David Foster Wallace's This Is Water

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At the Kenyon Commencement in 2005, David Foster Wallace gave a speech, This is Water, to all who attended the ceremony and gave them words of encouragement and advice for the new life they’ll have after graduation. Wallace told multiple stories during his speech, each of which had to do with understanding other people and how they have their own unique thoughts. Wallace begins his speech with a greeting and then dives straight into the story of fish to introduce his topic to the audience. By starting off with the story of fish, ‘ “Morning, boys. How’s the water?”. “What the hell is water?”, Wallace makes a point that the younger fish did not realize what they were surrounded by, to which Wallace later mentions “the value of the totally obvious”.
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