Week 16

Commencement speech

A commencement speech or commencement address is a speech given to graduating students, generally at a university, generally in the United States, although the term is also used for secondary education institutions. The "commencement" is a ceremony in which degrees or diplomas are conferred upon graduating students. A commencement speech is typically given by a notable figure in the community, during the commencement exercise. The person giving such a speech is known as a commencement speaker. Very commonly, colleges or universities will invite politicians, important citizens, or other noted speakers to come and address the graduating class.

        

website: https://www.facebook.com/kaifulee/videos/1671936116167033/

Kai-Fu Lee

Kai-Fu Lee (simplified Chinese: 李开复; traditional Chinese: 李開復; pinyin: Lǐ Kāifù; born December 3, 1961) is a Taiwanese venture capitalist, technology executive, writer, and computer scientist. He is currently based in Beijing, China.

Lee developed the world's first speaker-independent, continuous speech recognition system as his Ph.D. thesis at Carnegie Mellon. He later became a high-technology executive at Apple, SGI, Microsoft, and Google.

He became the focus of a 2005 legal dispute between Google and Microsoft, his former employer, due to a one-year non-compete agreement that he signed with Microsoft in 2000 when he became its corporate vice president of interactive services.

Columbia University

Columbia University (Columbia; officially Columbia University in the City of New York), established in 1754, is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. Today, it is often cited as one of the world's most prestigious universities.

Columbia contains the oldest college in the state of New York and the fifth chartered institution of higher learning in the country, making it one of nine colonial colleges founded prior to the Declaration of Independence. It was established as King's College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain and renamed Columbia College in 1784 following the American Revolutionary War. The college has produced numerous distinguished alumni. It has additionally been amongst the most selective colleges in the United States since its founding. With an acceptance rate of 5.8%, it currently stands as the third most selective college by admission rate in the United States and second most selective college by admission rate in the Ivy League.

          

 James Ryan's commencement speech

An excerpt from Harvard dean James Ryan's prepared remarks at the 2016 HGSE Presentation of Diplomas and Certificates.

website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_7bApheEaY

          

The Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE)

The Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) is one of the graduate schools of Harvard University, and is one of the top schools of education in the United States. It was founded in 1920, when it was the first school to establish the Ed.D. degree.

It offers three doctoral programs: the Doctor of Philosophy in Education (Ph.D.), the Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) and the Doctor of Educational Leadership (Ed.L.D.). The Ph.D. program replaces the Ed.D. program, which enrolled its final cohort of students in fall 2013. HGSE also offers thirteen masters programs. These include Master of Arts in Education, Education Policy and Management, Higher Education, International Education Policy, Special Studies, Technology Innovation and Education, Teacher Education, Mind, Brain and Education, Prevention Science and Practice, School Leadership, Human Development and Psychology, Language and Literacy, and Learning and Teaching.

Late Fragment

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

Late Fragment is the final poem in the poet and short story writer Raymond Carver’s (1938-1988) last published work, A New Path to the Waterfall, a collection that was written while he was dying of cancer. I value the Carver poem for a number of reasons. Mostly, I admire its simplicity and its poignancy. There is no measure of irony or artifice in it. There is also an underlying sense of celebration — this, in the affirmative “I did” and in the realization that when all is said and done, to call oneself beloved and to feel oneself beloved (a kind of proof) is enough.

Raymond Carver

Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short-story writer and poet. Carver contributed to the revitalization of the American short story in literature during the 1980s.

Theseus

Theseus (/ˈθiːsiːəs/; Ancient Greek: Θησεύς [tʰɛːsěu̯s]) was the mythical king and founder-hero of Athens. Like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, Theseus battled and overcame foes that were identified with an archaic religious and social order. In the same way that Heracles was the founding hero for the Dorians, Theseus was a founding hero for the Athenians. The Athenians regarded Theseus as a great reformer; his name comes from the same root as θεσμός ("thesmos"), Greek for "The Gathering". The myths surrounding Theseus—his journeys, exploits, and family—have provided material for fiction throughout the ages.

         

Apolo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in classical Greek and Roman religion and Greek and Roman mythology. The ideal of the kouros (a beardless, athletic youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of music, truth and prophecy, healing, the sun and light, plague, poetry, and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu.

        

Cupid

In classical mythology, Cupid (Latin Cupīdō [kʊˈpiː.doː], meaning "desire") is the god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus and the war god Mars. He is also known in Latin as Amor ("Love"). His Greek counterpart is Eros.

       

Viola tricolor

Viola tricolor, Also known as Johnny Jump up (though this name is also applied to similar species such as the yellow pansy), heartsease, heart's ease, heart's delight, tickle-my-fancy, Jack-jump-up-and-kiss-me, come-and-cuddle-me, three faces in a hood, or love-in-idleness, is a common European wild flower, growing as an annual or short-lived perennial. It has been introduced into North America, where it has spread. It is the progenitor of the cultivated pansy, and is therefore sometimes called wild pansy; before the cultivated pansies were developed, "pansy" was an alternative name for the wild form.

          

Aluminium foil

Aluminium foil (or aluminum foil), often referred to with the misnomer tin foil, is aluminium prepared in thin metal leaves with a thickness less than 0.2 mm (7.9 mils); thinner gauges down to 6 micrometres (0.24 mils) are also commonly used. In the United States, foils are commonly gauged in thousandths of an inch or mils. Standard household foil is typically 0.016 mm (0.63 mils) thick, and heavy duty household foil is typically 0.024 mm (0.94 mils). The foil is pliable, and can be readily bent or wrapped around objects. Thin foils are fragile and are sometimes laminated to other materials such as plastics or paper to make them more useful. Aluminium foil supplanted tin foil in the mid 20th century.

closet drama

A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group. The dichotomy between private 'closet' drama (designed for reading) and public 'stage' drama (designed for performance in a commercial theater setting) dates from the late eighteenth century. The practice of circulating plays in written form (printed or handwritten) for literary audiences predates this period, however.

Percy Bysshe Shelley 

Percy Bysshe Shelley (ⁱ/ˈpɜːrsi ˈbɪʃ ˈʃɛli/; 4 August 1792 – 8 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets, and is regarded by some as among the finest lyric poets in the English language, and one of the most influential. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not see fame during his lifetime, but recognition for his poetry grew steadily following his death. Shelley was a key member of a close circle of visionary poets and writers that included Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock, and his own second wife, Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein.

Performing arts 

Performing arts are a form of art in which artists use their voices and/or their bodies, often in relation to other objects, to convey artistic expression. It is different from visual arts, which is when artists use paint/canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Performing arts include several disciplines, each performed in front of a live audience.

         

Thirteen Amendment ti the United States Constitution

The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states on December 6, 1865. On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed its adoption. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War.

           

Death of a Salesman

Death of a Salesman is a 1949 play written by American playwright Arthur Miller. It was the recipient of the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Play. The play premiered on Broadway in February 1949, running for 742 performances, and has been revived on Broadway four times, winning three Tony Awards for Best Revival. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest plays of the 20th century.

       

Arthur Miller

Arthur Asher Miller (October 17, 1915 – February 10, 2005) was an American playwright, essayist, and figure in twentieth-century American theater. Among his most popular plays are All My Sons (1947), Death of a Salesman (1949), The Crucible (1953) and A View from the Bridge (1955, revised 1956). He also wrote several screenplays and was most noted for his work on The Misfits (1961). The drama Death of a Salesman has been numbered on the short list of finest American plays in the 20th century alongside Long Day's Journey into Night and A Streetcar Named Desire.