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This is an exciting time. On graduation day, we stand back and reflect on the past 4-5 years which have aroused a powerful mix of emotions. At the same time, we have an eye towards the future – future jobs, family, and inevitable gains and losses. Drawing on the words of MIT mathematician and songwriter Tom Lehrer, today marks the beginning of your continuing slide down the razorblade of life.
For the last 20 years, I have been fascinated with what happens when we have to deal with significant upheavals in our lives – both positive and negative: marriages and divorce; having children and seeing them leave home; getting jobs and losing them; from death and traumas to winning the lottery. All of these experiences share a number of features with the graduation from college. They are associated with profound changes in how we identify who we are; how we relate to other people; even, the friends we have. At every upheaval, we are also placed at increased risk for heart attacks, cancer, ulcers, colds and flu, depression and episodes of schizophrenia. (Your parents are sitting there thinking, “why didn’t my kid become a business major – we wouldn’t have to be listening to this stuff”).
But good news. Today’s graduation or future life upheavals do not guarantee disease and pestilence. Research conducted here at UT and elsewhere is showing that one of the most powerful ways of preventing the negative sides of a trauma is by putting the experiences into words. Talking about or writing about emotional upheavals has a profound effect on people’s physical health, mental health, and even their memory. Many of you were probably in an experiment or have helped out in running a study related to language. In these studies, having people write or talk about an upheaval for 3-4 days for only 15 minutes a day can bring about remarkable biological and cognitive change.
Why is this? By telling people our thoughts and feelings about a personal experience, it changes the way the experience is organized or structured. Putting something into words creates a story or narrative that gives it meaning. But talking to others about our feelings also has important social benefits – it bonds us together. It allows us to get past the experience and to become better listeners and talkers with others. It allows others to see us as who we really are.
There is another feature about talking about important emotional events: it bonds groups of people together and, in fact, serves as the very basis of history. Shared emotional upheavals are part of what we call autobiographical memory or collective memory. And certain memories are particularly likely to bond an entire cohort of people together. Indeed, some fascinating work in sociology and psychology has found that the experiences we have between the ages of 13 and 25 are the ones that stay with us forever and define who we are. According to my calculations, I’m about the same age as your parents. (Did I mention that you should always listen to your parents?) Like most of them, our generation was defined by a group of events from the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, hippies, maybe Watergate. The music we listened to then turns out to be the best music ever written – Beatles, Stones, Dylan. And we still listen to it now.
And your cohort is now sharing experiences that will be with you the rest of your lives. Since you were 13, you have experienced the Oklahoma City bombing, Columbine, the A&M Bonfire tragedy, the most exciting and nerve-wracking election in history. These events will define your group forever. And 50 or 60 years from now, you and your spouse or best friend will be rocking on the porch somewhere and you’ll say, “Heather,” she’ll say, “Yes, Sean.” “Let’s put on some of that great music. Let’s hear some Limp Biskit. I love the song about the cookies.”
Today is part of the memory construction process. The experiences today and from the last few years in Austin will be the basis of the movies and books you write, maybe the studies you will conduct, and the stories you will tell. Right now, I want you to look around at your cohort. Smell the smells of today. Pay attention to your feelings. So stop right now and think about this for a moment.
No go forth and talk about these thoughts and feelings. I hereby pronounce those memories cemented in. Congratulations. And let’s get this show on the road
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