Commencement Speech –2021 Spring Session

——Robin Mackinnon

感恩遇见! 感恩歌乐书山岁月！

2021春季班的学员已经与我们挥手告别了近两个月。然而，每当静下心来，相信这份暖暖的歌乐记忆依旧会在你我心中荡漾起一丝丝心动。让我们再次品味Robin老师在结业典礼上关于陶瓷罐、 test与人生的智慧分享。

It happens that sometimes I get stuck without a particular idea to bring to occasions like this– and – when that happens, I try to pick a word out of the unhelpful jumble of thoughts that don’t come together.  I’ll do a little digging on it and see if I can make something out of its dustiest beginnings...                                                            

This was one of those times & this time, I was thinking about the word ‘test’ –

Today, I can win over my audience with a momentary reflection on the very thing so many of you are chewing on anyway,

test (n.)– late 14c..."small vessel used in assaying precious metals," fromOld French test, from Latin testum "earthen pot," related to testa... "piece of burned clay, earthen pot, shell”...sense of "trial orexamination to determine the correctness of something" is recorded from1590s. The connecting notion is "ascertaining the quality of a metal bymelting it in a pot."

test (v.) – 1748, "toexamine the correctness of," from test (n.), on the notion of "put tothe proof." Earlier "assay gold or silver" in a test (c. 1600).Meaning "to administer a test" is from 1939; sense of "undergo atest" is from 1934.

I guessed something like this pot here might be such a thing as the word originally gave name to –dated to the 14^th Century & made in England. I marveled at how the old expression in English – TO TEST ONE’S METAL – as in to test a person’s limits / strength / endurance – is actually rooted in its original – very literal – meaning!  

Note - it’s only within this last century of modern English usage that we have come to say‘test’ to refer to your business tomorrow – an act of submission – putting yourself in a room, under a clock – to do your best with a series of questions or problems laid out for you on paper.  

It turns out that you and your ordeal tomorrow are the more recent metaphor – you are the precious metal - heated - put to the proof - in the clay pot. The clay pot is that room– the heat is some combination of the clock and the papers covered with questions and problems.  The heat may also be a person rather than a paper – someone asking you a reasonably predictable array of questions about what you would do if... or what you think about this or that.  

You are the metal being tested and that clay pot is just a day away.                                

Or –– is it...?  

Arguably – that’s notthe test at all.  

The true test waits for you a little further off in the distance with a decision to go – where? There will be a plane to catch heading in that direction and some long-ish stretch oftime spent away from the familiar.  Into the unknown – to be put to the proof – as though you were a handful of gold orsilver or other precious metal to be tested with the aid of fire & a claypot – strangers cast adrift by yourselves in strange lands – until – we hope, you pour yourself out under the heat and find that after all that – you are yourself, a speaker of many languages, at home wherever you are in the world...                                

Tomorrow will justcome & go, just like that – in the blink of an eye.  It’s what comes later that will really ‘testyour metal’ as the saying goes... -which brings us around to another word...                                

CRUCIBLE ... a more or less elegant form depending on your personal style –built for purpose...
Early 15c., crusible, "vesselor melting pot for chemical purposes, so tempered as to endure extremeheat," from Medieval Latin crucibulum "melting pot for metals,"originally "night lamcrucible (n.)

So – now suppose youare the crucible...  

Suppose your efforts to come this far are the gold & silver mined from every step that got you here.  Suppose the result has left you‘tempered – as to endure extreme heat,”...Tomorrow’s last bit of business will be behind you soon enough.  Thus tempered and tested there is just the road ahead, so go boldly enough; be at home wherever you are in the world, and do all the good things you are going there to do...