Thank you President Adams, distinguished members of the faculty, deans and Regents, parents and families. I was honored, surprised, and frankly, a little intimated to be asked to speak here today to the graduating class of 2006. There’s no tougher audience than a college graduating class, and as we all know there’s no tougher place to play than between The Hedges.

But before I go any further, let me just say congratulation graduates. And in offering my congratulations, I would like to single out one special group of you – those of you who are not graduating cum laude or magna cum laude or summa cum laude. I would like to give a special personal salute to those of you who are graduating, as my mother said of me back in 1970, “Thank the Lawdy!”

And before I begin, I’d also like to single out one special member of this class, a Mr. Reid Erwin, who was quoted in today’s Atlanta Constitution. When asked what his expectations of my remarks were today, he said he just wanted them to be over with. Reid, I feel your pain, but you’ve got about another 12 minutes to go, buddy!

There’s a magical quality about being asked to deliver a commencement address, especially at your own university. Somehow I found myself quickly transported back to my college work habits. After a lifetime of meeting deadlines, instead of fulfilling this assignment and moving onto the next, what did I do? I did what I would do if I had been writing a term paper – I put it off! I called every friend I had in the world and chatted meaninglessly on the phone to them. I finished unread books. I cruised the internet. I spent long overdue quality time with my Labrador retriever. I searched for inspiration. After one particularly hellish night of sleeplessness, I came to my first conclusion – you never really get out of college. At the age of 58, I still have those dreams. The ones where I’m arriving for my biology final, and I realize I’ve not only forgotten to study for it -- I forgot to buy the book. What’s more – I’m naked!

But today is your day. The day when it finally sinks in that you’ve made it. You’re here! After at least sixteen years of school – at least. That includes countless all-nighters, crafty course registration strategies, and desperate bargaining sessions with ruthless faculty members – you are now a bona fide college graduate. You’ve passed go. You’ve collected your $200. And today you move the tassel from the right to the left. And no one can ever take that away from you!

There’s a reason they call these speeches commencement addresses, you know. You’re about to commence your so-called ‘real life.’ And life can be like a monopoly game. You start out with Baltic Avenue, and no liabilities, and the longer you play, it gets more and more complicated.

There is, however, one way in which life is not like monopoly and that’s that in life important things really can change and you can participate in making them change for better or worse. The reason they asked someone like me to speak to you today is fairly basic. First, I am not one of your parents, so they think you might conceivably listen to me for a moment. Secondly, as someone who graduated here 36 years ago and has been traversing the real world ever since, I have theoretically learned something along the way that I can impart to you. Some pearl of wisdom that might make it easier for you. Provide you some shortcuts to success. Well, if success is all you seek, I can tell you Woody Allen shared the secret of it years ago when he said “90 percent of life is showing up.” And hey, you showed up today, so you’re off to a good start!

I don’t want to disappoint you or leave you feeling you somehow didn’t get your money’s worth but I am not so sure about this theory of older more experienced and therefore wiser. After all, you’re the ones with the freshly minted diplomas. You’re the ones with the desires to conquer the world, discover new universes, make you marks, redefine the paradigm. I’m the one with the scar tissue, the regrets, the missed opportunities, the tasks still left undone.

We are facing each other here today, a little bit like those cartoons you see every New Year’s Day in which the battered Old Year hands the globe over to the Baby New Year in diapers and wishes her luck.

Part of what I want to share with you today is a little story from my college days and it takes place right here in Stanford Stadium. You may find this hard to believe. You may find it hard to believe that when I graduated from UGA in 1970, our school did not have a single African American football player or a single African American basketball player on any of its teams. It’s true!

Brown v. Board of Education had been decided in 1954 in effect mandating the desegregation of America’s education system. It wasn’t until 1961 that two courageous students named Hamilton Holmes and Charlene Hunter-Gault had integrated UGA. But still in 1970, sixteen years later, at the height of the Vietnam War, there was not a single black person in a Dawg athletic uniform.

My story takes place in 1968. The year Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy were assassinated, and I was a rising junior here in Athens. To some, it was a major event when the University of Houston came to town to play Georgia because their team, the Cougars, featured a black running back named Paul Gipson. A number of students here were quite vocal in their disapproval of allowing Gipson to play against the all-white Dawgs. They sat in the stands and shouted racial epithets at him. As it happened, he had a great afternoon. In the Hollywood version of this story, the Cougars would have won and Gipson would have enjoyed a moment of triumph. In real life, the game ended in a tie and I must confess I was disappointed. I rooted for Houston that day.

That’s an ugly story from my world, long before you were born, and of course your world still has it share of injustice and inequality in it. But to me, the story has a happy ending, because we’ve made so much progress in so many ways since 1968. To sit here today in the house that Herschel built, is almost impossible to imagine that world I just described anymore.

So you see, things do change, they can change, and sometimes for the better. And by the time one of you is up here addressing the Class of 2042, the world will have changed profoundly. (Think about it, 2042 -- that’s where I am now.) And let’s hope for the better.

Okay, you’ve graduated, you’ve shown up and you, as the cliché would have it, are up for changing the world. What else can I tell you in the little time I have left up here – Reid? Uh.

Some of you may know today, exactly where you want to go from here. You may well have a bead on exactly what it is you want to do. A clear road map. Others of you may not have a clue what you’re going to do from here. You may be sitting out there hot, maybe a little hung over, just a little confused, unsure how the world really works, much less where and how you’re going to fit into it. That’s exactly where I was 36 years ago. And here is what I can tell you now. Confusion and fear and lack of cosmic understanding, are not excuses for failing to show up. They should not stop you from dreaming big dreams and then throwing yourself at them every single day.

Another thing I learned is this: life is about choices. I’m an editor and I believe strongly in the power of editing. With that in mind I would say, learn to edit your life as you choose which direction to take, which career to pursue, which church to join, which magazine to read, what candidate to vote for. The world is full of information, more than ever before. It’s also full of misinformation. Full of those who would have you buy their products, their philosophy, their ascent to power, their religious beliefs. It’s not dangerous to listen to them. It’s not dangerous to blog and listen to talk radio and watch cable TV shout fests. It’s only dangerous if you’re not editing what you hear. Figuring out what you believe is fair, right, and good for you in your life.

I’m in the magazine business, and I want you to read magazines and I believe what we tell you and I want you to believe it. I’m a purveyor of what I believe to be reliable, edited information, but don’t believe me. You have to choose who and what to believe in. You have to edit that information and decide what you think is the truth, and who’s lying, who’s morally right and who’s wrong. Because what’s really dangerous is letting someone else edit your life for you!

Fear anyone who says newspapers or network TV or Time Magazine is biased and therefore, they or the government should decide what you should hear so you won’t be corrupted by bad information. Our Founding Fathers gave us a first amendment guaranteeing your and my right to express our opinions about ideas, and events and other people, including the government, yes – even the President. It is not unpatriotic to question these things. It is your right! Exercise it!

This is why Thomas Jefferson said that given a choice between government without newspapers and newspapers without government, he would take the latter. It’s less dangerous to democracy. Learning to think for yourself is a life long process. I will always be grateful to my parents for the simple set of rules and principles they reared me to live by and never demanded of me any further specific requirements. They never said “be lawyer or be a doctor or you can’t go there, or you can’t take this job or that job.” To be more specific, they never said, “you can’t major in English. How will you make a living?”

My father made two exceptions to this approach. He made me take typing and he made me take Latin. Today, I earn my living typing and using everything I learned as an English major and I never, ever had to do anything quite as hard conjugating Latin verbs or declining Latin nouns.

One last thing on this matter of making choices. I want to tell you something that a friend of mine said in his commencement speech to his university several years ago. It has stuck with me because it’s about how to know if you’re making the right choices for you. Really it’s about learning to listen to your heart. I love his technique.

Imagine you’re at the big fork of that road and you just don’t know what to do. You’ve sought the advice of your parents, your friends, everyone else – you still don’t know what to do. His advice, think back to how you felt when you were eleven years old. And you could get really excited about something you dreamed of doing someday. Remember how that felt. And if one of the forks feels that way – if one of the them can recapture that excitement, take that fork.

So now, you have an education, and you’re ready to move on, follow your dreams, make you own choices, edit your own life. What else can I tell you? Here’re a few parting tips. Planning is essential, but remember that nothing will succeed as planned. If you find yourself feeling stuck, and frustrated and confused, take a trip. Go to China or Alaska or Vietnam, or just drive across the country and talk to people along the way. Be careful out there. But do it! You won’t be so confused when you return.

Remember life and its experiences will change you. It will make you harder and it will make you softer. Don’t worry, you’re not suppose to understand that now. Just don’t be surprised when it happens to you. And here’s the biggest cliché of them all, you’re just going to have to trust me on this one. Don’t fear failure. So you failed, who doesn’t? Learn something from it. Just don’t quit when you fail. You have to keep showing up.

And now for all your English majors out there, all 100 of you or so -- there they are –80, 90 – 100. I’m going to close my remarks with a short poem by William Butler Yeats. I found it in a weathered old text that I carried with me to class at Park Hall almost 40 years ago. It’s called, not coincidently, “The Choice.”

The intellect of man is forced to choose perfection of the life,

or of the work,

and if it take the second must refuse

A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

When all that story's finished, what’s in the news?

In luck or out the toil has left its mark:

That old perplexity an empty purse,

Or the day’s vanity, the night's remorse.

May I wish you a life time of good choices, and may I wish you and your family a marvelous day in Athens, celebrating your most notable achievement.

Thank you.