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Bill Watterson Commencement Speech (1990)
- mattdeboard 15y agoOne of the great American artists, IMO, and one gets the sense his noteworthiness is increased by several orders of magnitude by his steadfastness in the face of "sell out" pressure. I think about the artist behind Calvin and Hobbes every time I see some unlicensed Calvin urinating on some automobile manufacturer logo, or kneeling at some religious symbol.
- thesash 15y agoSo cool to see him speak about his values reals rivet early on in his career, knowing that he stuck by them.
- Natsu 15y agoHe's a pretty cool guy from everything I've heard. It's sad to hear about some of the things that drove him away, especially the fights with the syndicate, or even how when he used to sneak signed books into a local bookstore, people started selling them, much to his chagrin.
- Natsu 15y agoIn case anyone else was curious, 4.5 million minutes works out to about 8.5 years.
- djtriptych 15y agoAnd in case anyone was wondering about the easiest way to figure that out: https://www.google.com/search?q=4.5+million+minutes+in+years https://www.google.com/search?q=4.5+million+minutes+in+years
- Natsu 15y agoHeh, that's precisely what I did to find it.
- rgovostes 15y agoYes, but he wasn't working continuously for 8.5 years. If a full time work-year is about 240 hours, that's 312 1/2 years! I admire his persistence.
- Natsu 15y ago240 hours is a very short full time work-year. (52 weeks/year - 2 weeks vacation) * 40 hours/week == 2000 hours. Many workers exceed that.
- kghose 15y ago50 weeks/year * 40 hours/week * 60 min/hour = 120000 work min/year -> 37.5 years. So, most possibly, Watterson was refering to the total time, not just the time spent at work 365.25 days/year * 24 hrs/day * 60 min/hr = 525960 min/yr -> 8.5 years which is STILL a very long time. I have not (yet) had to spend so many years on something I did not like.
- djtriptych 15y agoAmazing - perhaps my favorite graduation speech with "This is water" by David Foster Wallace (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/fiction http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/sep/20/fiction).
- sardonicbryan 15y agoI've never heard of Kenyon College, but the quality of their commencement speakers is staggering.
- paul 15y ago"Drawing comic strips for five years without pay drove home the point that the fun of cartooning wasn't in the money; it was in the work. This turned out to be an important realization when my break finally came." I feel like this is the key to any great work.
- toyg 15y agoHow many people are able to spend 5 years without income ? Should we commend Mr. and Mrs. Watterson Sr.? Without them, Calvin & Hobbes might have never been created; but how healthy is it to subsidize your children for so many years, hoping that they'll eventually find their own way ? As a (not particularly wealthy) parent, this is the sort of question I keep asking myself, and my experience tells me to do the exact opposite of what the Wattersons did.
- easp 15y agoWhat do you think the Watterson's did? They may have paid his way through 4 years of college, but it seems pretty clear that he held jobs after left college, he just wasn't making any money off his comic strip.