Class of 2024 Commencement: Live in the Now

The following is a speech that English Teacher Bob Pfeiffer read at the Class of 2024 Commencement. Read the additional speeches by students, faculty and staff.

By English Teacher Bob Pfeiffer

As Mrs. Larson mentioned, I am Bob Pfeiffer, and I am thrilled to be here in this beautiful building, for this beautiful occasion, to celebrate the Eastside Catholic graduating Class of 2024. It’s an honor. I’m happy to be speaking to this class in particular, because the students I have gotten to know this year, through AP Lit, Student Leadership, the musical, and around campus are simply the best. I mean it. You are extraordinary, and you are going to do extraordinary things in this life. Congratulations!

There are so many memories I flashed on preparing to write this speech – studying Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car” in first period. Seventh period seminars so brilliant I couldn’t leave the building until I had emailed your parents to brag about you. Zero period chaos with the senior leadership team. Getting talked into doing the musical – the single most terrifying and out-of-my-comfort-zone thing I have ever done, but finding that I loved it and having it utterly transform my life. Walking into my senior-pranked classroom last Thursday to about a thousand balloons and smiling ear to ear. There are too many to mention, so I’ll stop there.

I’d like to start by telling you a little bit about myself. I’m a dad to an EC sixth grader, I’m a husband of 15 years to the best person I know, I’m a poet, and I’m an educator. I’ve been an educator for 17 years, all of which were spent at the university level in the Atlanta area until last year when my family and I moved out to the West Coast. There are various reasons why I wanted a pretty drastic change in my life and career, and I won’t bore you with them, but I will say that after a dozen years of working as a professor at my old university, I felt a significant lack in community and relationships.

See, my mom was a teacher. She taught elementary school for almost 40 years. In the summers I would go with her and help set up her classroom, though after a couple hours of laminating pictures for the wall and alphabetizing the books in her reading nook, this would usually end up with me going to the gym to shoot hoops and leaving her to finish alone. My mom was a great teacher … legendary … the type that, though she taught second grade mostly, her kids would come back to see her when they were home from college and stop her in the mall when they would see her, thanking her for being so wonderful all those years ago, and tell her how much of an impact she had on them. She was born to teach, and she loved doing it. She always says that teaching was her calling, and if you don’t feel that way as a teacher, you’ll either flame out, or become rigid and passionless. When she got really sick in 2002, she was forced to retire, though she couldn’t give it up completely, and so, when she was well enough again, she tutored students who needed a little extra help. She is still a part of the community of that school, the one at which she taught, and from which I graduated.

So for me, one of the alluring aspects of EC was the focus on a true school community, and I’ve found it here. I’ve been known to go on long tangents, and I promise to not extend this metaphor too long, but bear with me for a few sentences. A school is like a tree. From a distance, from the outside looking in, a school pretty much always looks the same. But the truth is that every year a tree, like a school, reinvents itself. People come and go – faculty, staff – and every year, like leaves turning and falling, seniors graduate en masse. Then, in spring, new buds come, just like every year we have a whole new senior class. But while it may look the same to outsiders, those of us in the building know different. I can’t imagine our tree without you. I’m going to miss so many of you so much that in an effort not to devolve into a sobbing mess, I’m not going to look too closely at some of these faces, or mention too many names. Now, when I was 18 years old, I probably would have rolled my eyes out of my skull at comment like that, but in midlife and beyond, different things become important to you, and that is the capital-T Truth.

Midlife and beyond.

It seems impossible, but pretty much exactly 27 years ago, I was standing on a stage in my high school’s auditorium, giving the student commencement address to the Wilmington Friends School graduating Class of 1997 … my graduating class. I don’t remember much of the content of that speech. Mostly what I remember is something I think a lot of the scholars on this stage can relate to, which is the feeling of being totally and completely over high school. In two months, I’d be moving into my dorm, living on my own, enjoying “the college life.” It was like I was on a train, rounding a long bend past a mountain, and I was finally at the point where I would come into the clearing, able to see where I was headed the whole time.

I know high school can feel that way. I remember it well. For me, high school felt like something blocking me from where I was supposed to be going. Like once I graduated, I could finally become what or who I was supposed to become. And it wasn’t like I’d had a bad experience. Actually, I’d had a pretty great high school experience. But despite that, there was still that sense that I was in stasis. Frozen. I imagine this is true for many of you sitting right over there.

I promise you I am not going to go on some spiel about how you should be thankful for the experience you’ve had over these last years (though you should), and how your hard work will benefit you in the long run (though I think it will). I don’t know that for sure, and I don’t want make any assumptions about your personal experiences, or your sense of values. I can only speak to you from my own personal experience, as someone who once sat right where you are now, and who has since experienced another 27 years, all but a couple of which spent in education.

What I do know is that over the course of my life, I have accumulated regret like a boat taking on water. Almost none of which is either appropriate for this esteemed occasion, or likely of much interest to anyone here. However, there is something that will hopefully be of some value to some of you. And that is this: I am filled with regret from a lifetime of always looking forward to the next thing. If you always look to the next thing, you’re never fully present in this thing. This thing is therefore never what you want. This thing is between you and what you think you want. When I was in middle school, I wanted to be in high school. Then I got to high school, and I wanted to be in college. Then I got to college and sure enough I wanted to graduate. I achieved that, then I wanted to start a career. Then I wanted a raise. Assistant professor. Associate professor, tenure, full professor. If you live life like that, nothing is ever enough. First book published? Need a second. Second didn’t sell enough, how ‘bout a third?

In his great poem Song of Myself, Walt Whitman discusses the notion of “loafing.” He writes “I loafe and invite my soul. / I lean and loafe at my ease, admiring a spear of summer grass.” Paradoxically, this idea of loafing required an incredible amount of discipline. See, to Whitman, loafing was the way you could eliminate all other thoughts and simply focus on the present moment. It’s nearly impossible to do. Try it. Try it now. Focus on this exact moment. It’s tough, right? Once a moment arrives, it’s gone, and you’re on to the next. I suggest to you, this is how your life will be regardless of whatever path you go down. You’ll work hard to achieve something, and as soon as you grasp it, like a ladder made of sand, it will sift through your fingers, and you’ll be reaching for the next rung.

Let me be clear, so no parents in the crowd get nervous that I’m suggesting you don’t need to try at anything: ambition is good. It is good to strive for greatness and do your best to achieve your goals. Of course. You’ve all already done that to an impressive degree. But: don’t let your ambition become anger. If something you want doesn’t come to be, or if you don’t get the credit for something you think you deserve, or if you achieve a goal and it doesn’t feel as good as you thought it would, don’t let your ambition become the anger to treat yourself, or those around you poorly. My mentor, the late, great poet David Bottoms wrote: “Lay it down, they say, your ambition / which is only anger, / which sated could bring you to no better place.”

"Which sated could bring you to no better place."

Life, drudgery, failure, disappointment. These things can grind you down, but don’t let them make you ordinary. Don’t waste your life as a cynic. Allow yourself to feel things, and risk feeling them deeply, even if, especially if, you worry they might cause you pain. You only have one chance. Feel everything you can. You’ll never regret it. I promise you. When that song comes on at just the right time, the twilight glowing over the mountain ridge and the leaves blushing against the coming dark, don’t just think to yourself: that’s beautiful. Pull the car over onto the gravel and sit there with it on the side of the road. These are the little miracles that can fill your life, and whatever regrets you may have along the way, acknowledging the little miracles will never be one of them.

You are sitting on your graduation stage, ready to become the you you’ve always anticipated. Here’s the thing. Just as you are not the same person now as you were when you moved up to ninth grade, you will be a hundred different you’s before you become yourself. To quote Bob Dylan, “He not busy bein’ born is a-busy dyin.” Throughout all those evolutions, try to ignore the voice on your shoulder telling you the little things don’t matter. Because another capital-T Truth is, the little things are almost always the things that matter most. A Tuesday dinner with mom and dad; you only have so many. An embrace from a good friend; you only have so many. The day’s first cup of coffee on the couch next to the person you love; you only have so many. A day in 2024, just two weeks ago, when your sixth-grade daughter who is old enough now that just the week before explained why she thinks Kendrick ethered Drake in their beef and, like a good EC student, used specific textual support from “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us.” I’m sure she would have had the perfect parenthetical MLA citations if she was writing an essay on it. Well, she got sick with that virus, and despite being the mature, big kid that she is now, with strong opinions on hip hop battles and seemingly everything else under the sun, she only wanted to sit on the couch with you and watch Disney movies all day until she felt better. For a day, like a miracle, she was your little girl again. You only have one chance. And if you can train yourself to start appreciating these little miracles, your life will be filled with riches you cannot possibly imagine right now. It all goes so fast. Enjoy this life. I promise you won’t regret it.

To wrap it up, let me paraphrase my beloved Ursula from “The Little Mermaid,” better known as our outgoing ASB President, Sophie Panay, every morning on the announcements (another thing you don’t think you will miss, but you will): Have a great life, Crusaders; remember to always take care of yourselves and each other; I love you more than you know.

Your future begins now.

Thank you, and congratulations, Eastside Catholic graduating Class of 2024.

If you have questions for Bob, you can contact him at rpfeiffer@eastsidecatholic.org.