David Foster Wallace Commencement Speech Analysis

The books and articles I read this summer taught me to take common topics and change the way I look at them. They covered a wide variety of subjects such as adult life, capital punishment, school shootings, and how my own mind works. They all received critical acclaim and it is obvious why. All the authors cause their readers to question the way they have been looking and going about things. David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech to Kenyon College graduates has received praise because of his ability to break the set pattern of commencement speeches. All are filled with “helpful” advice that are meant to inspire kids to go the distance. To follow their dreams. To not stop in the face of adversity. Wallace speech doesn’t do that. He realizes that the kids have already heard this one too many times, so he talks about something different. He tells them about a mental problem that appears as you go about your adult life. You start to become self-centered. You wonder why you have to sit through …show more content…
Blink is a book about learning to think in “slices”. It uses science to show how judgements made in a short amount of time are correct. He talked to psychologists, scientists, war generals and pretty much every profession that deals with conflict. He learned some astounding things about how the human mind works. The brain can make decisions so quickly, that we don’t even know it’s doing it. It uses intuition and past knowledge to draw conclusions, without us really even thinking about it. That is also the reason why sometimes we can’t explain why we think what we think. We just know. I enjoyed this book because it talked about the brain in a way that was interesting and explained things I always wondered. It talked a lot about things that many people find themselves thinking about like how they could tell if a couple was going to make it or if this dog will be a good addition to the