Harvard University Commencement Address 2010
Jimmy Tingle
Graduate English Address, The Town, The Gown and asking for help, candidate for the degree of master and public administration: Jimmy Tingle
Thank you.
I am truly honour to be here this morning. My name is Jimmy Tingle and that is my real name and I was born right here in Cambridge Massachusetts. I am an unlikely choice to give a commencement address at Harvard because quite Frankly my friend, I am not a scholar, which will become increasingly more evidence as I proceed. I am a comedian by profession, and I started to perform in here in the early 1980s, actually I did strip performing right down here in Harvard Square. I've travelled all around the world performing standing up comedy. I don't want a break but two years ago I performed in Europe. And I just like to say: "Excellent Country."
You know what's nice for being here this morning, you actually get that joke.
Actually I am from a long line of intellectual, growing up here in Cambridge, we live quite near a college. My father owned and droved taxi cabs, here in Harvard Square, he will pick up Harvard professors, they would tell them thing, he would come home and tell us. For generations, Harvard has given scholarships to students from Cambridge and students from all over the world who could meet the academic requirements. Starting from the third grade, my dear sweet mother who was here this morning, would say to me: "Jimmy, if you study really hard, some day you could go to Harvard." By the sixth grade, she stopped telling me that. By the eight grade, our whole neighbourhood has their eye set on Harvard, not so much for scholarship but because it was an excellent place to steal bicycle.
I can remember running through this very yard, some forty-years ago, being chased by the Harvard Students, The Harvard Faculty and The Harvard Police Department. Other college campuses in the 1960s were bitterly divided between the students and the administration over civil rights and the war in Viet Nam. But here in Harvard, my friends and I was able to unite: Student, Faculty and Law Reinforcement. It was in this very yard that I had my first spiritual awakening, as I was running I started to pray: please God, please God, don't let me get caught, I will never do it again, my mother will kill me, she always want me to go to Harvard, this isn't what she meant. And then I really I wasn't a naughty boy, I was a Catholic, I should have been praying before I try to take the bicycle.
And I just want to say to the slump night gather here this morning on behalf of myself and all the other miss-guided you of Cambridge and Greater Bolton who have un-justified taken your bicycle ... We are sorry.
And to the graduate, many of you will go on to position of great power and influence in business and politics and government and the temptation to cut corners, to lie, to steal, to cheat will be formidable. My advice to you today is simply this: "Ask for guidance before you commit the crime". Trust me, it is much less embrasessing to ask for help privately than to beg for forgiveness at graduation. And I am so grateful, I am so gratefully that the pretty crime of my youth were not successful, for had my dis-honest behavior been rewared, I may not be with you here today. My life may have taken at different turns, and I may ended up on Wall Street.
[05:42]
I'd always wanted to this school but always felt that was too late getting courage from family, friends, and colleagues, and my mum, and my wife Catherine, I put in an application anyway. And like of you who was absolutely over-joy when that letter of acceptant came in the mail. I couldn't believe this, after all this year I have actually been accepted to Harvard ... they must really need a commencement speaker.
In this entire year people has asked me Jimmy why would an comedian want to go to Harvard, the same reason all of you want to go Harvard: "We got in". And all of us has faced challenges getting here today and still more academic challenges when class started. My biggest academic challenges was the quatitative mathematics requirements for graduation. Unfortunately I had to take statistic. Fortunately we have had a wonderful and dedicated and great teacher, Dr Hugh Helen who was kind enough to arrange extra help sessions tor students who was struggling with the materials. I went to every single extra help sessions she offers. And it was always very similar scenario, me and nighteen students from other countries. Countries often in conflict with one another, India and Pakistan, Turkey and Greece, Israelis and Palestinians, all of us helping one another, all of us learning from one another, all of us supporting one another across ethics and religious line. And I say this as an native Bostonian, all of us with English as a second language.
All of us are here to day because somebody helped us, whether it was family, or friends and colleges or teachers or administrators or scholarship has gone or higher power, someone or something helped us get here to day, and now it is our job to help others. And that is education, and that is human progress in it simplistic form and I believe very very strongly that is with the right amount of physical, spiritual and intellectual help, almost anything in this world is possible. All of the students in those extra helps sessions passed those courses, some of those students actually got an A in statistic, I personally got a B, which for me was a miracle, actually in the spirit of honesty, a B minus. which was a minor miracle, but If I could get the help that I needed in Statistic to get a B minus in Statistic in Quantitative Mathematics at Graduate School, at Harvard, there are hope for war peace.
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