Commencement Address: Dr. Craig Spencer
Four Graduations and a Wedding, hosted by Brian Lehrer, presents an on-air commencement ceremony for health care graduates!
Dr. Craig Spencer's message to today's health care graduates:
Stop vaping!
Only with great crisis does great opportunity present itself.
You will discover that the path to your best self lies in service to others.
Dr. Spencer speaks as a New York City emergency medicine physician on the front line of the fight against COVID-19 and director of Global Health in Emergency Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, and an Ebola survivor.
The full transcript of Dr. Spencer's commencement address:
Congratulations to the class of 2020! I’m really excited and honored to celebrate this remarkable achievement in your lives. I want to start by recognizing that right now many of you feel very nervous about the future. So I wanted to share some of my nervousness with you. Over the past few days I’ve struggled to find a message that is motivational and inspirational right in the middle of a pandemic. I looked online and everything said to use humor, but nothing really feels funny right now. Especially to people like myself working in the emergency room seeing patients struggling with coronavirus, or to many of you who’ve likely had family or friends sick during this outbreak.
I asked my nephew who is graduating this year what important message he thought his peers needed to hear right now. He said, “stop vaping!” Which is a definitely great message, but I felt like I probably needed a little more profound. So I kept wondering what can I share? And what do I say in this time of uncertainty? And what I kept coming back to, the thing that has defined my life, given me purpose and made me feel whole despite whatever pandemonium may be swirling around me, is the incredible value of a life devoted to service to others.
I’ll share a few examples of how that service has changed my life, and the lives of those around me. And I’ll highlight how you, and your generation will have an unparalleled opportunity in the aftermath of this pandemic to fight for a society built on empathy, service and equity.
I think back on my high school graduation. I had previously decided I wanted to become a doctor. But no one in my family had ever gone to college, and I really didn’t know how to apply. Thankfully a friend spent a lot of time helping me understand the process, fill out the paperwork, and pay the application fee. It was a small act of kindness but without her, I never would have went to college in the fall, I never would have went to medical school, and I never would have become a doctor. I never would have wound up in a hospital bed in New York City years later fighting for my life but never more aware of the incredible impact each one of us can make.
In 2014 I was sick with Ebola, a disease that kills up to 80 percent of people that contract it. I’d been infected with this virus while taking care of patients in West Africa. I remember lying in that hospital bed weak and nauseous. I knew the statistics. I had little reason for optimism. Then my phone rang. It was a call from Guinea, the country where I had just been treating Ebola patients a few weeks before. When I picked up I heard a familiar voice on the line. It was a mother who came into our treatment center with ten of her family members all sick with the virus. Only four ever left the treatment center alive.
When I left Guinea and came back to New York City memories like that left me frustrated and saddened. I had seen so many succumb to this disease and I felt like I hadn’t made a difference. Yet when I received this call from someone so far away, who heard I was sick and called me to thank me for caring for her family, and to wish me well, I recognized then that I had indeed made an impact. Because over and over she thanked me. She believed if I wasn’t there to take care of her and her family none of them would have survived this disease.
In caring for others I had created a community of people across the world who cared about me because I had cared about them. So what does this mean for you? And for your graduation?
Well, it’s basically a requirement for any commencement speaker to tell you that you are on the cusp of a changing world. And that your generation will be responsible for profound changes in the years and decades ahead. But that’s actually never been more true than it is right now.
Each generation has been defined by a historic challenge. To my grandparents it was World War II, for my parents it was the Vietnam War, and for me it was 9/11. I was just out of high school. I was starting to understand how the world worked, and then one morning everything changed. For you and for your generation, this pandemic will be that defining moment. Which I’m sure is really frustrating for many of you! This pandemic comes at one of the most important times in your life. A time when you should be in classes with your friends and colleagues. Or outside on the weekends in the park thinking about graduation parties, getting a job, or going off to further studies in the fall. This pandemic will change everything. And you will forever know of a time before the virus upended our communities and took some of our loved ones. You will always remember how this virus exposed our weaknesses. And how it highlighted that we are only as strong as the weakest among us. You may feel like I felt lying in that hospital bed six years ago, struggling to overcome Ebola. So much uncertainty, and no reason for optimism.
But just like that phone call from Guinea uplifted me. I want you to recognize that you have so much to be optimistic about. Because only with great crisis does great opportunity present itself. Throughout this you have learned how to be resilient, and how to handle change. And with this your generation has the opportunity—indeed the responsibility—to fundamentally re-envision how we build and nurture our local and global communities. To remember how everyone of us can have an impact. Just like that person who helped me go to college so that I could one day take care of those patients in Guinea. And that collectively each of those singular actions can have a dramatic impact on our friends, our families, and our communities.
And you may not know what you want to do with your life. Trust me, many of us including myself, still aren’t certain. But know that you don’t need to be a doctor or fight diseases overseas to have a huge impact. If anything this pandemic has shown us who the real heroes are in our communities, including many of our friends and parents. Transit workers, grocery store clerks, sanitation employees, and teachers. So no matter what your plans are after graduation, whether starting a job or pursuing further training, I ask you to commit to community. Both locally. And globally. To always think about how you can make an impact. And to always extend a hand to those who need it most. In doing so you will discover that the path to your best self lies in service to others.
Congratulations to everyone in the class of 2020! These are difficult times. But remember that right now is only temporary. We will get through this. And when we do, I am expecting great things from you. Thank you.