Volume 5, Issue 33: College

"Maybe being a rebel in my family would have been selling patio furniture on route 22."

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A couple of weeks ago, I did something I never imagined I would do, had never even considered the possibility of doing: I gave a commencement speech.

It wasn’t that big of a deal. I didn’t wear a robe or anything, and my primary attribute as a speaker was less my blinding insight and more my immediate availability. The person scheduled to give the commencement address had to cancel at the last minute, and the recipients of an MFA in narrative nonfiction and screenwriting from the Grady College of Mass Communication and Journalism at the University of Georgia had earned the right to have somebody speak to them. Enter: Me. I live nearby, I had nothing going on that Saturday, I can write a speech really fast if I have to and I am, on a good day, at least a slight improvement over an empty podium. They asked. I said yes. I am not difficult to persuade.

Thus, there I was:

And there were they:

As you can see, I wasn’t filling Sanford Stadium here. But these students worked hard for their degrees, and their families were all there to celebrate their achievement: It was an assignment to take seriously. The professor who asked me to speak told me that the students, more than anything else, were looking for something inspirational, for some encouragement that pursuing this degree was a valuable pursuit, for some hope that they were about to head out into to the world and get to do some cool stuff. Let them, and their families all there to honor them, feel good about themselves. I was delighted to give this a shot. It came easily: After all, every single one of them was about to earn a higher degree than I have ever approached. (I topped out at my bachelor’s degree in print journalism and, if I’m being honest, I just barely hung on for that one.) They had just completed something I had never completed myself. I didn’t have to pretend to be impressed.

So, midway through the ceremony, the professor introduced me, and I walked across the stage to the podium. I took my speech out of my pocket, put it in front of me, cleared my throat … and then didn’t read a single word of it.

I don’t know why I didn’t. I didn’t think it was that bad of a bad speech. I think they might have even liked it.

But that morning, I’d seen clips of the students, posted by the professor, doing a public reading of their final projects at a bar/coffee shop the night before, as a way to celebrate their achievements and say goodbye to their fellow students with whom they had taken this journey. I watched every single one of those videos, each student displaying to the world, with various levels of nervousness and pride, the results of all their hard work. Some of their pieces were moving; some were funny; some were straightforward and dry; some were delivered with the stage presence of a seasoned veteran. But every single one of them were theirs. Before they began their project, they were staring at a blank page, an empty Word document like everybody else, and then went about filling it. They built something. They made it. There was something in the world that did not exist, and would have never existed, had these students not made it exist. There was nothing … and then there was something. They did that. And now they were giving it to you. It was creation in its purest form, and I was riveted. This was why we do this, why any of us do anything: To make the world a little bit different than it was before. And then do it again.

I looked at the students out there in the audience, those same students, and I completely forgot about my speech. So, for about 15 minutes, that’s what I talked about, off the cuff: Creating, expression, the excitement of doing committing yourself to do something that people always say they want to do, or wishes they could have done, but never do. Telling a story. Changing someone’s mind. Making them think or, even better, making them feel something they weren’t expecting to feel. I quoted their stories back to them, I praised the short films they made, I tried to make it clear, to them and the families there for them, that what they were doing was special and that they were special for doing it. And they should never forget it.

I think that’s what I said anyway. That’s what I vaguely remember saying. I basically just monologued how great they were for 15 minutes, looked down at my speech, still folded into quarters like it was when I took it out of my pocket, and then thanked them and sat down.

I have no idea if it was a good speech or not; I’m not entirely even sure of what I said! Some people sought me out afterwards to say they liked it, but they may have just been being polite; it would have been strange, at their loved one’s graduation, to accost the speaker and tell him how terrible he was. I didn’t see any of the professors afterward, and I haven’t heard a word from any of them since, so it’s possible I did the exact opposite of what they had wanted and they were all deeply embarrassed. I really don’t know. But I was moved by those students, and their families, so I just decided, in the moment, that the only important thing was that I told them so. I hope it meant something to them. I dunno. Maybe someday one of them will look me up and tell me whatever it is I said.

Anyway, it’s the middle of August, the doggiest of summer dog days, and my son Wynn has a soccer tournament at 8 a.m. this morning, so, if you’ll permit me, as we all fortify ourselves for what promises to be a transformational, historic, unquestionably exhausting fall, if, in this week’s newsletter, I simply publish the speech I meant to make. There’s nothing worse than writing something that no one ever sees or hears. I might as well put it here.

So here it is. Should I have just given it in the first place? Probably. But reading it now, I think it would have gone over fine. I apologize to the students, and the professors, for not delivering it the way I was supposed to in the first place. It’s your own fault: All of you were so impressive that all I could think to do was just tell you so.

Anyway, here’s my first, and probably only, commencement speech, the one I never, in fact, ended up giving.

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You’ve got to make stuff.

My name is Will Leitch. I have been a journalist, author and even occasional broadcaster – for two years I even hosted my own talk show, with a viewership that, at least half of the time, exceeded the number of people in this room – for nearly 30 years now. I’ve written six books, with a seventh coming out next May, I’m a contributing editor at New York Magazine, I write regularly for The New York Times and The Washington Post, I founded the late sports culture Website Deadspin and if you happen to watching cable television at the wrong time, you can catch me yammering on about politics, sports, movies or whatever CNN or MSNBC needed to fill a few minutes before returning to their assigned roles as enemies of the state. I have had the opportunity to interview presidents, senators, governors, artists, athletes, rock stars, business executives and even a couple of dogs, as part of my four-part investigative series “Where Did That Squirrel Go?” I mention all this not just to persuade you that your speaker has at least some basic credentials that at least slightly justify you having to sit and listen to him for 15 minutes or so – well, I don’t mention all that just for that reason—but instead to get across one basic point: I do a lot of stuff. I make a lot of stuff.

My journalism hero and mentor growing up was the late film critic Roger Ebert, who once said, “the muse visits during the act of creation, not before,” which is a fancier, more polite way of saying, “Sit down and get to work.” Nearly thirty years in, there is still nothing more exciting to me than a blank page, an empty Word document, a set right before we go live, a void that’s waiting for me to fill it. It is as thrilling to me today as it was when I was 15 years old, writing pretend news stories in a notebook and calling it “The Will Street Journal.” Ebert really was my hero growing up, and I needed him. I grew up in a small rural Illinois town, where my father, when I told him I wanted to be a writer, once informed me that “you come from a long line of non-readers.” What I loved most about Ebert is that, like my electrician father and my emergency room nurse mother, he loved to work.

My other favorite Ebert quote is when someone asked him what he learned in college, working for the Daily Illini, the same student newspaper I wrote for. He said, “At the Daily Illini, I learned my three favorite words in the English language: ‘By Roger Ebert.’” That may sound egotistical, but it’s anything but. It shows a joy in invention and expression, the eagerness, the need, to tell a story and let your name stand beside it. I, too, remain addicted to the byline. They are a series of signatures that, in the end, will tell the story of my life.

And that’s why you are here, why you have done all of this. To make stuff. To create. To tell stories. To put something into the world that wasn’t there before. Do you realize how much you’ve already done, just by getting to this point? Anytime someone goes into the world of writing, or journalism, or media, inevitably, someone else in their life, probably someone who’s really into crypto or NFTs or AI and can’t wait to show you and Elon their Tweets about it, will say, “oh, wow, that’s scary, aren’t you worried about making money? Will you be able to find a job?” Putting aside the depressingly empty utilitarianism of this specific vintage of human being, it is worth noting three things:

1. This is exactly what these type of people were saying to me when I went entered journalism school 30 years ago, and, as my professors informed me back then, was exactly what these type of people were saying to them 30 years earlier.

2. The only way to make a living as a writer or journalist or media person or creator is to care so desperately about doing it that you can’t imagine doing anything else, which is, of course, the reason we’re all sitting in this room in the first place.

3. Everybody else, deep down, wishes they could do this.

This last one is the key point. When I tell people I’m a writer, they never say, “Oh, wow, how do you make a living?” They used to say that, when I was younger. But now that we’re older, they say something else, something both wonderful and a little sad: They tell me how they always wished they could have done the same thing. “I wanted to be a writer, but my parents made me go to business school.” Or, “Yeah, I was worried about money so I went to law school.” They sometimes say this with a certain faint look in their eye; you can see them staring off into space, imagining what their life might have been like, had they followed their passion, whatever that passion might have been. They don’t look on creators with pity; they look at them with envy.. They see journalism and writing and media not as a lost cause, but something instead that they have lost—something they wish they had the courage, or the motivation, to have made their higher calling. They wish they could have done something that, by sitting here, you already have.

Because the thing about doing this, about being a part of this life that you have chosen, is that it is fun. I often hear from undergraduates who are majoring in journalism or the arts who ask me how to help justify their major to their parents. I tell them, as a parent myself, that I absolutely understand being worried about the future career prospects of my children. But much more than I worry about that—I worry about them being happy. I want them to be interesting. I want them to feel alive. Sure, they could (maybe) make more money sitting in a corporate office and sorting through excel spreadsheets all day under deadening fluorescent lighting, but what’s the fun in that? That’s boring! Your parents want you to be happy, and they want a cool story to tell. There’s a million corporate lawyers. How cool is it that Becky’s kid is covering the Olympics in France right now? Or on the campaign trail? Or on a movie set? Or on book tour?

This creative life, it can be a struggle, and a grind. It is unquestionably an uncertain one. But, you know, life’s a struggle and a grind and full of uncertainty for corporate lawyers too. At least you’re doing what you love. That’s why you’re here. That’s why you made it through this program. And that’s what’s going to get you through whatever you do next. That you are here, that you have done this, is magnificent. It means you already have everything you need. I cannot emphasize this enough: YOU ARE HERE. I don’t know if you appreciate how cool that is.

And now you get to make stuff. There is so much stuff on the planet that, right now, does not exist, but it will, because you’re going to make it. How exciting is that? And then you’ll make more, and more, and more, and your life will be different because of it, and so will someone else’s, and the whole world is about to change, in ways big and small, but undeniably forever, because of you. There was a blank page! And you filled it! And it’s got your name right there next to it. I’m tell you, Ebert was right: They’re the three greatest words in the English language.

So congratulations, on this MFA, on making it through, on all the hard work you have put in, on all the hard work there is still yet to come. I don’t know what you’re going to do next, and neither do you. But you’ve already won. People always say they want to do what you’re doing, but they don’t. You, though? You did. You’re here. And I can’t wait to see what you do next.

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I dunno. Maybe it would have gone better if I’d gotten to wear a robe.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. These Olympics Were Fantastic, New York. They really were!

2. The Tricky Strategy Behind the Sports Betting Boom, Fast Company. I did a big piece on all my gambling stuff again.

3. Cate Blanchett Movies, Ranked, Vulture. Updated with the truly terrible Borderlands.

4. This Week’s Five Fascinations, MLB.com. On the Phillies, the sorting of the NL Wild Chase, Kerry Carpenter, today’s Maddux-Bonds matchup and yet another year without a repeat champion.

5. Which Teams Have the Toughest Schedules Down the Stretch?, MLB.com. Unfortunately, you will find the Cardinals on this list.

6. This Week’s Power Rankings, MLB.com. Back on our weekly schedule until the end of the year.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we discussed “The Instigators,” “Borderlands” and “Cuckoo.”

Seeing Red, Bernie and I wonder if John Mozeliak will be back next year.

Waitin’ Since Last Saturday, we are back to our weekly shows, with a big college football preview and then an SEC preview.

Morning Lineup, I did Thursday’s show.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“Is There Any Real Sign of Anti-Progressive Backlash?” David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times. My friend DWW asks an important question: Did people really turn against left-wing ideas, or did it just feel that way?

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers! (I’m sorry I’m so behind on these. But I am starting to catch up!)

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Sunshine Rock.” What better way to ride those Tim Walz middle-aged Midwestern vibes than a little Bob Mould?

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

Also, now there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.

Got this official confirmation this week.

It will be good to have something else to obsess about in early November. That is, if I don’t die.

Have a great weekend, all. It’s almost fall, I swear.

Best,
Will