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What Are You Going To Do
With It?
Commencement Address, August 2, 2013
Creig Hoyt, SFGI10
Dean Sterling, Director Carl, esteemed faculty, staff, fellow
graduates of the Institute and friends. I am deeply honored to give
this commencement address. As a recent graduate of the Eastern
Classics program I remain in awe of the uncompromising
commitment of St John’s College to engage in a long-term
community discourse in order to glean meaning and clarity from
the writings of the world’s great thinkers. I also am mindful that
some of the tutors who sit here today on the podium have given
this address at previous graduation ceremonies. That I do not
possess their depth of knowledge of the great writings you have
studied is obvious. Therefore, it would be inappropriate for me to
base my presentation on an analysis of one or some of the
thinkers you have read here.
Moreover, you can hardly expect to receive wise career
counseling from one who stumbled from a flirtation with music to
philosophy in undergraduate school, who became enamored by
neuroscience in medical school primarily because of the beauty of
the brain’s organizational structure, but who fled from a career as
a neurologist because it involved caring for patients I could not
cure and finally stumbled into a rewarding career as an
ophthalmologist specializing in infant visual problems: rewarding
not because the problems primarily involved the visual brain but
because I discovered I loved caring for children despite an
intense dislike of pediatrics in medical school. I hope that by
offering you some personal reflections on the ongoing impact that
�my St John’s education has had on my life and work I will provide
you some useful reflections.
Today we salute these new graduates of the Graduate
Institute. We know the rigor involved in the academic programs
they have completed. We recognize and admire their fortitude and
considerable academic accomplishments. Today is a day of
celebration not only for them but for all of us who deeply care
about the uncompromising scholarly traditions and demands of
this extraordinary college. So let me speak for all us when I say to
the new graduates, “Yours is a noteworthy accomplishment at a
unique institute of higher learning. You have much to be proud of.
Bravo”.
Ok, now let’s get serious. “What are you going to do with it?”
Those were the exact words of my ninety-four year old mother
four years ago when I informed her that I hoped to be a student in
the Graduate Institute. These were not the words of
encouragement a son craves. Adding insult to injury, this was the
first time in my educational wanderings that I was not seeking any
parental financial assistance. So what did she have to lose in
offering her moral support? You would have thought a woman
who lived with a single abiding passion during her 70’s and 80’sto win as many tango competitions as possible- would have
embraced the novelty of her aging son’s desire to become a fulltime student in an area about which he knew absolutely nothing.
What was I going to do with it? I was not even certain I could
qualify for the program let alone complete it. I no longer recall
what attempts at justification I mumbled to her, but the notion that
my adventure was to be judged by what I might “do with it”
irritated me. It reminded me of European colleagues who find it
insulting that the first question Americans ask on meeting them is
“what do you do?” In the remainder of my talk I will reflect on the
�primacy of the notion that one’s education is to be judged by what
one can “do” with it.
Regrettably, the sentiments expressed by my mother have been
heard by all of you in many different guises, all of them cloaked
and protected by the seemingly impervious provenance of real life
experience and practical counsel: “What kind of job can you get
with that degree?”, “Wouldn’t computer science be more
sensible?”, “Can you justify the cost for something so
impractical?” “No one studies humanities anymore!”
No one doubts that it is prudent and wise to carefully consider and
reconsider each step in one’s educational journey. Accumulating
unreasonable amounts of school-related debt can restrict future
life choices. Some professional degrees no longer guarantee an
interesting and well-compensated career: this has become a
serious concern for many of our law schools. Other career
choices apparently require a carefully structured path consisting
primarily of educational prerequisites that permits little time for
exploring what might be simply interesting or enlightening. Note
that I said, “apparently require”. In the case of medical schools
there are some educational prerequisites that absolutely must be
completed, but I can assure you that we who are involved in
medical education are always looking for applicants who are not
only capable of completing the scientific studies in our medical
curriculum, but who also bring to medicine unique educational
and work experiences.
Even though I intensely dislike her question can I now provide my
mother a satisfactory answer? Can I explain in what ways my St
John’s experience has changed not only how I think but what I
do? Undoubtedly, a startling result of my graduate study at St
John’s is that instead of remaining permanently retired I have
resumed my position on the faculty of UCSF Medical School
albeit on a part-time basis and without any administrative duties.
�Why? In no small part because St John’s re-energized my
intellectual curiosity after a long period of time when my career
had become dominated by all-consuming administrative duties
that left no time for the pursuit of my research and creative
activities. I realized I wanted to spend a few more years in the
University concentrating on teaching and completing several
unfinished research and writing projects. It also became clear to
me that I missed caring for children and their parents. I agree with
the Dalai Lama who in his commencement address at Tulane
University this year said, “A pathway toward a meaningful life lies
in caring for other people”. I have returned to what I know how to
do- caring for vision problems in children.
Perhaps surprising to some of you, my St John’s experience
stimulated new research interests that I believe I can study with
the assistance of my UCSF colleagues. Those many seminars on
Buddhism radically disturbed my previously unchallenged notions
concerning certain aspects of what we mean by “perception” and
“cognition”. In particular, I think the techniques of neuroscience
may provide an interesting framework with which to explore the
limitations and unreliability of sensory perceptions.
I am currently studying unusual visual percepts that occur in many
adult patients who experience visual loss. I appreciate that no
Johnnie wants to hear an oversimplified bottom line statement
without first hearing all the details that lead to that conclusion, but
our time today is short. Therefore, let me simply summarize some
preliminary impressions and conclusions. It seems that the
inherently high run rate of the brain does not allow it to turn off or
suppress higher centers when peripheral sensory input is denied
it. In the case of some visually impaired patients the brain will
create a recognizable formed visual image even when the patient
cannot process visual input in the eyes due to pathological
changes such as macular degeneration. This can be profoundly
�unnerving for the patient who is already coping with a serious
visual impairment. From the point of view of the student of
Buddhist thought the only reassuring aspect of this phenomenon
is that the patients are fully aware that the created image is false
although they are often afraid to talk about it for fear that the
listener will conclude they are demented or mentally ill.
Yet, more important than this example of a specific research
question that was initiated and nurtured by my St John’s
experience I would like to consider the learning skills that I and all
students acquire on this campus. Numerous newspaper articles
and news broadcasts have recently addressed the question of
whether American colleges and universities are adequately
preparing students for future employment in a rapidly changing
marketplace.
In a recently published special report of The Chronicle of Higher
Education and American Public Media’s Marketplace half of the
employers in the study reported that they had trouble finding
qualified recent graduates. Most of you will not be surprised by
this jeremiad; you have undoubtedly heard or read similar
complaints. What is noteworthy about this study is that
responding employers were not speaking of deficiencies in
specific educational training or technical skills. Their complaints
were more fundamental: they insisted that the primary obstacles
were that the graduates were deficient in essential core skills. I
quote from the New York Times, dated June 29, 2013: “When it
comes to the skills most needed by employers, job candidates are
lacking most in written and oral communication skills, adaptability
and managing multiple priorities, and making decisions and
problem solving.” In this same article a vice-president of a human
resource organization was even more explicit when he said,
“young employees are very good at finding information, but not as
good at putting that information into context.”
�If we believe these criticisms accurately describe the major
obstacles facing recent college graduates seeking employment,
how are St John’s graduates likely to fare in their attempts?
Perhaps, the most straightforward way to assess this is to ask,
“What does St John’s do best?” My evaluation will be from a
student’s point view and I am aware that some of you may feel I
am oversimplifying the issues. Nevertheless, I think St John’s
prepares students to do exactly what these critics claim today’s
young employees cannot do well. In my experience, the
keystones of the St John’s educational process are learning how
to:
1. read carefully and critically some of the most challenging
literature, and
2. express and defend one’s ideas clearly in a seminar, but also
3. evaluate and integrate the conversations of other students and
tutors into one’s understanding of the problems under
discussion.
I thought I was a reasonably skilled reader until I enrolled here. I
was adept in my professional reading and could quickly find and
prioritize the central issues in a reading a scientific paper. I
successfully edited an international ophthalmology journal that
required me to read and review a few thousand manuscripts a
year. I even imagined myself to be reasonably “well read” outside
my medical field of expertise. Naively, I was not particularly
perturbed by the breadth and length of the reading list sent to me
by the Graduate Institute prior to my enrollment. I was in for a
rude awakening. It became apparent in early seminars how many
details, subtleties and inferences I routinely missed in my
readings. Learning how to be a more nuanced reader was a slow
process and that process continues.
Yet, it is the uniqueness and central importance of the St John’s
seminar that I especially want to highlight and examine. I have
�attended many seminars as a student in undergraduate school
and medical school and as a faculty member of a medical school.
When I came to St John’s I was confident that I understood the
dynamics of a successful seminar and how to function effectively
in it. I was wrong, at least in regards to what was expected here. I
had never been in a situation where my education depended
primarily on the quality of thinking and conversation of my
classmates. My classmates weren’t my competition but rather
they were my teachers. I was amazed by the ability of some of my
classmates to penetrate and analyze texts that appeared to me to
be nothing less than incomprehensible. In particular, I am
recalling certain Vedic texts, Yoga sutras and Nagajura’s notions
of truth, but there were plenty of other readings that I found more
perplexing than enlightening. I remain indebted to my classmates
for so much of what I learned here. I still seek the advice of
several of them about their recommendations for further reading.
Of course, one quickly learns that different skills are brought by
various classmates to the seminars. A small cadre of my
classmates seemed to be able to hold forth on any topic and at
least sound informed and thoughtful. Others enjoyed slowly
mulling over the arguments of other classmates and only adding
an occasional insight or critique and then quickly retreating once
again to the role of thoughtful observer. However, some of this
latter group proved to be essential in keeping conversations
moving forward and exploring avenues of thought untested by the
rest of us. That at times some classmates substituted a bit of
blarney masquerading as insight should surprise no one. Indeed,
one of the endearing features of a St John’s seminar is its
tolerance of what might be called Brownian thinking and even the
occasional complete collapse of group focus resulting in an
unintentional homage to Jabberwocky. A St John’s graduate’s
ability to negotiate through the verbiage of a two hour seminar
�and condense the essential elements of it into a few coherent
sentences is a skill that any potential employer should prize.
Having returned to the clinical practice of medicine I now realize
how invaluable the listening skills that I learned at St John’s are in
my work. Yes, they are helpful in the give and take with student
physicians and in navigating the still far too frequent committee
meetings. More importantly they are critical in the most essential
aspect in caring for a patient: obtaining a history of the patient’s
illness. It may seem counterintuitive to you, but the medical
history obtained from a patient is usually far more important in
establishing the correct diagnosis than the physical examination
or laboratory testing. I remember a wise senior professor of
medicine reassuring me when I was nervous 3rd year medical
student that history taking would be the most difficult skill I
needed to learn in order to be a good physician. Why is this true?
A patient comes to a doctor’s office with a specific complaint: in
most fields of medicine it is pain or physical discomfort but in
ophthalmology it is usually visual loss. The problem is to identify
the cause of the pain or visual loss. The art of history taking is to
question a patient in such a way that they provide the clues to
lead you to the correct diagnosis. This involves ignoring a lot of
the conversation that the patient deems essential but that you
judge to be extraneous or even misleading and diverting. On the
other hand, it is sometimes vital to focus on a seemingly trivial bit
of information that ultimately points you directly to the diagnosis.
Shortly after I returned to clinical practice I was asked to see a
young teenage girl who had suddenly become blind in one eye as
the result of bleeding within the eye. Her referring
ophthalmologists were unable to identify a cause for the bleeding.
Her blood count and clotting studies were normal. She was not a
diabetic. She denied experiencing a blow to the eye. She and her
parents were extremely nervous because of the understandable
�fear that she might become blind in both eyes. I proposed that we
start from the beginning and have her describe how this problem
had come about. She grew frustrated with my suggestion since
she had told her story several times to numerous doctors. She
finally agreed and in a disgusted tone of voice said, “It is simple. It
was the end of my vacation and I woke up one morning and could
not see out of my right eye.” I thought for a moment and then
asked her where she had gone on her vacation. When she said
she had traveled to East Africa a new list of possible diagnoses
entered the picture. After surgical removal of the blood in her eye
we were able to identify a bot fly larva in the retina that
subsequently was destroyed with a laser. I confess I am not
certain why I asked her where she had gone on her vacation
except it seemed to be the most important aspect of her
statement. Moreover, she and her family were extremely nervous
so I had to say something. I often finding myself pondering how
much a St John’s education prior to my medical training would
have improved my skills as a physician.
In concluding these remarks I would like to tell you a story that I
believe highlights the breadth of options that your St John’s
education provides you. When I was chair of our department of
ophthalmology I was anxious to expand our research activities. I
knew that a very innovative retinal surgeon was unhappy in the
university where he was employed. He was working on an
exciting prototype of a retinal prosthesis that could be implanted
directly in the retina of blind patients. I thought he would be an
outstanding addition to our department. I called him and asked
him if he might be interested in joining our faculty. After several
conversations it became apparent that both he and his wife were
excited about the possibility of relocating to the Bay Area. Yet, I
could not make a formal offer to this internationally famous retinal
surgeon until he gave a research lecture not only to the clinicians
�but also the basic scientists in our department. I knew this
potentially might be a deal breaker.
In the past 30 years the top medical schools in the country have
become major biomedical research centers and not simply
professional schools were future physicians are trained. In many
departments basic scientists now outnumber the clinicians. In our
medical school the standing of basic scientists has been further
enhanced by the fact that five Nobel Prizes in Medicine and
Physiology have been awarded to UCSF basic scientists since
1989. We would need to convince our basic scientists, a tough
audience, that this retinal surgeon was qualified to join the UCSF
faculty.
To highlight our problem let me say that as a clinician I see basic
scientists as having much in common with Sanskrit grammar.
They love the passive voice especially in journal articles- “A new
gene has been discovered” or “The sample was divided into equal
aliquots”. New discoveries are often named with mind-numbing
compound nouns- proto-oncogene, macrosquare- wave jerks, or
proximity-luminance covariation. I must admit that most basic
scientists would respond by asserting that clinicians lack the
precision and concern for detail so characteristic of Sanskrit texts.
The tension between these two faculty groups is never more
apparent than in research seminars. I discussed this issue with
my new faculty candidate but he assured me he could deal with it.
You can imagine how stunned I was when he began his research
seminar with this story: “A surgeon is walking beside a river when
he suddenly sees a man struggling as he is swept down river. The
surgeon jumps into the river, swims to the man and grabs him
under the chin and pulls him to shore. A few minutes later the
surgeon while continuing his journey up river hears the calls of
two men who are drowning in the turbulent river. The surgeon,
being a man of action, jumps into the river, swims to the two men
�and holds one with his right arm and the other with the left and
drags them to safety. A few minutes later the surgeon resumes
his walk upstream but almost immediately sees three men being
swept downstream in the river. He jumps in the river but realizes
he is unable to pull all three of them to the shore. He looks up and
sees a basic scientist walking upstream on the other side of the
river. The surgeon calls out to the basic scientist and pleads with
him to jump in the river and help with the rescue effort. The basic
scientist replies, ‘No, I am going to walk upstream and see who is
throwing these guys in the river.’”
What are you going to do with it- your St John’s education? No
doubt some of you firmly believe you have your future planned out
in detail; others of you in a candid moment might admit you
haven’t a clue. For myself, I like to think that at St John’s I learned
to swim more effectively while also being encouraged to walk up
river more often. I envy the many opportunities that await all of
you. Congratulations again. There are great adventures and
challenges ahead. What will you do with them? Ah, that will be an
interesting story.
Dr. Hoyt received his bachelor’s degree from Amherst college,
and his MD from Cornell University Medical College; he served as
Intern in Medicine at Stanford University and as a Resident on
Neurology and then in Opthalmology at University of Californa in
San Francisco. He has served as a flight surgeon in the US Navy,
as a lecturer at the University of Sydney, and from 1978 to the
present he has practiced medicine, taught, and performed
research at at the University of California, San Francisco, where
he is currently Emeritus Professor and Chair of the Department of
Opthalmology. He has authored over 170 peer reviewed scientific
articles, among other publications. In 2010 he received his Master
of Arts in Eastern Classics from St. John’s College. A classmate
reported that he was an anchor of the group, widely respected by
�his fellow students. He is now a member of the Presidents’
Council of St. John’s College.
�
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Commencement Programs and Addresses
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College Greenfield Library
Description
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Addresses given at commencement and programs of events related to, and including, the annual commencement ceremonies at St. John's College. Includes both the undergraduate and Graduate Institute commencements. <br /><br />The College Archives holds programs and/or addresses for the following years:<br />
<ul>
<li>1796</li>
<li>1835-1836</li>
<li>1842</li>
<li>1852</li>
<li>1856-1857</li>
<li>1870</li>
<li>1878</li>
<li>1880</li>
<li>1890</li>
<li>1893</li>
<li>1895</li>
<li>1897</li>
<li>1907</li>
<li>1910-1918</li>
<li>1920-1924</li>
<li>1928-1929</li>
<li>1932</li>
<li>1936-1937</li>
<li>1939-1945</li>
<li>1947-present </li>
</ul>
Click on <strong><a title="Commencement Programs and Addresses" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=18&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the Commencement Programs and Addresses Collection</a></strong> to view and sort all items in the collection.
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commencementprograms
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12 pages
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Hoyt, Creig
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Commencement Address, Graduate Institute, Summer 2013
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2013-08-02
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Annapolis_GI_Summer_2013_Commencement
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Annapolis, MD
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St. John's College
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English
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text
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pdf
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Typescript of the commencement address for the Graduate Institute given by Creig Hoyt at the end of the Spring 2013 semester in Annapolis, MD.
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St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online.
Commencement
Graduate Institute
Tutors
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