You're Not Special...

I have become, of late, a reluctant devotee of YouTube. Increasingly I have found myself drawn to the Web-based video link as a result of friends and acquaintances who breathlessly urge me to view the “latest YouTube entry that has gone viral.” It took me more time than it should have to realize that the term “gone viral” was a metaphor for a rapidly expanding number of on-line viewers. The problem (for me) with YouTube is its use of an algorithm which predicts what similar types of videos might interest the viewer and then lines them up on the right side of the computer screen like obedient Londoners cueing up for the Piccadilly Circus bus. And, like a British bus cue steadily advancing to the moment of boarding, I find myself clicking on each successive link in the vain hope that I will get closer to the penultimate experience of knowing everything there is to know about the original video which brought me to the web site in the first place.


Which is why I was somewhat reluctant to access YouTube (once again, at the recommendation of a friend) to view a video entitled:”You’re Not Special,” a speech given by Wellesley High School teacher, David McCullough, Jr. to the Class of 2012. I imagined the thousands (if not millions) of graduation speeches videotaped and uploaded to YouTube, whose algorithm would park them to the right side of my computer screen. I feared that I would be unable to resist the temptation to click through these options and find myself hopelessly lost in cyberspace.

Fortunately, I was so captivated by McCullough’s talk that I successfully resisted the urge to make a long march through the cyber-world of commencement speeches. To understand why, you need to know that Wellesley High School was ranked 70th in the US News and World Report rating of public secondary schools, that 100% of its graduates go on to higher education; that it is situated within a community of 27,000 souls with no less than four colleges located within its city limits; and the median family income is north of $150,000.

So you can appreciate how intrigued I was by the concept of the “You’re not special” speech to a high school community which can be forgiven if they take for granted their privileged position within the Boston Metropolitan area. This is how McCullough frames Wellesley students’ lack of special-ness:

Across the country no fewer than 3.2 million seniors are graduating from more than 37,000 high schools. That’s 37,000 valedictorians…37,000 class presidents…92,000 harmonizing altos…340,000 swaggering jocks…

So think about this: even if you’re one in a million, on a planet of 6.8 billion that means there are nearly 7,000 people just like you.

Having set the stage for the commonality of high school graduates, he then delivers the punch line:

You see, if everyone is special, then no one is. If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless.

When thinking about others, or others’ children, we nod in agreement about the unassailable truth of his claim that, “if everyone is special, then no one is”…unless, of course, when considering ourselves and our children.
On a related note, I consider a non-issue in the current presidential election campaign, “American Exceptionalism,” to be a terrific example of this dynamic, writ large. If we are exceptional - “special” in McCullough’s nomenclature, then, America must be exceptional (special). I can’t think of a better way to derail voters’ consideration of the pressing issues confronting the country at this point in time then to take McCullough’s sardonic commentary about teenagers and apply it to a nation of 300 million people on a planet of 6.8 billion. Yet we persist in accepting this myth about ourselves, our children, and our nation. Here’s how McCullough describes this myth:

…we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement. We have come to see them as the point - and we’re happy to compromise standards or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole. No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it…Now it’s “So what does this get me?” As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and, building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of Guatemalans.

I’d like to claim that La Salle is immune to this dynamic of what I’ll call “teenage exceptionalism,” but the fact of the matter is we’re not. We’re human, riddled with all of the same temptations which afflict all of humanity. Parents’ hopes, dreams and fears are just as real here at La Salle as they are at Wellesley High School; and we all succumb to the desire to protect ourselves and our children from the all too frightening realities of the world which surrounds us.

I would be remiss, however, if I didn’t inject a note of hope and optimism which, I believe, characterizes the world of La Salle. Yes, like the parents, teachers and students of Wellesley High School, we aspire to be “special” here at La Salle. And, yes, as McCullough lays bare, we grasp - as any human would - onto whatever “brass ring” will give us, and our children, a “leg up” in this “dog-eat-dog” world. But I’d like to think that, at La Salle, parents, teachers and students recognize that we come together for all of the same humanity-inflected reasons that McCullough satirizes in his “You’re not special” speech; and because we believe that to be special means to be grateful; and to be grateful means to give back. This is the essence of the School’s motto:

Learn   Serve   Lead

And our motto compels us to recognize - and embrace - the fundamental point of McCullough’s “You’re not special speech”:

The sweetest joys of life come only with the recognition that you’re not special;

because everyone is.

In May we celebrated the accomplishments of La Salle’s recently graduated Class of 2012. They didn’t experience McCullough’s “You’re not special” commencement address. I’d like to think it’s because they didn’t need to.