Today@Dal

From Tuesday's Globe and Mail:

June is convocation month, a time when the parents of university students spend hours crammed into the nosebleed seats of auditoriums waiting for the fleeting moment when their child struts across the stage wearing a square hat to collect a hard-earned and expensive roll of paper.

...

After attending 16 graduation ceremonies and shaking 3,600 hands this season, rookie university president Richard Florizone, who has been on the job for one year at Dalhousie University, has had some time to reflect on what makes a good speech.

“The ones that are great are personal and authentic; they distill a story into some advice,” he said.

And to really knock it out of the park?

“You have to have at least one joke.”

...

Maureen Sabia, chairwoman of the board for Canadian Tire Corp. Ltd. and named one of Canada’s 100 most powerful women by the Women’s Executive Network, at Dalhousie:

I am a bossy woman and I do not apologize for that. In fact, I am proud of it. It means I am a leader. By the way, ladies, ignore the Ban Bossy campaign. Truly ambitious girls are too smart to let a single word stand in their way. And we should not make a victim of all girls by banning a word for their protection. We should encourage their aspirations and delight in their leadership goals. Let’s all resolve to be bossy.

...

John Burrows, scholar in indigenous and aboriginal law, at Dalhousie:

When I graduated from law school I began articling in the small Ontario town in which I grew up. It was my dream. I lived by the lake. I could walk to the office, and I knew many clients from a lifetime of interaction. I could make a small contribution to a little corner of the world which I cared for deeply. There was nothing I wanted more. Life was unfolding exactly how I had planned.

And then I was fired. When I was in court, with my pen and paper, I wrote “too loudly” for the lawyer who was my principal. I found myself on the other side of my life’s most treasured hopes.

My wife and I have often wanted to thank that lawyer for crushing our dreams, though it was very painful at the time.

...

Read the rest of this article — including highlights from convocation speeches across the country — at the Globe and Mail's website.