
In “This is Water” by David Foster Wallace, he gives this graduation speech in a different way than graduation speeches students hear today. The author wants students to realize that everything they’ve learned and encountered so far means nothing when they get to the real world.  He wants students and even the adults present to understand what life actually is, the different trials and meaning of what they go through, and how to react and deal with what they go through. Students may use knowledge learned from studies during high school, yet they will never get what the real world is like until they actually grow up and use the experiences they go through as trial and error.

Students today believe everything encountered to this point is of the biggest encounters they will go through and that from these can handle anything thrown at them in life. Wallace begins to teach the students that this jump from high school to either college or straight to working and providing for a family, is unlike any trial they have been through and not knowing the different obstacles about to be thrown at them. Early on in his speech Wallace gives them a story, “There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’(X).”

This story of the two young fish can be used as a comparison to the young graduates about to take on life. It shows that students do not yet fully understand what they will go through. This story is a great example to show this. The fish have lived and swam in this water for all of their life. Yet the do not even know what water is. High school students today have grown up in the world and think they understand life when they are eighteen and graduating high school, but still at this point should be asking themselves, what is life? Adults today do not actually want to teach kids about life simply because they do not understand it themselves and have no answer to the question. Wallace is not trying to do this himself he is merely trying to explain to them that they have no idea what life is. Wallace later says, “The point of the fish story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.” (X). Life is one of those strange things that no one can fully comprehend. One person may get one thing while someone else understands something else. This understanding will only come with experience and living in the real world.

Wallace wants to explain to people attending this speech that there are many different trials they go through and how to understand the meaning of them. He tells us a story of a religious man having a conversation with an atheist to show us an example of a trial(XI). Wallace wants students to understand that they will come across many people with separate views as you and you can either try and change that man or accept what he believes as true to one person and what they believe to be true to themselves. They can learn to live that people do not see the same way as them self or give up on anyone that is not like them. Everyone has their own view. People believe their opinion is the only truth and do not want to accept that different people see the world differently, which is something seen all over the world. Wallace gives us an example of a normal day in this world, “By way of example, let’s say it’s an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again(XII).” He wants the students to realize that once they get through college and are in the real world they will have a boring routine filled life. Each day they will wake up, go work a full day, eat and sleep. There is not much change on a day to day basis. What they have done to that point has gotten them that job and put them where they thought they wanted to be. They realize that being in the real world is a boring life that is the exact same day in and day out. They might have a family they can enjoy life and be around when not at work, but to sum up their life they will have the same schedule as the day before or after with not much change. 

Wallace finally wants students to know how to react and deal with the situations they encounter in life. One example he uses to show is when someone us stuck in traffic he knows that they hate that. Everyone is going to be stuck in traffic; there could be a fatal wreck that someone just lost a family member in, there could be someone that just lost his parents or trying to get a sick kid to the hospital. The fact is that there will always be someone going through something worse while you could just be mad you have to go to the store(XIII). Of course a student might be in a situation like this but still some things happen, and while you think going to the store is a terrible thing. He tells them that they will have default settings we stick too. The default settings he says they have will make them mad but mainly because it is a form of self-worship(XVI).

 The key points Wallace showed students throughout the speech are real life examples that happen every day. He wants to try and show the students these things and better prepare them for the real world and how to handle themselves day in and day out. Wallace wants to teach everyone attending this graduation that they may believe they know what life actually, but in the end, understanding what life actually is comes with experience and only by trial and error. He is not trying to necessarily scare the students but just is trying to better prepare them for this journey called life.
