Jimmy TingleGraduation Speech Transcript:Thank you.I am truly honored tobe here this morning. My name is Jimmy Tingle and that is my real name and Iwas born right here in Cambridge Massachusetts. I am an unlikely choice to givea commencement address at Harvard because quite frankly my friend, I am not ascholar, which will become increasingly more evident as I proceed. I am acomedian by profession, and I started to perform in here in the early 1980s,actually I did strip performing right down here in Harvard Square. I've travelled allaround the world performing standing up comedy. I don't want to brag buttwo years ago I performed in Europe and I just like to say:“Excellent Country.”You know what's nice for being herethis morning, you actually get that joke.Actually I am from along line of intellectuals, growing up here in Cambridge, we lived quite near acollege. My father owned and droved taxi cabs, here in Harvard Square, he willpick up Harvard professors, they would tell them things, he would come home andtell us. For generations, Harvard has given scholarships to students fromCambridge and students from all over the world who could meet the academicrequirements. Starting from the third grade, my dear sweet mother who was herethis morning would say to me:“Jimmy, if you studyreally hard, some day you could go to Harvard.”By the sixth grade,she stopped telling me that. By the eighth grade, our whole neighborhood hadtheir eye set on Harvard, not so much for scholarships but because it was anexcellent place to steal bicycles.I can rememberrunning through this very yard, some forty-years ago, being chased by theHarvard students, the Harvard faculty and The Harvard Police Department. Othercollege campuses in the 1960s were bitterly divided between the students andthe administration over civil rights and the war in Vietnam. But here inHarvard, my friends and I were able to unite: students, faculty and lawenforcement. It was in this very yard that I had my first spiritual awakening.As I was running I started to pray, please God, please God, don't let me get caught.I will never do it again. My mother will kill me. She always wanted me to go toHarvard; this isn't what she meant. And then I realized I wasan altar boy. I was a Catholic, I should have been praying before I tried totake the bicycle.And I just want tosay to the alumni gathered here this morning on behalf of myself and all theother miss-guided youth of Cambridge and Greater Boston who may haveun-justified taken your bicycles…We are sorry.And to the graduates,many of you will go on to position of great power and influence in business andpolitics and government and the temptations to cut corners, to lie, to steal,to cheat will be formidable. My advice to you today is simply this:“Ask for guidancebefore you commit the crime”. Trust me; it is much less embarrassing toask for help privately than to beg for forgiveness at graduation. And I am sograteful; I am so grateful that the petty crimes of my youth were not successful,for had my dishonest behavior been rewarded, I may not be with you here today.My life may have taken at different turns, and I may have ended up on WallStreet.I'd always wanted tothis school but always felt that was too late getting courage from family,friends, and colleagues, and my mum, and my wife Catherine, I put in anapplication anyway. And like of you who was absolutely over-joyed when thatletter of acceptant came in the mail. I couldn't believe this, afterall this years I have actually been accepted to Harvard; they must really needa commencement speaker.In this entire yearpeople has asked me Jimmy why would an comedian want to go to Harvard, the samereason all of you wanted to go Harvard, we got in. And all of us have facedchallenges getting here today and still more academic challenges when classstarted. My biggest academic challenge was the quantitative for graduation.Unfortunately I hadto take statistics. Fortunately we had had a wonderful and dedicated and greatteacher, Dr. Hughes Helen who was kind enough to arrange extra help sessionstor students who was struggling with the material. I went to every single extrahelp sessions she offered It was always very similarscenario, me and 19 students from other countries. Countries often in conflictwith one another, India and Pakistan, Turkey and Greece, Israelis andPalestinians, all of us were helping one another, all of us learning from oneanother, all of us supporting one another across racial, ethnic and religiousline and I say this as a native Bostonian, all of us with English as a secondla。