Learn English Ed Helms Here is the reason we should define ourselves with BIG subtitles

UVA is truly a magical place founded by

the great dr. Dre and Ice Cube I’m I’m

being told no that is NWA not UVA

apologies my bad your founder of course

is the great Thomas Jefferson who wrote

that he hoped the university would

attract talented students from other

states to come and to quote drink of the

cup of knowledge and students were like

you had me a drink as would be expected

from an institution of this caliber UVA

has its share of famous and highly

successful alumni including Tina Fey

Edgar Allen Poe and New York Jets

offensive lineman D’Brickashaw Ferguson

which means the question what do Tina

Fey Edgar Allen Poe and D’Brickashaw

Ferguson have in common actually has an

answer I did not know that it is such a

treat to be addressing you in front of

the famous UVA rotunda which is now

undergoing its fourth complete overhaul

since its inception making it the Rand

Paul of UNESCO World Heritage Sites the

best thing about Virginia is of course

your state motto Virginia is for lovers

which explains why the mottos of

Maryland West Virginia and North

Carolina are all get a room when I was

invited to speak to you today it was

pretty pretty obvious to me what was

going on so I’m not gonna stand here

with false modesty and pretend I don’t

know the real reason I’m here I get it

this is Virginia and I play the banjo

I grew up here in the south and yet

despite having many friends who attended

this great institution you might be

surprised to know that my strongest tie

to UVA is actually through show business

I was an actor on a sitcom called the

office for many years and in one episode

my acapella obsessed character Andy

Bernard brought his own Aqaba College

acapella group to Dunder Mifflin this

group was played by none other than your

very own Virginia Halawa whose and we

had a great time working together now

here’s a slightly less well-known

factoid the Wardrobe for Andy Bernard

was actually inspired by student attire

at the fox field races interesting side

note Andy Bernard was also supposed to

appear in one season of The Office and

then they were gonna get rid of him but

I’m proud to say that due to the

characters popularity they decided to

bring him back which is why I feel a

special kinship with president Sullivan

who can best be described

I think we can all agree president

Sullivan can best be described as the

Andy Bernard of UVA although I will

point out Andy Bernard was eventually

cancelled along with the rest of the

show so don’t get too cocky I don’t know

if you’re even aware of this but UVA has

had quite an impact on Hollywood

recently it turns out that orange and

blue are the new black and the Virginia

ABC officers were the inspirations for

the paul blart mall cop movies a lot of

people think it’s strange that a school

with 21,000 students should have close

to 15,000 secret societies but I think

it’s fabulous as a freemason and Templar

Knight and member of the Illuminati I

feel very at home here incidentally last

night I either joined a secret society

or I’ve now legally married to a goat in

a purple hood one of my favorite UVA

traditions is of course streaking which

I learned the hard way does not include

attending the Boar’s Head Inn

continental breakfast arbitrarily nude a

mistake I will not be making again or

will I

congratulations to the men’s soccer team

national champions for the seventh year

in a row a great sports tradition here

at UVA although I gotta be honest I feel

like we could work on your mascot a

little you’re the Cavaliers and yet your

mascot doesn’t have a very Cavalier

expression I mean you can’t expect fans

to leap to their feet and cheer when the

mascot looks artsy and world-weary like

an emo Captain Morgan living

paycheck-to-paycheck until his jam band

makes it big tomorrow

having worn the honors of Honor whatever

the hell that is

you will walk away from this University

carrying with you invaluable knowledge

experience and if you’re lucky the

password to your roommates Netflix

account you will also have your esteemed

UVA diploma which I understand is

absurdly large one and a half by two

feet to be exact what in God’s name are

you compensating for and where will you

hang that it’s basically a highway

billboard advertising unemployment and

crippling student loan debt

the good news is for those of you who

majored in comparative literature your

diploma can also serve as a tent for you

to live under but enough about you what

about me

right why am I here well I’m speaking

you to you today because I’m a very

brilliant and important person how do I

know this well because I’m a celebrity

and celebrities are by definition

brilliant and important according to my

agent and of course also deeply humble

according to my publicist but I’d like

to set the record straight because I

feel that celebrities are often

misunderstood

for example people often try to not

define me as callous and pampered living

in a bubble

I am very resentful of this because I’m

actually extremely grounded which is why

I have my vast legal team crush every

last person who would say otherwise

the simple truth is that celebrities are

people too I have my pants put on me one

leg at a time just like everyone else

and I deal with my feelings the same way

you do by burying them deep inside under

gallons of ben & jerry’s while scrolling

through netflix titles never quite

committing to watching anything those

are some ways people try to define me

here are some ways that people are

trying to define you you are Millennials

which is the biggest generation in US

history I thought it was hard for me to

find a job it’s gonna be like The Hunger

Games out there for you guys

they say Millennials are uninterested in

the burden of ownership and prefer to be

part of the sharing economy that you’re

exercising more eating right and using

apps and data to track your health

they say you use built-in sonar to see

in the dark and that your wings have

tiny glands that produce a tawny almost

tobacco like musk when you’re frightened

some of these labels might fit others

seem like they might apply more to bats

the last one in particular but at best

these generation descriptors are just an

absurd reduction so take note as you go

out in the world you’ll find that people

are always quick to define you to

pigeonhole you to whittle you down to

their preconceived notions which brings

me to my point never let others define

you define yourselves in 1997 Apple

computers was seen as a as well past its

peak and the prognosis was dire in

October of that year Dell Computer CEO

Michael Dell was asked what would you do

if you were Steve Jobs he said what

would I do i jut Apple down and give the

money back to the shareholders well do

me a favor reach into your pocket take

out your Dell phones and tweet that

in 1991 I was applying to colleges and

my father suggested Vanderbilt after all

he had gone there so had my mom it’s a

great school and maybe after that I

could go to law school just like he did

and then join a law firm in Atlanta

wouldn’t that be great well no not

really because my idea of being a lawyer

is being in a John Grisham movie this

was a major crossroads for me a moment

where I needed to define myself and

thank God I did I decided to attend a

small arts school Oberlin College in

Ohio where I joined up with some

bluegrass pickers and some improv comedy

nerds and those two things have shaped

my life more than just about anything

else

in 2008 I had spent close to five

wonderful years on The Daily Show as a

fake news correspondent I wanted to act

more to do other things but the TV

community had already defined me he’s

not an actor he just does fake news so I

threw myself into a short film a friend

was putting together and we worked our

asses off on it when that film landed on

the office showrunner Greg Daniels desk

he saw me on my terms and suddenly I was

in consideration for one of my favorite

TV shows now I know the UVA community

has some experience with being defined

by outsiders it has been said that a

rolling stone gathers no moss I would

add that sometimes a rolling stone also

gathers no verifiable facts or even the

tiniest morsels of journalistic

integrity

Rolling Stone tried to define you this

year as a result not only was this

community thrown deep into turmoil but

the incredibly important struggle to

address sexual violence on campuses

nationwide was suddenly more confusing

than ever and needlessly setback and

sadly rolling stones rushed to define is

just the tip of the iceberg we see it

everywhere in the media less than three

weeks ago in Baltimore was erupting in

violence

erin burnett on CNN argued that a local

resident insisting the argued with a

local resident insisting the rioters be

defined as thugs Wolf Blitzer did the

same thing over on Fox News reporter

Nick Vitter prattled on about how

violent the people of Baltimore were but

City Councilman Nick Mosby wouldn’t have

it in @xg tech in a testy exchange he

defied his own community saying this is

about the social economics of poor urban

America these young guys are frustrated

they’re upset and unfortunately they’re

displaying it in a very destructive

manner when folks are undereducated

unfortunately they don’t have the same

intellectual voice to express to express

it in the way other people do and that’s

what we see through the violence of

today that’s a much bigger more complex

analysis and it strikes me as the real

news story either way the reductive

labels aren’t helping and we better stop

applying them because there are a lot of

Americans in a lot of pain those riots

weren’t happening in Kiev or Benghazi

they happened a mighty pleasant

three-hour drive from right here so does

all of this mean Erin Burnett and Wolf

Blitzer bad people I don’t think so

we’re all guilty of this how many times

do we label someone with our first

impressions only to be proven wrong the

tattooed motorcycle guy who turns out to

be a teddy bear the buttoned-up

co-worker who actually knows how to

party or the mousy librarian who takes

off her glasses to reveal she’s a

bloodthirsty alien from a distant galaxy

we try to define others with simple

labels because it makes the world easier

to understand behavioral economist and

Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman explained

this in his amazing book Thinking Fast

and Slow in which he wrote when faced

with a difficult question we often

answer an easier one instead usually

without noticing the substitution so

clearly other people are really bad at

defining us but sometimes these can also

be great opportunities to examine and

learn about ourselves

this may sound contradictory but f scott

Fitzgerald famously said the test of a

first-rate intelligence is the ability

to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at

the same time and still retain the

ability to function and that’s precisely

what all of you did this community

didn’t fall for the fallacy that just

because rolling stone was wrong

everything here must be perfectly peachy

you all had the courage to understand

you can be outraged at rolling stone and

still ask yourselves some hard questions

when sexual violence does occur in our

community do we have the best possible

protocols and resources available to our

students and UVA is charging forward to

answer those questions and you should be

proud of that

questioning something doesn’t mean you

repudiate it to the contrary we should

question most the ideas and institutions

we cherish most we can question a

sitting president without disrespecting

the office we can question our foreign

policy without while still supporting

our troops we can celebrate the honor

and courage of our dedicated police

while questioning some of their tactics

and of course we can love our parents

and respect their desires while charting

our own courses

sorry moms and dads but maybe that’s a

good one for you to hear too it doesn’t

matter where you fall on the ideological

spectrum what matters is that you

approach the world with humility

intellectual honesty and an ongoing

effort to understand the whole picture

if you need any more reason to be humble

there’s a terrifying new study out by

Yale Law Professor Dan kahan and his

colleagues that paints a very scary

picture of how our minds work I suggest

looking it up but the gist of it is that

very smart people are confounded by very

simple math problems when the results of

the math problem challenged their

politics in other words our beliefs make

us irrational many of our most brilliant

thinkers have had shocking blind spots

spaces where they chose to ignore what

was right in front of them our founding

fathers were obsessed with liberty and

yet at the same time they owned slaves

we can marvel at how blind they were but

maybe we should also ask ourselves where

are our blind spots today which of our

positions will look equally absurd to

generations to come what are we

rationalizing or refusing to see in you

are not so smart

author David McCraney points out there

is a growing body of work coming out of

psychology and cognitive science that

says you have no clue why you act the

way you do choose the things you choose

or think the thoughts you think that is

terrifying

apparently we fight to stay idiots

because the more we know and understand

the more we realize the world is just a

confounding infuriating place so what

now do we give up give into nihilistic

defeatism just throw our hands up and

say oh well I guess I’m an idiot and the

world’s a mess

time for some Ben & Jerry’s and Netflix

hell no

realize that this is a wonderful gift of

greater self awareness and self

knowledge it’s not depressing it’s

liberating pain suffering and ignorance

make no sense but guess what not either

do Beauty compassion and love they’re

two halves of the same pomegranate and

whichever side you decide to chop dot

down on will define who you are remember

what F scott Fitzgerald said whoa

apparently Georgia Tech doesn’t like

this speech

[Applause]

where were we

it was really building momentum wasn’t

it

oh yes the pomegranate they’re two

halves of the same pomegranate and

whichever side you decide to chomp down

on will define who you are remember what

F scott Fitzgerald said well this is the

mother of all opposing ideas for you to

hold in your head at the same time and

still function here are a few more the

world is not a meritocracy but merit

still matters the world isn’t fair but

being fair still matters the world is

unkind but being kind it still matters

perhaps more than anything we can’t

eliminate human nature from humanity so

we must embrace it accept ourselves the

good the bad our brilliance and our

ignorance and simply strive to improve

David Brooks in a wonderful New York

Times column titled the moral bucket

list referred to this process as

stumbling he said the Stumbler doesn’t

build her life by being better than

others but by being better than she used

to be Ernest Hemingway put it another

way there is nothing noble and being

superior to your fellow men true

nobility lies in being superior to your

former self even Matthew McConaughey

weighed in on this in his Oscar

acceptance speech for Dallas buyers club

he said a person came to me and said

who’s your hero and I said it’s me in

ten years now the media had a field day

with this they said he’s his own hero

what a narcissist but that that’s way

off base that that’s actually a

beautiful idea he was defining who he

wanted to be and then chasing after it

my compliments to Marco Rubio now after

digging deep I realized that the person

I really wanted to be is Matthew

McConaughey I mean come on that Texas

charisma just washes over you like warm

pancake syrup who do you want to be you

are going to be defined whether you like

it or not the question is will you let

others do it for you or will you define

yourselves and remember you can’t just

define yourselves with words you can’t

write it in a journal or say it out loud

I am a wonderful person with exceptional

character and a vaguely British accent

no that does not cut it we define

ourselves by our actions convictions and

responses to the world around us and by

the degree to which we take full

responsibility for our lives now

whatever your backgrounds and wherever

you’re headed you all have two things in

common right now you are graduating with

a phenomenal education and you are young

these two things combine to give you

immense power they say with great power

comes great responsibility

not true responsibility is entirely

optional you can coast if you want to

but don’t you dare coast ladies and

gentlemen of the university of virginia

class of 2015 each and every one of you

has a vibrant courageous soul and a

depth of power creativity and wisdom you

are only just beginning to tap into that

is your light it is the light within you

and you have to let it shine because

when you do I promise it will illuminate

you your family your friends your

community your country and the entire

world

don’t let that light die every day wake

up and say to yourself this little light

of mine I’m gonna let it shine

this little light of mine I’m gonna let

it shine this little light of mine I’m

gonna let it shine this little light of

mine I’m gonna let it shine this little

light of mine I’m gonna let it shine let

it shine let it shine let it shine

everywhere I go I’m gonna let it shine

whoa everywhere I go

I’m gonna let it shine everywhere I go

I’m gonna let it shine let it shine let

it shine

little light of mine I’m gonna let it

shine this little light of mine I’m

gonna let it shine

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]

I’m gonna

[Music]

[Applause]