As we mentioned here last month, Stephen Colbert was chosen to give the commencement address today at the Medical University of South Carolina. We will, as ever, be on the lookout for potential footage from this event, but here’s a first look at some of what he said.

From the Charleston Regional Business Journal:

Colbert returns to give MUSC commencement address
By Chelsea Hadaway
chadaway@scbiznews.com
Published May 15, 2009

Stephen Colbert - MUSC Commencement 2009Charleston’s own Stephen Colbert returned to familiar stomping grounds as he delivered the Medical University of South Carolina’s 180th commencement address this morning.

. . .

In between other quips about cadavers named Ricky and medical school pick-up lines, were moments of poignancy as Colbert reflected on his father, who died in a plane crash when Colbert was 10 years old.

“When a parent dies to a young child, the godlike image of that parent is trapped in amber,” he said. And then the child looses [sic] the ability to see the parent as a human, he said. But he thanked Dr. Layton McCurdy, who was a friend of his father’s and another faculty member at MUSC, for telling him stories of his father as a human and a doctor.

Colbert spoke of his father’s favorite quote from Jaques Maritain: “The only sadness is not to be a saint.” This played into his advice he wanted to give to the graduates, which was “go make mistakes.”

“But it’s irresponsible for me to tell graduates of a medical college to go out and make as many mistakes as you can,” he said. So he instead offered other advice: “Lower your patients’ expectations as to your competence as soon as possible.”

. . .

Read the full article here

It must have been a great honor for Stephen to be asked to speak at a school with such strong family ties. I have no doubt he delivered a wonderful speech (I’m enjoying the portions quoted so far!), and I hope we get the opportunity to see bits of it on YouTube or the like soon.

Congratulations, 2009 MUSC graduates!

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