2022 Commencement Speech
Dr. Casey McCluskey '97

Here we go: Sisters of St. Dominic, members of the school board, honored guests, family, friends, my mom, alumnae, and of course, most importantly, the distinguished class of 2022.  I am beyond humbled and overwhelmed to have been asked to deliver this address to the graduating class.  And when I say overwhelmed, I mean it. This has been one of the most stressful things that I have done in years and do you remember what I do for a living? I am a Pediatric Intensive Care doc and I make life and death decisions on a daily basis. But that, that I can do. That is what I am trained in and that is where my passion lies.  But this? Getting up in front of these incredibly gifted and talented women and try to deliver a message to send you out into the world? This is not my place of comfort.  I am one of 6 children and each of us has graduated from high school and college. So what does that mean? I have heard a LOT of very bad commencement speeches. Which may be why I did everything I could to actually turn down this amazing invitation.  What message could I possibly have? What could I possibly say to this amazing group of young women?  But then my best friend reminded me listen my own advice: “Stories are important. You always want to hear peoples’ stories and details because those are the beautiful and amazing things about them….” So maybe that is where I start with stories

So how do stories begin? “Once upon a time?” Is that how your story will begin tonight?  Yes, this is a beginning for you, but please do not think this is your very beginning because you have already faced a lifetime of experiences.  You have already lived through a pandemic!! 

Don’t let anyone belittle everything you have accomplished up to this point or tell you that your story thus far doesn’t hold value.  Some of the best stories with the deepest meanings are referred to as “children’s stories.” 

The Little Prince taught us “a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Lewis Carrol asked of Alice, “Do you suppose she is a wildflower?” Dorothy taught is “there is no place like home.”  And Max showed us that “Inside all of us is Hope. Inside all of us is Fear. Inside all of us is Adventure. Inside all of us is… A Wild Thing.” So this is just A beginning for you, but you have lived a life so far.  

So my next chapter began like many of yours might, I was off to college.  I was given this incredible edict from my parents: “You go to school to get an education, not to job, so go take any and all of the classes that inspire you and fire you up.” So this is what I did.  I took all the classes that I loved and this led me to learn even more about stories and story telling as I double majored in English and Film.  What an amazing gift this was! I got to study stories! But then comes senior year and suddenly people are asking, “What are you going to do with your life?” Guys, I don’t even know what I am having for dinner on a nightly basis, let alone what is happening a week from now and people were asking 21-year-old me, “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” At what point in time did we expect 21-year-old people to have anything figured out, let alone their lives! Don’t fall for this trap. Don’t hold yourself to this expectation.  You do not have to write the end of your story when you haven’t even met the most interesting characters in your lives! Give yourself time and I pray that along the way you meet your Ron and Hermione, who stand by you through your journey, your Peter Pan, who reminds you that childhood is forever and rules are often optional, your George who reminds you to be so curious, your Atticus Finch who speaks truth, and maybe a talking animal here and there. Seek out these interesting characters out in your life and be one of those interesting characters. 

So what does someone who has no idea what to do, in fact do? Grad school! Now I say this only half joking, but it is actually bit true. I knew I wanted to give back so after graduating I applied for a postgraduate service program called Alliance for Catholic Education where I taught second grade for 2 years in Jackson, MS while earning my Masters in Education.  This program was perfect for me because it was a bit like being an adult with training wheels: I could be an adult during the school year and a graduate student during the summers.

Now let me tell you, I have accomplished a couple things in my life.  I have graduated from the Elms, from Notre Dame, taught in Ethiopia, survived cancer, graduated medical school, finished a residency and a fellowship and the absolute HARDEST year of my life was my first year of teaching.  And I am not saying this to be nice to your teachers because I don’t really have to be.  And you know what made it harder? Knowing I liked teaching, but I did not love it.  I was not made to do it.  My mom, my brother and my aunt are all teachers….They were born to teach.  When I look at them, their passion and love for teaching is so clear; I did not have this passion. I knew this was not a sustainable career for me because it did not fire me up.  I think this period of my life is what Mrs. Fippin would call my Bildungsroman period, but, honestly, ever since she taught me that word, I have never been sure I have pronounced it correctly or used it correctly. But this time was a period of growth and education where I went from being a lost child to a mature adult….okay, the mature adult part may be pushing it a bit as I have more legos that any of you can even imagine and I just bought myself a pinball machine.  But I was certainly lost and was not feeling very adult and feeling like everyone else had it all figured out and I could not find my way.    

During this period of teaching, I tried to listen to that amazing narrator in the story of my life, my gut.  And my gut kept calling me to medicine.  And I did, what I do best: I fought it. I didn’t know if I was smart enough to do it.  I didn’t know if I had the drive to do it.  I didn’t even know if I only thought about doing it because my dad was a doctor and so far the only two careers I saw myself doing was being a teacher, my mom’s career, and being a doctor, my dad’s career.

Plus after taking my prerequisite classes (because surprisingly “Advanced Film Noir” and “American Literary Traditions” are not required to go to med school), I would be *gasp* 30 years old just STARTING medical school.   But the voice persisted. Please take this lesson from me, listen to that voice. If only we all had Morgan Freeman’s voice as the voice of our gut, it would be so much easier to listen to.  It would be loud and authoritative and you would know.  But that is not how our gut narrator works, it is quiet; it is subtle; and sometimes it takes the forms of other people.  It is when we are ready to listen, that is when we hear it, we just have to be willing to listen.  People ask me all the time, do you regret not going to medical school right away and without hesitation I tell them “absolutely not because I would not be a doctor now.” I wasn’t ready then. I was ready on my own time line.   

Now back to talking about characters.  There are times in your life, when characters will find you. I now thoroughly believe that every good story needs to have a ninja in it. And believe it or not, I mean this quite literally.  Here is my ninja story.  The first day of my third year of pediatric residency, I found this little yellow ninja in the drawer in our Emergency Department that I was working in.  Now it probably was pulled out of some kid’s nose, but I didn’t care.  I decided that this “Pocket Ninja” was going to be my mascot for the year because I enjoy making ridiculous proclamations such this. I took pictures of it all around the hospital fighting off evil germs and working as my pocket ninja sidekick and put them on facebook because for me, the whole purpose of facebook is to amuse myself.  And then one day, I went to visit one of my little ones who was born with a very bad heart and he was not doing well.  His mom told me, “He may need a pocket ninja of his own if things keep going like this.”  So I did what any good pediatrician does and I went and googled “little plastic ninjas” “small karate figures” “tiny ninja fighters” and I found them! I overnighted a bag of them and brought a green pocket ninja and gave it to his mom and told her it would watch over him when I couldn’t.  That green pocket ninja actually went with the flight crew to pick up his new heart and was in the surgeon’s pocket during his heart transplant and remains taped to the door of bedroom to this day 6 years later.  But now I had this whole bag full of pocket ninjas.  So I started taping them to my patients’ hospital beds to watch over them when I was not around. It became something that I was kind of known for at my hospital 

When I moved to my next hospital for Fellowship and I thought, maybe I should just let my weird out a little bit at a time. How do you explain Pocket Ninjas to people? You don’t. It is simply something that is just understood.  So I would secretly hide these pocket ninja’s in my patients’ rooms and for 6 months my nurses were finding ninjas everywhere and very confused.  Finally someone caught on that it was me who was leaving these little guys to watch over patients and people were like, “yeah, that makes sense. That seems like something Casey would do.” 

I like to think it is because I have many attributes of a ninja and not that I am just weird.  I think we all know.  Well, now, I have left hundreds of these little ninjas for 100s of patients in 5 different hospitals.  I give them out to my team when we go through something big and scary together.  As one of my partners put it, “Save a Life, Get a Ninja.”  They have gone home with patients and are taped to the door in their bedroom, they have been buried with children, they are carried around in parents’ wallets.  I also believe they go where they are needed and find whoever needs some watching over and each of you will be receiving your own pocket ninja to be with you because like I said, “every great story needs a ninja” and I know that each of you will live an amazing story. 

Now the last part of my story that I want you to remember is this: in the age of social media and sound bites and editing, you are only hearing one version of my story.  And sure, it sounds like a good story now, but in the middle of it, it was messy and scary and, at times, dark.  It was hard to be a college graduate, living at home with my parents, not loving my job and having no idea what to do with my life.  It was lonely seeing other people fulfill their dreams as they shared their successes on social media. (Funny how no one really ever shares the failures though.)  It was complicated having a job I was good at but that didn’t fulfill me and feeling that I needed to do something else.  It was terrifying to go back to school and “start over” at 30.  So remember, you are hearing one version of my story though, but those other aspects exist.  (No one graduation speech should ever hit: and then there were the depression years…) Please don’t ever lose site in the fact that we only see versions of others’ stories and we all have those dark periods, despite how pretty the cover of the book may be or how eloquent the words sound. 

Your own tale has started.  Make it a fantastic story.  Don’t make it predictable.  Fill it with fun and interesting characters.  Choose your own adventure and live it to the fullest. No matter how bad things get, don’t ever underestimate the hole your story’s absence would leave.  Don’t worry if you feel like you have writer’s block and don’t know what direction to take your story, it will come. Be patient with yourself.  The words will come.  Remember your story is sacred to you, but share it with others and allow your story to shine through in the world. And lastly, please know, It has been an honor to be even a small character in your story. 

“And now,” cried Max, “let the wild rumpus start!”