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David Foster Wallace
This Is Water
2005 Kenyon Commencement Address
David Foster Wallace, 2005
What's inside?
Higher education develops your capacity to decide “how and what you think” about yourself and the world around you.
Recommendation
People often claim that a liberal arts college education teaches young people “how to think,” but what does this maxim really mean, and why does it matter? In this unique and persuasive commencement address, delivered to the 2005 graduating class of Kenyon College, American novelist, essayist and professor David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) raises intriguing points about the barriers to empathy in adult life, the difficulty of resisting the “natural default setting” of self-centeredness and the true meaning of “freedom.” getAbstract recommends Wallace’s call to action to those working in higher education and everyone interested in self-development.
Summary
About the Author
David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) was an American fiction author, essayist and professor at Emerson College, Illinois State University and Pomona College. His most famous work is the 1996 novel, Infinite Jest.
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