I know everyone is a bit tired at this point in the semester, and a bit overworked.  I well remember my own time in college, when I was more of a night owl than I am now.  My habit was to read till 3 or 4 in the morning, and then go for a nightly walk in Riverside Park to inscribe into my brain the most valuable elements of what I had read about and thought about and talked about that day -- and also to admire the Hudson and the Palisades and clear my head and remind myself of the universe beyond reading and thinking and talking.  Toward semester’s end those intense conversations with friends and those solitary walks always took longer, because unlike the rest of the semester, which felt like a time of experimentation, the end of the semester felt like a time of commitment.  By commitment I mean making decisions about what had become important to me after a semester of being exposed to so many exquisite new things, and making decisions about what I wanted to confront next.  For me, college changed everything every semester, but it also became part of me, new layers of bedrock.

In this course we have talked about personal identity, cultural encounter, social interaction, economic practice, political principle, military war, and I hope you have felt challenged to think about life from new perspectives -- that’s the advantage of history, and that’s some of the experimentation of life.

But I have also tried my best to leave plenty of room for you to take ownership of your own interpretation of history.  Now is an apt time for you to consider commitments -- what has become important to you, and what will you confront next.

In their own way, all of the documents for this final discussion section do exactly this -- they staked out what was important, and pointed toward an uncertain future. Lincoln’s Gettsyburg address is perhaps the most beautiful in its holding up of old realities and new realities, old ideals and new ideals -- experiment and bedrock.

1.  So, this semester, your new experiments?....




2.  So, at semester’s end, your new layer of bedrock?....




(Thank you for all your efforts in this class this semester; good luck with all your finals; have a peaceful winter break out in the world; and have a challenging next semester....)