WHAT AN AWESOME STUDENT GRADUATION SPEECH MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Sitting down to write this, I did a lot of research about graduation speeches in pop culture. I'm sure we're all familiar with those particular 90s movies cliches – “together, we can do anything!” or “dreams can overcome!” etc, but I have to say that my studies revealed a personal favorite from Winona Ryder's character in the movie Reality Bites. As a student speaker at her graduation she stands before her entire university with cue cards out of order, and is forced to finish a rallying declaration of independence with the rather lame “The answer is....I don't know.” To be perfectly honest, I don't know, either. And despite what have been four incredible years at this institution, years in which we've all had the wild opportunity to “pursue our dreams,” “become ourselves,” years in which most answers to most questions have been “Yes, go for it!” I'm leaving Tisch so full of “LET'S GO FOR IT!” that I begin to realize this process of becoming a bona fide adult will be about making choices, making sacrifices, editing. I feel so capable and so ready, but what I must find now is the confidence of commitment. CAN I make a perceptive off-off Broadway theatre piece with nine friends and a bucket? Totally! CAN I launch a web-series about a struggling Journey cover band? Absolutely! But will these projects come at the expense of, say, health insurance? At least in the short term future? Will following my present bliss lead me to hardship, occasionally? Maybe. I haven't been thinking about that, I've been painting my feelings. Yikes. It's a very interesting climate we graduate into today. The streets of this city seem awash with the “Mid -Twenties and Somewhat Listless,” the people who support their art work with day jobs because they want to and can and the mainstream world doesn't always reward performance art or experimental filmmaking the way we've been taught to think it should. And I do believe it should, and I do believe all of us in this room have already surmounted great odds to pursue a deep, burrowing passion, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about balancing what I love to do with what I know I must do, or be willing to do, to survive here. This 'art life' will be a long one, you guys, and it will be rocky, in tandem with what we hear about the world from The Colbert Report each night. The economy is bad, the environment is flagging, social stratification and revolution are happening everywhere, the world is probably ending this December anyways...how are we to reconcile all of that 'no' with the profound acceptance, the YES, we've experienced at Tisch? How is Art to be situated in this modern and ever-changing world? If only twenty people come to see my show, has it succeeded in a large sense? Does what I do even matter? Cue the existential crisis. Then I read an article in New York magazine about your average Williamsburging New York twenty-something, who is maybe auditioning on the side of pet-sitting, or writing a novel in the wee hours of their night shift host job, or trying to hold on to an inflated ego after a brief, thrilling moment of financial and commercial success. The contention of this article was that our generations' standard of measuring a lifetime's success has shifted in this fundamental way – apparently people these days are far more concerned with finding happiness over the course of their lives than reaching one singular, tangible goal. This really heartened me. Anytime the world applauds starry-eyed idealism, I'm on board. But then I took a long look around the Tisch community and thought, “Duh--” For me, this education has been in total a process of self-realization. I've come to believe so fiercely that the creative outlet is one of those things that make humans human. I'm stunned by how brave the people in this room are, and so serious about what they want. Most days at Tisch – even those so popular (at least in the drama department) when you're crying hysterically to a wise mentor about your soul – have been nothing short of transcendental. I feel so fortunate to have met and worked with people in this room through any kind of artistic communion, because less do I take away some concrete formula for success as I graduate, more do I take away an enlarged sense of humanity. And empathy. And courage. I feel I've been granted a heightened insight into all the things one human might contain, and for that I'll always be grateful. For that, for better or worse, I'll always be Brittany, I think. So, to bring this chugging meditation back to Starry-eyed Idealism Station, what I have decided to believe about our future is this: it will be stunningly hard to hold on to these desires in this world, but our sensibility is one engineered to accept challenge with grace, to move forward with nearly un-checked audacity, to seek understanding from and of our fellows way more than we've ever needed to quantify a future with physical gains. Which is not to say that the next Spielbergs' and Andersons' or Lori-Parks' or Streeps' are not sitting in this room, poised to alter the art world forever. On the contrary, we're all here and equipped for a certain kind of success, but we're different, and I believe that willingness to engage with the different and the uncomfortable will make all of our lives rich. That's why we came to this school, really. It's definitely why we graduate now. I wish all of you the best possibly luck on the road to prioritizing and sating your hunger. I know that some of the world's most exciting humans, most exciting artists, are heading out on their lonesome rocky road today. So thank you for being around me, and sharing all of your gifts and questions and growing up for four years. Thanks also to those mentors who have guided and gently nudged what really must be my soul in all different directions, thank you to the teachers who have spent time making me feel my heart can always get bigger. It's been a time. I think that desire is just as much of a choice as we need to have made by these early twenties, I think it can begin a life in 2012. So the future is funny-shaped, oblique, uncertain – we are not.