Meg Lewis Summary Essay College Comp and Research January 24, 2017 The Default Setting David Foster Wallace gave a commencement speech to a group of graduates. In “Kenyon Commencement Speech,” Wallace talks about how most students are set to a default setting when they should think for themselves. Wallace talks about adapting unconsciousness, practicing traits and points out self-centeredness students of students that are set to the default way of thinking. points out self-centeredness, adapting unconsciousness, and practicing traits of a student with the default way of thinking. When one’s state of thinking is set to a default setting they rarely realize it. If one eventually realizes the state of thinking that they’re in, the default setting, they try to escape from that way of thinking. Wallace states that each and every students should be “well adjusted” that means that any students who can naturally adjust their way of thinking to the default setting (202). In Wallace’s eyes he believes students should be able to think the way they want to think: Given the triumphant academic setting here, an obvious question is how much of this work of adjusting our default setting involves actual knowledge or intellect. This question gets very tricky. Probably the most dangerous thing about an academic education is that it enables my tendency to over-intellectualize stuff, to get lost in an abstract argument inside my own head, and instead of simply paying attention to what is going on right in front of me, paying attention to what is going on inside me. (Wallace 202) Wallace talks about how students shouldn’t get lost in their thoughts. He says students need to be more aware of what is right in front of them rather than being consumed by their thoughts, which can be irrelevant. Wallace tells his students, “Think of the old cliche about “the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master” (202). As Wallace explains how to get unstuck from the default setting he also talks about practicing traits that are apart of a student’s daily life. Being in the default setting means thinking in a way that a student was taught. Being in the default setting also means having to practice certain traits. Wallace explains it to be like this, a default setting leads students away from being a unique version of themselves and ultimately takes a student's freedom away. Wallace says, “Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid...Worship your intellect… you will end up feeling stupid… But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they are evil or sinful it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings” (208). These traits or “worships” seem to be simple.Wallace explains these traits and comes to an end with his speech as he goes into detail of what the traits are. Wallace speaks about liberal arts schools not teaching creativity as much as liberal arts schools teach students to set their thinking to a default setting. In this speech the speaker talks about how each item involved with a liberal arts college teaches one to set to a default setting (202). Wallace said that as people, students think improperly; he says students need to be able to think for themselves. Wallace says, “Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of you or behind you” (Wallace 201). He talks about how other people in the world matter and how their feelings are just as important. Humans think of events that have happened to them in their lives and only see it from their point of view; not from another student’s point of view. As Wallace continues his speech he talks about ways to reset their way of thinking from the default setting to whatever they want to think. In “Kenyon Commencement Speech,” David Foster Wallace explains how the majority of students set their way of thinking to a default setting. Student don’t think the way they want to think. They think the way they are taught to think. In this article Wallace talks about the unconsciousness, traits, and self-centeredness of a student whose thinking is set to the default setting.
Works Cited Wallace, David. "Kenyon Commencement Speech." They Say I Say With Readings. By Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. Ed. Russel Durst. 2E ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 179-189. Print