Public speaking, speech writing, and public education are best illustrated with an example. I am most pleased with the following speech that I prepared and delivered to the students at St. Olaf College on Honor's Day in 1997. It took about 20 minutes to present. I can help you with matters like these, either by delivering a speech to your group myself, or helping you prepare one to deliver yourself.
On Excellence, Honor, and Being Honorable -- Blessed to be a Blessing
Address by John P. Walters
St. Olaf College
Northfield, MN 55057
Honor's Day, May 9, 1997
This is an unusual situation for me. On the one hand, I delight in being able to talk to students, and especially those like yourselves. On the other hand, this is not exactly my natural habitat. I am much more comfortable talking with you in the lab, wearing a white lab coat instead of this black affair. The black color always makes me think of sobering financial messages. The white lab coat suggests a lively involvement in things that are brisk, occasionally risky, and always fun. I do love labs! So, let's change the format of this session by doing an experiment -- even if I cannot change the garb!
We will do a "thought experiment" this morning. This will be mostly for the students who are here, but if the "older folks" want to join in that's OK too. This will be a thought experiment that should help us understand what is meant by excellence, by honor, and by being honorable.
I should mention that most Deans whom I have known prefer this kind of philosophical approach. They know that science labs require a lot of apparatus and are expensive. Math labs are better since they only require a blackboard and a wastebasket. But philosophy labs and thought experiments are best -- they do not even need the wastebasket.
Let's begin by considering "excellence." In one sense, it can mean doing something very well, exceeding defined expectations, or admirably accomplishing a difficult set of goals. Certainly, you all have done that, and I congratulate you both for your efforts and your accomplishments.
But, when I think of excellence, I think more of how a person adapts to new and unusual, or unrehearsed, situations. To me, this is what a good examination, or a good lab, or a good interpersonal situation does for you. It exposes you to an unrehearsed situation that allows you to bring together what you have studied in a context different from the one in which it was first learned. This is a subtle point, and I propose now that exploring it for deeper meaning be the goal of our thought experiment.
Suppose, for example, that you have become parents of a son or daughter about high school age. On a school night, after borrowing the car to go to the library to work on a paper, he or she does not return home until after 1 AM. Imagine that you are waiting up when he or she comes in the door, and there occurs an unrehearsed communication moment. What do you say? Whatever it is, it will happen quickly. The results of the encounter may reverberate for years to come.
Now, briefly, think with me. Imagine yourselves to be either the parent or the child, and imagine having only a sudden 30 to 60 seconds to meet, to exchange comments, and then to react. What would make the results of the unrehearsed encounter "excellent"?
That's it. All that has to happen is that when the thought experiment is over, you can picture yourselves going to bed and getting a good night's sleep. In the morning, when the other parent or a school buddy asks how things went last night, you each are able to answer "excellent!".
You now have thought about what William Calvin in his book "How Brain's Think" (Basic Books, 1996) defines as a key component of our intelligence. It is not just what is in your head that that characterizes intelligence, although we certainly do need remembered experiences to act intelligently. Rather, it is how creative you are in using that material in unrehearsed situations.
How did your thought experiment come out? I suspect that many of you would call your results "excellent" if the encounter produced results that were honest. I would. If I told my son that I was angry at him for knowing how important it was for me to be part of his life and how I felt he had just cut me out of it, leaving me feeling that I was unimportant, by staying out so late without my consent or awareness, then I would be being honest.
But, if I only told him that I was worried about him, that would not be completely honest. Yes, I would worry about him, but I would also be angry at being cut out of his loop, left dangling as if I, and my advice to him, did not matter. However the encounter worked out, if we both knew honestly how we both felt, then I submit that we would have achieved excellence.
It has always interested me that this understanding of excellence carries with it the central element of honor, and that is honesty.
To illustrate how I understand this, I want to report the results of a real lab experiment and tell you a story. I have recently had a student in both of my analytical chemistry courses who did well in both of her majors and went to graduate school. She passed with A's all of what I know from experience to be horrific first year graduate courses, finished her seminars, passed her written and oral preliminary exams for qualification for the Doctorate, and was ready to complete the last two years of her degree. I can assure you that doing this in two years is no small thing.
But, then she left graduate school with a Master's degree to take a job in industry. Frankly, I was astonished. She had passed with flying colors all of the worst parts of her doctoral degree requirements, yet had chosen to leave.
Just recently I had a chance to talk to her in person. I asked her, in effect, why did you do this? The hard parts were over, and the results were excellent. She said, yes, that the hard parts were over, but that the results were not excellent. When I asked her what she meant, she remarked about St. Olaf and its honor system. She said that St. Olaf had an honor system. Because of that the students respected and helped other students. Professors respected the students. People were open with each other.
But, at this school, there was not such a system. People did not appear to respect each other. Instead, they always tried to outdo each other. When one person knew something, they kept it to themselves, even if it could help someone else. She found it a harsh and hostile place to live, and did not want her life to be that way. So she left. She told me, "I'll live to be 100 -- my grandmother is 90 now - I can get a Ph.D. anytime. I don't want to live like that now."
So for this person, that part of excellence that was missing in her life was "honor." Intelligence was there. Cleverness was there. Discoveries were there. Knowledge was there. But, she perceived that the way it all was being reduced to practice was not honest, and was not honorable. I agree. She voted with her feet.
What is so remarkable about this story, and what it says to me so clearly about excellence, honor, and being honorable, is that I went to the same graduate school as she!
What was the difference? A friend of mine once said, "When there is trouble in the class, I always look to the front of the room." To me, now, this is the difference. The difference was my research director.
My research director did not pit those of us in his research group against each other. While all of us had individual thesis projects, we taught collectively. We all had fractional time teaching assistantships for each year we were there. And when it came to teaching the advanced course in spectroscopy, which was truthfully his own course, we worked in teams, with unique teaching assignments and responsibilities. We combined our unique talents to make his graduate course truly excellent. And we loved it. We had our egos. We had our moments. But, there was no attempt to homogenize us into a palatable blend. That was what made the whole thing work.
My research director is an honorable person. He is worthy of receiving respect. He is this way because he did not manipulate us and because he was honest with us.
He also was honorable because he was realistic enough to know that he could not do it all on his own, and told us so. The problem of running a research group with 15 graduate students and three post-docs, teaching a graduate class and lab, writing three books, and developing a new field of electronics in chemistry required a team of people. His leadership came in persuading us to "buy into" the effort, that it was worth doing, and that it was our unique talents that would combine to solve the problem.
He was, of course right. If you decide that you want to solve the really big problems, then you are going to have to "join up" with others, divide up your responsibilities according to your unique characteristics, and learn how to communicate by telling each other what your really know and what you really mean.
In other words, when I was in this graduate school, things were good "at the front of the room." It made a huge difference.
I stress this now because I believe many of you will become honorable leaders. I have seen this first hand. Many of you now have the passion, and the compassion, to immerse yourself in the really big problems. Many of you have consciously elected to use clear and open communication. Many of you are honorable, worthy of esteem and respect, by virtue of having excellence accompany the honest way in which you have used your intelligence.
Let me close on this one point. None of us knows what will happen to us in the future. I suspect that you did not know that you would be doing a thought experiment when you came to this address today. But, if it is our intention to be creative, to use our minds to solve big problems, make discoveries, and care for each other in ways that are excellent, then we must be thankful that we have been blessed with the resources and the desire to do so.
Remember that invention consists of two parts, discovery, and reduction to practice. Both must be present and perfected; neither alone is sufficient, no matter how clever we are. God has given you the intelligence you have as a blessing. One excellent way that you can acknowledge this blessing is by choosing to reduce the discoveries you make with it to practice in ways that help others. You can choose to use your blessings to be a blessing to others.
Your presence here today, in our chapel, signals to me that you know that you have been blessed, by God. This is not to diminish the efforts that you have made to develop and realize your intelligence. Rather the opposite. By continuing to work for excellence, you are choosing routes that I assure you will lead you to solve bigger and bigger problems. You too will lead others to work together in the solutions of those problems. You too will continue to vote with your feet.
If you remember anything from this day, remember this:
You have been blessed by God to be a blessing to others. This, I choose to believe, you can ponder, study, accept, understand, and practice. I respect you for this. To me, that makes you honorable.
I thank you for being my students.