
Life is about choices, whether these choices are very specific or just general guidelines of living life, everybody has choices to make.  These are choices that will either make someone’s life great or unproductive.  David Foster Wallace talks a lot about the choices people make in his commencement speech titled, “This is Water.”  He reinforces that getting an education is the most important choice someone can make in their lifetime. He wants to make the point that a student’s education is the most important ‘job’ they will ever have.  Wallace wants to inform these students that the choice of getting a liberal arts education will bring countless new opportunities during adulthood. 

To begin, Wallace is drilling into the students’ heads that getting an education is imperative, however there is still a choice there; “It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.  Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true; your education really IS the job of a lifetime” (Wallace XVII).  This quote tells young people to think about their future and learn as much as possible early on in life.  The choices that will be presented to us once we are out of school will be unlimited, as long as we get a quality education.  Our schedules will be completely up to us.  Yes, it is our decision to come to college and ‘make our schedules’ but really we are still at the mercy of the school.  Once we graduate, it is completely up to us to get a job, find a place to live, and to still find enjoyment in some part of our day.  We have to choose how we feel about different parts of the day.  The emotion that we will put into our days will determine what kind of people we become.  If we choose to get an education, then we will have many more opportunities in our future.  

To continue, the choice of what adults spend their time thinking about is very important for their future.  “Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about quote the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master” (Wallace XIII).  When Wallace brought up this quote the part that jumped out was the use of the phrase ‘terrible master.’  We think of our mind as the greatest ‘master’ of all.  However, our mind is fairly limited without the proper education and experiences.  Once we receive this education we then have the ability to choose how to live our lives.  Then, once we get these experiences we will have the past to back up our future choices.  Wallace wants to express to these new adults that they control where their lives go.  One example that Wallace brought up was getting into too much of a routine with his thoughts with work.  Some adults will go to work, wait in traffic, and get home as soon as they can.  However, we have two options regarding a routine as an adult.  Our first option is to avoid getting into a rut.  We can try new activities and try to enjoy as much of our free time as possible, or we can enjoy the routine we get into.  Either one of these options can be a great depending on how the person lookas at their situation.  These choices during adulthood will determine how we look at our lives.  The idea of a rut isn’t very appealing, but it is how an individual chooses to think about that rut that will make it a positive or negative part of their life.

Furthermore, Wallace really wants to tell us the choices that we have regarding our thoughts.  “But I'm going to posit to you that the liberal arts cliché turns out not to be insulting at all, because the significant education in thinking that we're supposed to get in a place like this isn't really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about.”  (Wallace XI).  Wallace says that people get into these more prestigious institutions not because they are smarter or more intelligent, they just think about more relevant subjects to get into them.  For example, a high-schooler that is very busy with extracurricular activities, will put less effort into his classes.  At the end of the night when he’s done with these activities, he will have lost that time to put in hours for studying.  On the other hand, a student that chooses to put all of their time into their studies and different school based extra-curriculars will be more likely to get into those institutions.  This will show to be better off as they will receive a higher education and will then have more options in the future for anything they choose.  Wallace wants to stress that it is the choice of where a student puts their time that will determine their future.  The choice of focusing on schoolwork will help greatly when more effort is put into increasing the level of education rather than wasting countless hours on different kinds of activities. 

In David Foster Wallace’s “This is Water,” he conveys the point that adult life is all about choices and the unlimited options that it brings.  His audience is just about to enter adulthood.  They have to know the amount of choices that they will have in the coming future and how their choices will determine their life.  They already made the most important choice of getting a liberal arts education, but there is still a lot of life to live.  As adults, the way people choose to spend their time will determine their way of life.  Whether it be productive choices or just choices for us to have fun, they will affect our future.  We are all about to enter adulthood, which means we are going to have those choices to make soon and we have to prepare ourselves to make the right choices.
