After months and months of intense reading, the brainy bookworms from Church of the Holy Spirit School are prepped and ready for the Battle of the Books competition in the Wichita Diocese Catholic Schools. The annual reading contest for 5th … Continue reading 
By: Jessamyn West,
on 8/7/2011
So I spent a good chunk of the day today at Goddard College which is up the road from me. I was invited to give the commencement speech for their MA in Individualized Studies Program. They graduated ten people and had a terrific ceremony including a singalong to the tune of the Muppets’ Rainbow Connection, a group of drummers during the processional, origami creations given to the graduates, and a lot of schmoopy speeches because when you graduate ten students, everyone gets a chance to be on the microphone. It was wonderful and heartwarming and I was so pleased to be a part of it. I gave a fifteen minute speech that I probably ad-libbed out to twenty minutes. Unlike most of the talks I give, this one was written out word for word for the most part. I was asked by a few people for the text of it so I’m tossing it here, adding some links to things, and people can link to it, copy it, whatever works. Thanks to everyone who hosted me, and congratulations again, graduates.
Hi and thanks for having me here. Congratulations to all of you, I’m honored to get to share this important and transitional moment with you.
Like you, I went to an alternative school, Hampshire, and am similarly interested in personal vision and radical thinking as the brochure says that you are.
By way of introduction, I tell people I’m the most famous librarian in Vermont [not as fancy as you might think], an “internet folk hero” dedicating her life to eradicating the digital divide in the US and helping turn libraries into their democratic ideals free from the influence of bad technology, bad people, and bad laws.
It’s as true as any of the other “who I am” explanations. At some level, realistically, what most people in the world know about you is what they see, what you tell them, maybe combined with what they can corroborate elsewhere. It’s important to have a good story and in the age of limited internet attention spans, it helps if it’s short. Wikipedia calls me an internet folk hero (and no I didn’t write that myself though I suppose I could have) and I like that & I’m sticking to it. It’s not actually so tough to be a folk hero, and I think it’s one of the natural paths from this sort of starting point, where you are now. I’ll talk a little about how I got here.
Part one is framing
I’ve got slightly different answers to the “who are you” question depending exactly on what’s asked.
- what I do for a job
(“um I run a big Internet community”)
- how I spend my time
(“I stare out the window and look at birds in-between answering a lot of email and making Keynote slides and reading books for hours in airports”)
- what I love doing
(“I teach email to old people… no seriously it’s the best thing there is”)
but I’m one of those people with a poor life/work balance, or maybe a great one, depending on whether you think that your small-w work and big-W WORK [your calling, your passion, your raison d'etre, whatever you call it] should be the same or different.
Mine are the same: I love the democratizing power of the library and the internet and share it with as many people as possible. I lucky that I get to do this for a job … but I did some work to get to this place, and also some not-quite-work. And the good news for you guys is that for the most part you now get to spend some time watching yourselves, out in the great wide world, figuring out what your Work actually is. It’s a time
By: jeff,
on 9/1/2009
Many kids will beg, plead, and annoy their parents into letting them get a puppy or kitten, but few have the skill or foresight to request the best kind of pet, a ROBOT. Just imagine how awesome your life would have been if you had thought to get yourself one of these useful and quirky companions.
GODDARD
Jimmy Neutron, a young genius inventor, created Goddard as a helping hand and best friend. One of Jimmy’s few inventions that doesn’t threaten to burn down the entire town of Retroville, Goddard can reportedly do 11,000,004 things. Goddard however is unable to clean up after his own “messes” (which are nuts and bolts).
GIR
In aiding Invader Zim’s quest to take over the Earth, GIR is at best a distraction. Often, he is the cause of Zim’s epic “Wile E. Coyote” failures. Despite his extremely convincing Earth disguise (a green dog suit with visible zipper) he is indeed a highly powerful yet malfunctional robot.
The Robot from Lost in Space
A Model B-9 Class M-3 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot, the robot from Lost in Space has no given name. The Robot is most famous for his catch phrase, “danger Will Robinson!” It seems that the fun of a robot slave was lost on the young Robinson who tolerated the robot as a kind of metal nanny rather than enlisting it into more mischievous purposes.
SPEED BUGGY
While a sputtering delivery of “Roger-Dodger!” and “Vroom-a-zoom-zoom!” may grate on more adult nerves, a talking, self driving dune buggy is just the thing I would have died for as a kid. Speed Buggy even had a remote control making him the world’s largest, most awesome RC car.
C3P0
So he’s a bit of a wanker, C3P0 is still a marvel of engineering from an 8 year old. R2D2 is obviously the preferred choice of the pair, but I would argue that C3P0’s personality make it possible that he can be classified as an actual “pet”, whereas R2D2 is a sassy service droid.
THE DINOBOTS
Big, metal, dumb as rocks. They are the Dinobots and Grimlock is their King! Much like GIR, they are often more trouble than they are worth to the Transformers who built them. The Dinobots combine the awesomeness of Dinosaurs with the sexy sleekness of Robots. One of my most epic dreams ever involved the decimation of my ninja enemies by my pet mechanical Brontosaurus. Mwa ha ha ha ha!!!
And all I ever got was this!!!?
“I love you.” Yeah, yeah. Come back when you can breath fire and/or open locked doors with mathmatical algorhthyms.
I know I must be missing some great Robot Pets, so please leave a comment if you can think of any more!
…
By: jeff,
on 9/1/2009
Many kids will beg, plead, and annoy their parents into letting them get a puppy or kitten, but few have the skill or foresight to request the best kind of pet, a ROBOT. Just imagine how awesome your life would have been if you had thought to get yourself one of these useful and quirky companions.
GODDARD
Jimmy Neutron, a young genius inventor, created Goddard as a helping hand and best friend. One of Jimmy’s few inventions that doesn’t threaten to burn down the entire town of Retroville, Goddard can reportedly do 11,000,004 things. Goddard however is unable to clean up after his own “messes” (which are nuts and bolts).
GIR
In aiding Invader Zim’s quest to take over the Earth, GIR is at best a distraction. Often, he is the cause of Zim’s epic “Wile E. Coyote” failures. Despite his extremely convincing Earth disguise (a green dog suit with visible zipper) he is indeed a highly powerful yet malfunctional robot.
The Robot from Lost in Space
A Model B-9 Class M-3 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot, the robot from Lost in Space has no given name. The Robot is most famous for his catch phrase, “danger Will Robinson!” It seems that the fun of a robot slave was lost on the young Robinson who tolerated the robot as a kind of metal nanny rather than enlisting it into more mischievous purposes.
SPEED BUGGY
While a sputtering delivery of “Roger-Dodger!” and “Vroom-a-zoom-zoom!” may grate on more adult nerves, a talking, self driving dune buggy is just the thing I would have died for as a kid. Speed Buggy even had a remote control making him the world’s largest, most awesome RC car.
C3P0
So he’s a bit of a wanker, C3P0 is still a marvel of engineering from an 8 year old. R2D2 is obviously the preferred choice of the pair, but I would argue that C3P0’s personality make it possible that he can be classified as an actual “pet”, whereas R2D2 is a sassy service droid.
THE DINOBOTS
Big, metal, dumb as rocks. They are the Dinobots and Grimlock is their King! Much like GIR, they are often more trouble than they are worth to the Transformers who built them. The Dinobots combine the awesomeness of Dinosaurs with the sexy sleekness of Robots. One of my most epic dreams ever involved the decimation of my ninja enemies by my pet mechanical Brontosaurus. Mwa ha ha ha ha!!!
And all I ever got was this!!!?
“I love you.” Yeah, yeah. Come back when you can breath fire and/or open locked doors with mathmatical algorhthyms.
I know I must be missing some great Robot Pets, so please leave a comment if you can think of any more!
…
Gah! I was totally the worker in the library this evening! I wish I’d come in early to hear you but I totally forgot. Sorry I missed you, but the transcript is amazing! Off to post everywhere!
I asked around to see if people knew you or if you were around. I should have swung by!
+1. Noted and Dugg.
Eloquent speech, with some lovely reminders for the rest of us who once thought (and still think) big thoughts but get distracted by all the noise.
Some of what I do is go places that “my people” don’t go to, represent us, and then come back and tell my folks what I found there, whether it’s being a techie at a librarian conference, a librarian at the tech conference or a rural librarian at the big city meeting. The world needs people who stay and people who roam, cross-pollinate, bumblebee style.
Yes, very much so. I’m a librarian in a blog community and a blogger at a library. There’s a great advantage to having two simultaneously managed careers because they expose hidden perspectives in each other.
[...] one line in Jessamyn West’s commencement speech to the Goddard College’s Masters in Individualized Studies Program that [...]
[...] Read her whole speech here. [...]
This is a really terrific speech! The idea that there is no need for librarians (anyone, really) to go through life as if on rails is one that should be repeated over and over. Talks like yours inspire people to have the courage to take it to heart.
I’m so glad I peeked into my Google Reader this morning.
Really great speech–not just inspiring, but providing a framework for charting a path. I especially like that after you provide that framework, you point out that you did get pushback from well-meaning people. In looking back, my best decisions have always gotten pushback. Like choosing to live on very little money as a member of VISTA…or leaving a career where I was established to become a librarian. ;) And yes, teaching senior citizens (or even middle aged people) about email or even just the internet IS the best thing ever.