I think it's great to start off a new semester with David Foster Wallace's commencement speech for Kenyon College, because I feel that it sets the tone for the rest of the year. Instead of a rundown given by the professor on the first day of class, it's interesting to hear what one has to say to a group of students on the last day of classes instead. Learning how to think is one of the more important points that I got from Wallace's speech, because I think that not everyone knows that there are many different ways to do so. Wallace states that learning how to think, "...means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience." From this quote, I understand that everyone chooses different ideas to spend their time on, though not everyone gains the same knowledge.
I think it's important to understand that how much we all succeed as artists is completely dependent on how much of our daily awareness we spend on our art. I also believe that there is no real definition to the word 'succeed', and that it is totally defined by one's self.
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