Friends, this week you are in for a treat.
WARNING: this preamble is a two-fer — as in two messages for the price of one.
Buckle up, it’s a story and you are in for a ride….
So you may recall that about two months ago I mentioned here that, after almost 4 years going part-time while working, my wife had completed her MBA.
We discussed the importance of investing in yourself and persisting when things get tough — and in her case, it was balancing family (which had multiple teenagers and a third grader when she started her post-graduate journey), work, the passing of her father and disruptions caused by COVID.
There were many times along the way when my wife understandably felt overwhelmed and wanted to quit or put things on a long hiatus. It took some coaxing, some courage and a few pep talks to keep the momentum going — but she did it.
One of the things I would say to her when things got tough was:
“Just think about how far you have come and how close you are to the finish….Picture yourself in your cap and gown…imagine the feeling you will have when they are calling your name at the ceremony.”
I recall saying this to my wife on more than occasion — I knew that vision she created in her mind and me reminding her of the feeling of accomplishment she would experience at the end was just the encouragement she needed to get back on track.
Fast forward to this past week. The day she had dreamt about for four years was here. It was the commencement ceremony for her graduate school.
The cap and gown had been ordered. The tickets had been reserved. We took time off from work and arranged for our youngest to be dismissed early from school.
My wife woke up that day as excited as I had ever seen her.
She talked nonstop on the ride to the historic arena where the ceremony was to take place, going over details of the procession, where they were going to be entering, where they were going to be exiting, who was going to be speaking and reminded us multiple times which section would be optimal for us to see her when she handed the announcer the piece of paper with her full name on it and crossed the stage to shake the hand of of the dean.
With a final round of hugs we left my wife with her fellow graduates and went to find our directed section. I made sure I texted her with a view from our seat — just to confirm, without a shadow of a doubt, that we chose our seats wisely.
I got a 👍 text just as they started to enter the arena. We were good to go.
It was a fairly quick proceeding — in fact, Friends, you should all hope that every commencement ceremony you ever attend is this tightly done. We got through speeches in about 20 minutes.
All that was left was the reading of the names and the handshakes.
An important thing to note: my wife’s school has a pretty broad international appeal, and the vast majority of the 400+ participants in the ceremony, as evidenced by the small flags many carried and adornments on their caps and gowns, reflected this diversity.
As the first set of graduates approached the announcer, handed them the card with their names on it, and heard their names called, it was apparent that there would be few “John Smiths” or “Jane Joneses” walking that day.
The man announcing the names was clearly flustered.
Graduate after graduate, he struggled to get the proper pronunciations out of his mouth — even though the participants had been instructed to provide phonetic spellings if needed.
Then came my wife.
From our seats in Section 6 you could tell she was both excited and nervous….or maybe also needed to pee…
She handed her piece of paper to the announcer…the moment she had envisioned and that had gotten her through thick and thin for over four years was finally here….we were in the perfect viewing spot and had our cameras ready…..
“Kill…Killaney???…..Mordimeer….FrannKALE”
The announcer completely butchers her name.
I mean not even close. Messed up the pronunciation of her first, middle AND last name….so much so that, in the moment, I honestly thought he was announcing someone else….I missed the handshake with the dean….
Holy 💩 she is going to kill me.
Our stunned family was able to snap out of it in time to give a loud “WHOOP!” just as my wife exited the stage area. And just like that, she returned to her seat.
For the next 30 minutes, we sat there and listened to the announcer painfully grind through the annihilation of the remaining 300 names he was given.
My oldest son remarked that the whole production reminded him of that popular Key and Peele “Substitute Teacher” sketch….and he was not far off.
“Kicking myself that I didn’t phonetically spell out my name. Didn’t think I needed to….” my wife texted me from her seat.
She was a little disappointed, but still proud of herself and what she had accomplished. It can’t be taken away from her. The celebratory moment was just not how she had envisioned or hoped it would be. And when she looks back on the day, unfortunately it will be something she will always remember.
While it won’t change the fact that she did something good for herself, it will have an impact on how she felt about the ceremony that she had looked forward to attending for four years. This is all because of one very simple thing:
The school didn’t care to get her name right.
Herein lies the first lesson of the day — people’s names matter.
You are given a name moments after you are born.
It is something you hear every single day of your life — it is meaningful to you and your family. You and people closest to you then spend countless hours over the course of your days crafting the ideals for which that name stands. Our names are something that inherently each of us want to be good and take pride in saying and hearing.
Think about it. Each of the 400+ people at that ceremony (and their families) came to the arena to hear their names read out loud — whether those names were originally from the US, Canada, France, India or China.
They had already paid their tuition. They went to all of the classes. They had already gotten their diploma.
They didn’t need to be there.
But they chose to attend the ceremony on that day not to hear the dean or faculty speak, but because they all spent hours adding a major accomplishment to the story behind their name. Hearing their names called was an extremely meaningful milestone to them.
And someone did not care nor put enough thought into the fact that pronouncing someone’s name correctly matters. You can rationalize it and say it was a small detail — I say it was the MOST IMPORTANT detail of all!
It’s one thing if it’s a barista announcing it so you can pick up a $4 coffee….it’s another if it is being called out after have you dedicated a significant portion of your life (and for most people, significant dollars) to something important to you….or if John Travolta is calling you Adele Dazeem….
It was more important than how long the ceremony was, what the dean or guest speaker said or in which section the families sat.
Don’t ever take it for granted — people’s names matter….
The family group chat then lit up with comments — all of the kids were congratulating their mother for her accomplishment. The snarky comments also started to roll in regarding the 💩 show of the name reading.
“Bro was trying to do too much.” was the only thoughts our thirteen year old son lent to the discussion.
It was probably the wisest observation made in the aftermath of The Boston Commencement Name Massacre.
The announcer WAS trying to do too much.
Therein lies the second lesson — don’t overcomplicate things when you don’t need to.
Obviously the announcer had been prepped that there were going to be a lot of international names that would likely be difficult to pronounce. It may have even been built up as a thing — and, as a result, it was clear that the guy was struggling to complete the task.
But man, he made it harder on himself than necessary. All he had to do was read what was on the card in front of him. Or have someone pull him aside and remind him of the wise words my 13 year old son said.
In my wife’s case, her name may not have been “Jane Jones” but it certainly was not exotic or crazy — if he just read the card without making it bigger than it was, he would have gotten it right.
We all do this….we can all make things more complicated than they need to be. Put an unnecessary emphasis on a syllable here, add a phantom tilde there.
This was a reminder to keep things simple. Keep calm and carry on. Just read the words that are on the card in front of you. Play it straight.
Don’t try to do too much. You hardly ever need to do too much.
Just read the name on the damn card, bro….
Trust me, you don’t want to make newly minted MBA Kill-Killaney angry….you won’t like her when she is angry….she is for real…you better check yourself…
XOXO
Dave
And now a few things to make you smarter…
Quick visualization of the countries with the most billionaires in 2024, sourced from the annual Hurun Global Rich list. A country and city aggregate is also available here.
“Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign the contract. If you don’t sign, there’s no way, because I can’t sign for you.”
A Brazilian woman was arrested after she strolled into a bank pushing a corpse she hoped would co-sign a loan for her.
This map shows the various regions of origin for 151 of today’s staple food crops. It illustrates an astounding fact that has become so commonplace that we hardly ever give it a thought: just how “foreign” much of the food on our plates actually is.
Great one from FoD and my longtime pal, Ed McDonnell. If you know how to tell time, you probably understand and use a.m. and p.m., and you might even know the terms come from Latin phrases. But do you know what exactly those phrases are, or what they mean in English?