It’s the time of year to cull what wisdom we can from those commencement speeches that few college graduates remember clearly after they descend from their ivory towers. As always, I start with my own shiny tower where this year NPR’s Linda Wertheimer gave some election advice: “I would suggest, vote all women. Generally speaking, they haven’t been around long enough to be seriously evil.” At Trinity College, Garry Trudeau exhorted graduates to “go forth and raise hell” as “Civilization has always advanced in the shimmering wake of its discontents.” Opera singer Renee Fleming totaled up a statistic that Julliard students may not have wanted to sum up: “Those of you who perform – musicians and dancers – will have by now practiced perhaps 3,000 hours a year, times 15 years, which equals 45,000 hours.” As a group she calculated that the graduates had practiced 11 million hours. Thus she encouraged them to make it time well spent: “Challenge the idea that the arts are for a select few – teach, make more people love what you love, and help them to understand why you dedicated those 11 million hours in the first place.” (more commencement excerpts from the New York Times)