There are going to be a lot of new college grads around town this weekend. Before they were sent off on the streets of Baltimore, some of our leaders provided words of inspiration. Here’s a look at the local commencement speeches, and a chance to watch some of them:
Johns Hopkins
Pixar President Edwin Catmull delivered the much-hyped address to JHU grads at Homewood Field on Thursday. He focused on creativity — “the process by which we solve problems.” He made an admission that at Pixar, “all of our movies suck at first.” But that’s part of the creative process, he said.
“I believe that everyone has the potential to be creative,” Catmull said. “It is our choices that block or enable potential in others and in yourself. Make it OK to make mistakes.”
Stevenson University
Ravens coach John Harbaugh was tapped for his first-ever commencement speech at Stevenson University on Thursday. He chose a topic of great relevance to his audience: the first job. His own first gig happened to be working for his dad, and he shared a story about a time when a fatherly lesson bled over to the sideline. The ever-competitive Harbaugh was also full of tips on how to get a leg up.
“Everybody you are competing against will do what they are supposed to do,” he said. “It doesn’t take all that much to outdo them. Do everything they do. Then everyday find one more thing to do.”
Loyola University Maryland
Greyhounds packed into Royal Farms Arena, as 1,200 students received degrees on Thursday. The speaker was R. Nicholas Burns, director of future diplomacy at Harvard University. Burns invoked the recent unrest in Baltimore as he offered a message for the future.
“What are our hopes for you as you graduate today?” he said, according to a transcript. “That you will protect and defend voting rights and civil rights and end at long last discrimination in our country against African Americans and other minorities. That after Ferguson, New York, Charleston, and now Baltimore, you’ll help us to return peace to our streets and justice to our society. That you find a way to close the income gap by helping the poor and rebuilding the core of our society—the middle class—because the survival of the American dream and the 21st century may depend upon that.”
