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Student speaker savors BU’s educational feast
By Tim Stoddard
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| John Degory Photo by Vernon Doucette |
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If Commencement is, to many students, the icing on the cake, then John Degory thinks of the four years leading up to his graduation on May 18 as a multicourse Italian meal. In his speech to the graduating class, Degory (CAS’03) will urge his classmates to savor their college years, because the academic and social nourishment they’ve taken in at BU will sustain them in the years ahead. “Feasting is an important part of my tradition as an Italian-American, and I view it as a joyful combination of mind, heart, and body -- things that can be linked to a BU education,” he says. “The message is to take what we’ve ingested at BU and apply it to our lives after graduation.”
Reflecting on several simple but profound lessons that he learned at Boston University and while studying abroad, Degory will discuss how his BU education has supplemented the physical, moral, and intellectual nourishment that he received from his family as a child. The food analogy grew out of his senior thesis, which focuses in part on how Italian-Americans build ethnic identity from food culture. “We’ve put a lot on our plates at BU, so I wanted to address that,” he says. “Besides, who doesn’t like talking about food?”
Earlier this semester, Chancellor Silber invited the University’s most academically accomplished seniors to submit a speech draft. A committee of faculty members and administrators received 35 submissions and heard 5 finalists deliver their speeches before selecting Degory to address the class of 2003.
His speech will touch briefly on his experiences studying abroad in Niger in the fall of 2001. Only a few days after arriving in the capital city of Niamey, Degory had an unsettling phone conversation with his father in Pittsburgh. While they were speaking, his father heard a radio announcement that an airliner had smashed into the World Trade Center. After the second plane hit, Degory hung up and spread the word among his BU classmates. “We went to the embassy and started watching the footage from CNN. It was tense for a while, but we were never worried about ourselves. We were always more worried about people at home. I think that my BU education helped me get through that while everyone else was afraid for me.”
Looking back at those trying days following the terrorist attacks, Degory attributes much of his confidence and resolve to his late grandmother, who pushed him and his six cousins to work hard in school. “My grandmother encouraged us to do everything we wanted to do and more,” he says. Indeed, because of her insistence, Degory will be the first person on one side of his family to earn a college degree.
While he has never stood before a crowd of 20,000, Degory has few qualms about public speaking. Four years ago, he delivered a speech at his high school graduation in Pittsburgh. As an actor and singer with On Broadway, a student-run musical theater group, he has performed a number of roles, including the Leading Player in the musical Pippin.
An anthropology major, with minors in political science and French,
Degory plans to return to Niger after graduation to be a resident assistant
for BU’s program in Niamey. He also plans to teach English part-time
to Nigerien children at an elementary school or possibly work with a
branch of the United Nations. He sees himself eventually returning to
school for a graduate degree in international relations and working for
the Foreign Service. “I want to work with people and make a difference
in the world at the policy level,” he says. “When I discovered
that that’s what the Foreign Service does, combined with all the
travel, it just seemed like the place for me.”
14
May 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations