![]() ![]() If I hadn’t finished that last term paper, I could STILL be here.īack when I was at Wisconsin, it was quite common for students to take a long time to graduate.īut I heard something the other day, from someone in the administration, that was quite troubling: the average Wisconsin student now graduates in less than four years. I should have *at least* stretched it out to six years. Honestly, if I regret anything, it’s graduating in four years. My time in Madison was some of the most fun of my life. And I showed them frozen Lake Mendota and the wind was blowing in their faces and I said, “Well, kids, here it is, Daddy’s favorite place in the world: Madison, Wisconsin!”Īnd they looked for one and a half seconds and we sprinted as fast as we could into the nearest building. And this morning, we had a real authentic Badger experience. You know, my children are with me today – they’re up there, watching “Toy Story 3” on an iPad. This feels like proper Wisconsin weather today. ![]() Let’s do a proper welcome, like they told me in the instruction manual.Ĭongratulations to all of you, the University of Wisconsin–Madison class of 2019!Ĭongratulations to you, your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents, your siblings, your kiddos if you got ‘em, your professors, your assistant professors, your TAs, your friends, your significant others, your exes, your enemies, your landlords, your baristas, your bartenders, your freshman year roommate who liked to clip their nails in the middle of the night, and the person sitting next to you who just woke you up in your seat 30 seconds ago and said, “Look at the guy onstage with the funny hair.”Īnd to think: If you all had just waited to graduate a little later – or a little sooner – we could all be outside in warm springtime weather.īut I love it. ![]() I got Wolverines to my right, Wolverines to my left.īut every once in a while, I’ll run into one, PUSHING very hard on a door that says PULL. Then I remembered: Michigan never shows up in Wisconsin.Īt the Wall Street Journal, I’m surrounded by Wolverines. I actually thought, for a moment, we might have some folks from Ann Arbor show up to protest my speech. Technically, Badgers are related to weasels, too. I’m just some guy who writes about sports in a daily financial newspaper, which might be read by your parents and grandparents, and great-grandparents, and great-great-great grandparents and occasionally uses that column to make fun of those deadbeats at the University of Michigan. Me? I ate 27 griddle cakes at Mickey’s Dairy Bar this morning. Watt raised $40 million for needy people in Houston. My friends, there are graduates of this school who have won Nobel Prizes, Oscars, Super Bowls! J.J. You know, if there’s one thing I remember from my time in Madison, it was how, first thing in the morning, after a long night on State Street, me and my friends used to love to roll out of bed and curl up with a nice, warm, broadsheet copy of the Wall Street Journal. Some people are definitely going to get fired for this. I won’t lie: everybody here has been really cool about covering up for the mistake, pretending they actually meant to do this. Watt’s name, and she accidentally typed in “Jason” and eight weeks later, here we are. She was hurrying off to a meeting at Bascom Hall, and she meant to type in J.J. Maybe Chancellor Blank typed in the wrong email. I assume they sent the invitation to the wrong person. I mean, there must have been a terrible mistake. You know, when I was first asked to deliver the winter commencement speech to the Class of 2019 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, I had the exact same reaction that you had: No, the truth is, my name is indeed Jason Gay and I am the sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal - which is kind of like being the money and investing columnist for ESPN. Jason Gay, a 1992 political science graduate of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal, delivered the following charge to UW–Madison graduates at winter commencement Dec. Sports and humor columnist Jason Gay shared wisdom as well as jokes (many at the University of Michigan’s expense). ![]()
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