"You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.

You're on your own.

And you know what you know.

You are the guy who'll decide where to go."

-DR. SEUSS

Of course, formal occasions such as commencement ceremonies often tempts too many people-especially those given a space on the entablado-to offer placid and long-winded advise, bordering on bromides, on the metaphorical significance of graduation as "a portal" to our graduates' soon-to-be-unspooling real lives.

In fact, the humorist Garry Trudeau jokes of that very nature of graduation exercises: "Commencement speeches were invented largely in the belief that outgoing college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated."

You may have heard it all. "Today is the first day of the rest of your lives." "Commencement is a beginning, a starting point from which you can now finally claim a responsible stake for all of humanity." "Each diploma is a lighted match, and each one of you is a fuse." And from Tom Brokaw: "You are educated. Your certification is in your degree. You may think of it as the ticket to the good life.  Let me ask you to think of an alternative.  Think of it as your ticket to change the world." 

The familiar quotes about graduation go on and on-and while we know that the heart is, more or less, true for each one of them, we all still somehow seek a kind of unvarnished truth for why we choose to gather in a university lawn or an auditorium in the first place, to toast the graduates in a rite as old as Oxford University.

To attempt just that, I want to quote Joann C. Jones who once gave an insightful account about what it means to gain an education, and then taking it to use in the world: "During my second year of nursing school," Ms. Jones wrote, "our professor gave us a quiz. I breezed through the questions until I read the last one:  'What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?' Surely this was a joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Before the class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our grade. 'Absolutely,' the professor said. 'In your careers, you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say hello.' I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned the cleaning woman's name was Dorothy."

It is exactly this philosophy that we, as teachers, hope we have inculcated in all our students over the course of their studies here in Silliman University-or in any other school for that matter. It is something that we truly hope our students can take with them as the very core of "quality Christian education," something that lays an inner foundation that holds students and keeps them resolute when they leave the portals of the school and its hallowed halls, "to roam the world o'er near and far," as the Silliman Song goes.

I'd like to remind them not to forget that this foundation we talk of can only be the result of steadfast edification that comes from a barrage of learning that springs from classroom, from church, from community, from court, and from culture-the five C's that make them unique as Sillimanians, and as citizens of the world. This is the very map of their Silliman education: theory and expressive debate within the four-walls of a lecture hall, spirituality and praise in the pews and under the spires, practice and a chance to give back in the backyards and winding roads of neighborhoods, sweat and brawn in the pool or the playing ground, and finally, music and the arts in the theaters of our imagination.

I thought of all these when we held Silliman's graduation ceremonies in a new venue. We were in a place that was the perfect metaphor for the Silliman education I have just defined: we were in the middle of the amphitheater-the site of old Shakespeare plays from years past; surrounding us was the city that hummed into our every day hearts, and also the classrooms tucked into these old nearby buildings which were testaments to Silliman's evolution as a place of learning; and finally, before us was the Silliman Church, where, so the cornerstone proclaimed, "the foundation of God standeth sure." The venue, indeed, as confluence.

The final analysis is that to graduate from Silliman University must and should be, for all togaed hopeful for graduation, a towering achievement built on wholistic development, a total education that hones every student into individuals of supreme competence and impeccable character, both of which is bonded and made more pure and strong by a sheer consideration of faith in Jesus Christ.

Graduation day was a reckoning for them all, to remind these old students of how far they had come from that shy young freshman of four or five years ago. Graduation day was a day of change for them as well, but change they must learn embrace with heart, because it is the precursor for all growth.

And graduation day is the day they finally learned, before they are bidden success in each of their future endeavors, that the confluence of competence, character, and faith will become the measure of who they are in the world.

And like what Ms. Jones reminded us in the beginning, all of that comes to play the moment they realize that their education will ultimately matter when they make significant the people from all walks of life they will meet in their journeys hereafter. Say hello, smile, know their names.

My name is Ian, by the way, and to all graduates, congratulations.