www.time.gov is the US time agency.

The agency coordinates two clock: one at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the other at U. S. Naval Observatory.  The time between those two clocks does not differ by more than 0.000 0001 of a second. Readings from those two clocks create the Coordinated Universal Time.

But the home page for the Coordinated Universal Time carries a disclaimer: "This web site is intended as a time-of-day service only. It should not be used to measure frequency or time interval."

The official US source for telling time does not tell you how long time lasts.

Even a child knows that how long time is not constant.

One day when I was visiting my sister, her six-year old son was sitting quietly in a chair for what seemed a very long time. Ben was the nephew who never sat still…so I asked him what he was doing and he said, "thinking about time."

What do you think about time? I asked, and he said. "Well, it’s not the same. Wednesday was my birthday and that day was shorter than today."

It turns out six-year old Ben was right.

His theory was borne out by in a recent article in the New Yorker about Professor David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine, who studies how the brain processes time.

Dr. Eagleman fell off his roof when he was eight years old, and he remembers it in slow motion, every detail vivid, the way Alice in Wonderland fell through the rabbit hole.

He recalls that it was like a movie scene in slow motion, with the minutes stretching on and on and on…

Dr. Eagleman’s research suggests to him that the brain is an amazing time piece: It can assess how long a minute or an hour lasts. It can wake us up at the same time each morning (or not). It can distinguish between sounds that are only milliseconds apart from each other.

It can compute instantly how far away the wild animal you heard growling is (a useful skill in the jungle) – probably adapted here to compute how far away is the cab making a right turn as you cross in front of it.

Dr. Eagleman thinks that what makes time slow down for us is our degree of attention. Our brains may be programmed to slow down time so as to capture every element of the experience.

This hyper-vigilance is a survival strategy, as we fall from a roof we can count the blades of grass below.

That is why the NY minute is a finger snap long, and the moment of being tongue tied, when asked a question on an oral exam, lasts an eternity.

Graduates, as you look back over your four years, what moments in time stand out for you?

First, what has flashed by, unnoticed:

The split second it takes to HIT the SEND Button?

To click on the BUY THIS NOW, link?

The time it takes to Twitter that…The Dean’s Graduation Speech is beginning to wind down…?

What has been stretched out time, time elongated, and remembered in minute detail?

he time it has taken to renovate the park: that was long time wasn’t it? And now you are leaving NYU and it will finally open later this month. Not fair!

Your first day student teaching or interning in a clinic a school, an agency, a gallery?

Your first audition? Your first date with a person you now hope to spend your life with?

Was it a deep conversation with an admired teacher, a group discussion that challenged and made you rethink a cherished belief?

Did time stop for you in the Lowe Theater or in the Speech clinic? On Museum Mile or Broadway, or University Neighborhood High School?

Or was it outside the familiar boundaries of your home country? Was it the experience of studying in a new country?

Which moments caught your brains hyper vigilance and slowed down time for you?

Dear Graduates, as you leave us today I ask you also to think: to what will you commit your precious time?

Will you continue to learn languages, study cultures you don’t yet know, wrestle with new ideas?

Will you use your time to create a new song, a visual image to help us understand and celebrate our world?

Will you spend time honing your skills to heal the wounded and open access to the world of knowledge for children and youth?

Whatever your field of study, will you take time to save public education?

And remember to spend some time simply thinking for if we taught you well here at Steinhardt, you know that thinking is the root from which the tree of knowledge and all its great branches spring.

Graduates of 2011, today you transition from your time here as a student.

You are now and for all time, an Alumnus of NYU Steinhardt.

What you do with your time – all your successes -- will be a source of pride for us.

Return often to your alma mater, spend time with us and to tell us how you have used your time to make this world better.