Time moves quickly. Your presence here, today, is proof of that. Whether you're a graduate or someone who helped a graduate get to where he or she is today — a parent, friend, sibling, relative, professor, etc. — you've likely stepped back in shock a number of times over the past few weeks and wondered where the time has gone. While we all mark the passage of time in our own ways, through photographs or journal entries, postcards and home video tapes, we all, for the most part, share the same pop-cultural cornerstones The class of 2011 has been in school since the early 1990s. Most of us entered kindergarten in 1994, the year that Quentin Tarantino won the Palme d'Or for "Pulp Fiction." We have been in school for 17 years since then. We have seen the second half of the "Star Wars" series unfold, as well as the final chapter (we hope) in the "Indiana Jones" franchise.
We watched intently as "Lost" (2004-10) and "The Sopranos" (1999-2007) went through their motions and flocked to the theaters in droves to see history come to life as James Cameron's "Titanic" (1997) smashed not only the iceberg, but all expectations and box office records.
J.K. Rowling's "boy who lived" started a cultural phenomenon that, without a doubt, many of the class of 2011 have to thank for their love of reading and, as it follows, their place at this university.
Playing Gameboy and Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 and the original Playstation were our childhood activities. Our soundtrack oscillated between sugary pop — *NSYNC and the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears — grungy alternative — this year marks the 20-year anniversary of Nirvana's "Nevermind" and the 15th anniversary of Weezer's "Pinkerton" — and hip-hop of every shade, from the squeaky clean Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff, to the white America-scaring N.W.A.
Where were you when you heard that Michael Jackson was dead? What was it like getting your first MP3 player? What was your first YouTube video? Your first time on Chat Roulette?
Yet it isn't just major cultural moments that we share. The very ways in which we interact have changed within our lifetimes: This class learned to navigate the terrain of the World Wide Web as we learned to ride bikes without training wheels. Getting our first cell phones was a rite of passage and, for most of us, life today is unimaginable without them. Most of us can look back and share our embarrassing stories of MySpaces, Xangas, LiveJournals, Friendsters and AOL chatrooms.
The advances in technology have shrunk the timescale of nostalgia to the point where we can reminisce fondly about viral videos from no more than two or three months ago (Rebecca Black's "Friday," anyone? "Charlie Bit Me," perhaps?), as our parents or grandparents do about albums or television shows from their youth.
I'd like to think that we still have the ability to concentrate, that it isn't true, as many have said, that this generation has no attention span. Rather, things just move much more quickly. There's just as good a chance that you're reading this on your laptop or iPad or Android phone as in the good old-fashioned print edition of The Tufts Daily. We are all constantly connected — I'll be very surprised if multiple people don't live-tweet Commencement — and our popular culture is moving more quickly than ever.
The webcomic (a thing which didn't exist when this current class was born) XKCD recently ran a chart listing films and their release dates, reminding readers just how old they are. "Terminator 2," for example, came out in 1991, the same year that "Beauty and the Beast" and "Silence of the Lambs" were released. See? Time does move quickly.
These touchstones that we all share give us common ground. When we got to college, many of us spent hours combing through each other's iTunes libraries to find commonalities and hanging up posters. Whether we realized it or not, these served as advertisements to our new classmates: "This is who I am," they said. Simple, easy ice-breaking.
So time does move quickly. It never stops. It just keeps going. Earlier this month, the fifth film in the "Fast and the Furious" franchise was released. One day, not too long from now, that will seem like an ancient event. A lot has happened over these past four years, and a lot more happened during the 13 that preceded them.
Today, May 22, 2011, is unlikely to see a major event in pop culture; no record-breaking movie will be released, no game-changing album will leak. Nevertheless, the thousand and a half graduates and their families and loved ones will always remember today. And for all those other moments? Well, we always have pop culture.
