In her commencement speech to Harvard University's graduating class of 2008, J.K. Rowling, renowned author of the Harry Potter series of novels, expounded on the benefits of what is a rare condition among the ivy league set: failure.
"The fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure," Rowling said on that drizzly spring day in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
"Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person's idea of success, so high have you already flown."
Rowling was a single parent, unemployed and living "as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain" before she published Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in 1997.
Today she is considered the most successful living author.
Rowling went on to tell the Harvard graduates that it was at her lowest, stripped of all pretenses of an enviable life, that she found the confidence to chase the thing she wanted most: to write books.
"I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive," said Rowling. "And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life."
Late June is commencement season. It is a time to recognize hard work and growth, and mark a transition to the next uncertain stage of life.
In a ceremony at the K'atl'odeeche First Nation reserve on Wednesday, 17 giddy four- and five-year-olds graduated from the Aboriginal Head Start program.
In the preschool program, children learn to socialize through play, and experience their culture by going out on the land.
Surely, during their time in head start, the children took innumerable tumbles, cried uncountable tears, and were gently scolded numberless times for hitting or shouting or not sharing.
In early childhood however, such blunders are not thought of as failures.
Missteps are how children learn to be conscious of themselves and considerate of others.
On Friday, Diamond Jenness Secondary School's class of 2018 had its convocation.
As it goes with graduation ceremonies, various adults offered the students words of advice and motivation, supposedly to prepare them, in some small way, for the "real world."
Of course, anyone who has been a teenager knows that these students have already traversed the spectrum of real life. They have experienced rejection and heartbreak, depression and loss, embarrassment, elation, success and of course, failure.
The real world, as it turns out, can feel a lot like high school, but with more bills to pay.
Still, there they stood: 28 young women and men, regal and proud in their purple caps and gowns, ready to take on whatever fate might deliver.
Futures always seem expansive and bright at graduation ceremonies SA国际影视传媒� and they should.
This year's graduates will get good jobs, go to post-secondary, travel the world, and start families.
They will also be laid off, get too drunk, go broke, have affairs and be cheated on.
Considering all this, it was heartening to hear Diamond Jenness's valedictorian, Fiona Huang, encourage her classmates not to let all the bad stuff, which is unavoidable, scare them from striving for the best stuff.
"Although some of us are unsure about what we're going to do in the future, we should all keep in mind to not be afraid to attempt anything we want to achieve," said Huang.
"In life, there are very few mistakes that can't be corrected."
No doubt, Rowling would agree.
