Advice at Graduation

It is Commencement on Friday, here at USC. Thousands of students will be dressing up in gowns and taking part of the ceremonies marking the ending of their time here at USC and the beginning of the rest of their lives. It’s an exciting time.

Merrill Balassone and a team from USC Media Relations came by my office a few weeks ago to take 15-20 minutes of time to do a prototype of a project on this very subject of commencement. The result was fun, and apparently they used it to build onto in order to make the final short video you can see below. They did a great job! It is a group of USC professors and staff** giving brief thoughts to graduating students upon their graduation. You’ll maybe guess what I say in my segment. It is a theme I mention here a lot, as part of my personal war on people being shut out of (or shutting themselves out of) participation in aspects of our society.

The summary of the piece is here and the YouTube video is embedded below:

Enjoy!

-cvj

**Deborah Harkness, professor of history with the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and a New York Times bestselling author; Barnet Kellman, professor with the USC School of Cinematic Arts and an Emmy award-winning director; Clifford Johnson, professor of physics and astronomy with USC Dornsife, who is currently drawing a graphic novel about physics; Robert Hernandez, assistant professor of professional practice with the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and creator of the first class based on Google Glass; and Cynthia Cooper, Olympic gold medalist and head coach of USC women’s basketball team.