HARVARD'S COMMENCEMENT

Graduation at Harvard was yesterday. I had totally forgotten about it, which, if you live in Cambridge Massachusetts, is difficult to do, especially every year during the first week of June. But I had a dentist appointment and had to leave work early. I took the bus to Harvard Square, where I then have to cut across the Cambridge Common and walk a short way up Massachusetts Avenue, to my dentist's office. 

It was a day of mixed clouds and sun. Pleasantly warm but not so warm as to make the wearing of a black cap and gown uncomfortable, or in some cases, the flowing red of those getting their Ph.D's. The Square was flooded with graduates, men and women of all shapes and sizes, surrounded by proud friends and family, many clutching bouquets of flowers along with their degrees. Cameras were clicking wildly as if to capture forever this moment of ultimate relief and triumph. Relief at having finally made it through Harvard and that brief moment of triumph, before one has to confront the aftermath of paying off student loans and making your way in the "real" world.

As I worked my way through the crowds, that were now filtering out of the Square and into the restaurants and cafes that proliferate on the surrounding streets, I was overcome by a wave of nostalgia as I flashed back to a day in late May, more than 35 years ago, when I was surrounded by my family, my grandparents were still alive and healthy then, perhaps the last time we were all together, in the same place. If I walked from where I was now standing, down to the Charles River, and looked across to the Boston side, I could almost see the spot were we all stood, my family, surrounding me in my brief moment of relief and triumph, the first person in my family to graduate from college, the first person to get a Masters Degree. It wasn't Harvard, but for my family Boston University was impressive enough. I still have the photos my dad took that day. It had started to rain lightly during the ceremony so I had irreverently pulled the hood (all folks who get masters degrees wear gowns with flowing hoods down the back) over my head.

There were certain parallels that resonate between then and now. Our country was being torn apart by disagreements over an ill-conceived war,  civil rights protests had been growing more violent, and we women were empowered with a new sense that the future was finally in our hands, as we won control over our bodies as well as proving that our minds were for more than cooking and raising kids. In spite of all that turmoil, I felt energized by my youth with the promise that I could do anything, the world stretched endlessly before me.

As I walked down Massachusetts Avenue, I noticed there were as many young faces set in an expression of grim determination, as though they are already well aware of the struggles that lie ahead. That chaos and energy and niavaté that seem infused through my generation, that feeling that we were actually able to change the world, a world that was sorely in need of change, seemed somehow lacking, in the polite, milling around, on the sun dappled campus of Harvard University yesterday afternoon.

I read in today's paper, that two famous Bill's; Clinton, who actually did graduate, and Harvard's most famous drop out, Bill Gates, were both invited guests and addressed the students. Bill Gates gave the commencement address, where he also mentioned the fact that he was the "leader of the antisocial group" at Harvard, when he dropped out in 1975 to  create MICROSOFT. Now as one of the worlds richest and most influential businessmen, he has also become one of the worlds most generous philanthropists. He encouraged the students to "be activists" to face the worlds biggest problems and try to solve them. It sounded like he was trying to revive the spirit that both he and I remembered.

I am equally hopeful and wary. As I see women's rights, and civil rights in this country sliding backward with little protest from those who could do the most to save them I wonder what lies ahead. How aware and how dedicated and how inspired will this crop of intelligent graduates be? The world does face huge problems. AIDS, war, famine, obesity, climate change and all the rest of the environmental degradation we humans have wrought. Are the seeds for the solutions planted in the brains of those  relieved and triumphant graduates I passed on my way to the dentist yesterday? We can only hope.