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Taylor Grandinetti

Wednesday, April 12, 2017 // The Statement 

Golden State Worrior: Closure.Mov

A

t work on Thursday, my boss, who is 
a kind 40-something woman named 
Melisa, asked me if it had “set in” that I 
was leaving the University of Michigan.

No, I answered, it really hasn’t.

Which is true; it really hasn’t. Not wanting 

to 
jinx 
my 
temporary 
lack 
of 
existential 

dread about leaving college, I changed the 
subject, or thought I did, to the topic of 
YoutubeCommencementSpeechSchlisselGate.

I told her we weren’t having a commencement 

speaker and that I was upset about it. Which is also 
true; I was, and am, upset.

This whole speech situation really did bum me out. 

It bummed me out more than I wanted it to bum me 
out and, frankly, more than it is appropriate. There 
are objectively much worse things in the world, and 
in Michigan, and in Ann Arbor, and in decisions that 
the University of Michigan makes or doesn’t make 
that should bum me out exponentially more. In fact, 
I think most people who are bummed out about the 
lack of a graduation speaker would also throw in the 
caveat that it’s not that bad, it’s just …

To me, it kinda feels like one of those things that 

we’re gonna look back on and think, “They did 
what?” Like when OKC traded Harden, or when 
Damian Marley and Nas did an album together, or 
“Limitless” the TV show sans Bradley Cooper, etc. It 
all sort of made sense at the time, but everyone had a 
feeling it wasn’t going to work out.

Of course the University isn’t trying to sabotage 

our graduation. Marky Mark Schlissel doesn’t have 
some vendetta against us. It was a decision as much 
as hiring Brady Hoke, raising the price of student 
tickets or closing the Taco Bell in the Michigan 
League.

I did not say all of this to Melisa. We got to 

talking about her week and then came one of my 
favorite parts of my Thursday. The part where 
I get to knowingly nod in agreement when she 
says things like, “Man, it’s been a long week” or 
“Friday can’t come sooner.” I like this part of 
my week so much because, for that moment, we 
could both take solace in the fact that the real world 
sucks and I can quell a nagging belief that I have 
never dealt with an iota of real adversity or true 
monotony in my life.

I think of David Foster Wallace’s claim that soon-

to-be college graduates do not understand what the 
phrase “day in, day out” really means. I certainly 

do not.

I think it would be fair for someone reading this 

to scratch their head at my thought process. They 
might think, and be correct in thinking, that I am 
effectively just visiting real life’s monotony eight 

hours a week, and thus, it isn’t really monotony at 
all. The short and long of their critique might be, “You 
don’t know shit about real life because you work part 
time at a sorority, stop pretending like you do.”

Those critics, strangely of which I am one, are 

right, and that’s part of the reason I’m so bummed 
about having a video replace a human for my 

graduation.

I’ve spent college searching for some morsel of 

truth that will let me cut through the monotony of 
what I perceive real life to be. One way or another, I 
think my peers do the same. We imagine a moment 

where it all makes sense, where we are ready. But 
the other section of our brain quickly reminds us 
that there is no such morsel to find and we block 
it out, like I do every Thursday when Melisa and 
I complain about our tough weeks.

And that is exactly the problem. The 

graduation speech is our last hope. When I close 
my eyes and imagine myself on the 20-yard line 
of the Big House listening to Hillary Clinton — 
or John Stewart or Barack Obama or whomever 
— I’m imagining the speech already in memory 
form, as if it already happened, and already 
imparted some wisdom. I imagine remembering 
the moment where I look at my peers at this 
great University, the Leaders and the Best, the 
champions of the West, and I make eye contact 
with one of my roommates and give him a 
knowing nod: We got this.

Part of me knows this wouldn’t have happened 

even if they brought Bo Schembechler back from 
the grave, but when I saw that our speaker was a 
video, my fantasy was destroyed.

There is literally nothing profound about 

a video, and it’s mainly a numbers game. 
Eight minutes on Instagram, and I can watch 
150 different videos. My fantasy graduation 
inspiration is a singular moment. After Obama 
says, “Thank you,” and I say, “We got this,” 
I’ll get a little sad, knowing how fleeting the 
moment is. Once this video is made available 
on YouTube, I’ll honestly get a better look at it 
when I’m craning my neck up at the big screen. 
It might even be better the second time. Cold 
No Thai is better the second time. Graduations 
shouldn’t be.

Still, the problem is not with Mark, or with 

the video, or with the lack of a keynote, the 
problem is with ourselves. The reason, maybe, 

this speech is causing more outrage than things we 
all agree are more pressing is because it taps into a 
special kind of existential dread. A fear that life is 
a set of small compromises you have to make with 
your own understanding of what a happy life looks 
like, one which is getting sent off by a YouTube 
video.

BY HARRISON KRINSKY, DAILY ARTS WRITER

statement

THE MICHIGAN DAILY | APRIL 12, 2017

PHOTO COURTSEY OF HARRISON KRINSKY

