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Members of the Vermillion High School Class of 2022 give their mortarboards a toss in celebration at the conclusion of their commencement on Saturday, May 14 in the Sanford Coyotes Sports Center.
School Board President Doug Peterson gives the keynote address at the May 14 commencement for the Vermillion High School Class of 2022, held Saturday, May 14, in the Sanford Coyotes Sports Center.
Members of the Vermillion High School Class of 2022 give their mortarboards a toss in celebration at the conclusion of their commencement on Saturday, May 14 in the Sanford Coyotes Sports Center.
School Board President Doug Peterson gives the keynote address at the May 14 commencement for the Vermillion High School Class of 2022, held Saturday, May 14, in the Sanford Coyotes Sports Center.
Doug Peterson, president of the Vermillion School Board and a professor at the University of South Dakota, admitted to feeling a bit nervous as he stepped up to the podium to present the keynote address at the graduation exercises of the Vermillion High School Class of 2022.
“I’m not nervous about speaking in front of people. I do that for a living; I do that almost every day,” he told the VHS graduates and their friends and families, seated in the Sanford Coyotes Sports Center on Saturday, May 14. “I’m nervous because I want to say something meaningful to you graduates.”
About 10 years ago, Peterson said, he developed a course on happiness call “The Psychology of Living Well.”
“I did that then because I felt students needed to know more about happiness and after the last couple years, I think we could all use a refresher course. I’ve continued to teach that course and I’ve continued to learn,” he said. “I want to share with you some of the things I’ve learned over that time. Most of them come from other people, some scholars, but many from the students who were in the classroom.”
Most of what he’s learned, Peterson said, sums up as 4Gs.
“Over the years, I’ve learned from projects the students have done,” he said. “Sometimes they write papers, they do research, but more often they do something very personal. They learn to play the guitar. They take a road trip across the Midwest. They create a podcast. They learn to paint and they train for a 5k or they develop their own charity.
“One student even interviewed a woman who was 101 years old and asked her, ‘what advice do you have? What is your secret to happiness?’ And her happiness was simple. French fries. Seriously, after 101 years, she said, ‘always order the fries.’”
Everyone likes fries, the woman said, and sharing fries leads to good conversation.
“What I have to tell you is not a secret to happiness,” Peterson said. “It’s not even the steps toward happiness. Instead, it’s more like a trail guide. Trails are challenging; they’re uphill, they’re not well marked and it’s easy to get lost.”
Trails, he said, often end up right where they began. And, he explained the meaning of the 4Gs that he mentioned earlier.
“The first G is for Greeting. How you greet people has a tremendous impact not only on them but on you,” Peterson said, “and the best way to greet people is with a smile.”
He encouraged the graduates and the audience to smile at each other.
“I start to see some giggles, I start to see some smiles,” he said. “That’s what we expect, because smiles are contagious and not only are they contagious, they actually change your brain.”
Peterson described how when a person smiles, the muscles in their face sends a signal to an emotional center in their brain to actually make it process happiness.
“Neuroscientists believe that we use this every day to interpret the emotion of others,” he said. “When you see someone else smile, your face begins to smile and your brain begins to process those signals to figure out what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling.
“Once you’ve greeted someone with a smile, take time to get to know them. You are surrounded by interesting people with amazing stories to tell,” he said. “Learn who those people are and listen to their stories. And I’m challenging you to even try this with strangers. It can be difficult, but you should and you can talk to strangers.”
When surveyed, most people say that fewer than 40 percent of strangers would welcome a conversation, Peterson said, but when people are sent out on a public transit and strike up a conversation with a stranger, an overwhelming majority – 84% – not only welcome the interaction but have an appreciation for it.
“Follow President Jimmy Carter’s philosophy,” Peterson said. “For the brief time that you have with another person face-to-face, treat them as if they are the most important person in the world, for in that moment, they are.”
The Second G Is For Gratitude
“One of the most common happiness activities is called the Gratitude Journal, where you write down things you’re grateful for each and every day and they often begin very much the same,” he said. “I’m grateful for my parents, my siblings, I’m grateful for my friends. But then they get into transition with things like I’m grateful for food, or coffee or Taylor Swift.”
Eventually, Peterson said, those who keep a journal begin to write how they’re grateful they have a bed to sleep in and that they live in a community that’s safe.
“Realizing how much we have can also be achieved through another exercise that I’d like to you use here right now. It’s called Imagine This,” he said. “Imagine all of the things that you have in the world and now begin to take away some of those things.”
Peterson asked students to begin to imagine that they don't have their cool, new shoes any longer.
“Now imagine that you don’t have different clothes to wear every day, or imagine that your home isn’t always heated,” he said. “Imagine that your friends are no longer there, that you have no family, nothing, and now you can put it all back and it’s magically there and you will appreciate what’s really important to you.”
Feeling grateful and recognizing all that you have to be grateful for is hard to process, Peterson said.
“I want to challenge you to express your gratitude and the easiest way to do that is to tell people, and be specific,” he said. “Tell them, ‘thank you’ and that you are grateful for them and tell them what you’re grateful for. Parents, grandparents, teachers, music directors, coaches, neighbors, friends – they’ve all done something very good to help you along the way.”
Peterson told the students to call them later that day and let them know they are grateful for them.
“Expressing gratitude closes the circle of giving. That other person did something for you and you are acknowledging their act through an action of your own,” he said.
The Third G Is Giving
“Happiness is by and large a short-lived experience,” Peterson said. “But when we give, that’s one of the few times that’s shown to produce a lasting change in happiness.”
The giving doesn’t have to be big things, he said.
“A few years ago, some students in my class wanted to make sure that no kid would be left out of T-ball for the summer,” Peterson said. The students put up posters, talked to their friends and asked them to lend them the money to help pay the registration fee. By the end of the project, they had raised almost $400 and no child that summer had to pay the registration fee to join T-ball.”
He said this past year a student was grateful for the opportunity she was given to participate in sports in high school.
“But she also realized that access to that opportunity depended on the right equipment and because she was a runner, she knew that meant running shoes,” Peterson said.
The student began a shoe drive on campus with the goal to collect 30 pairs of shoes in one week.
“At the end of that week, she had more bags (of shoes) than would fit in her car – over 200 pair of shoes donated to the Boys and Girls Club,” he said. “Giving is more than charity; it’s more than money … it’s a mindset. You can give while you’re doing your job, you can give as a teacher and you can give through community service, maybe even as a member of the local school board.”
Peterson spoke of Shel Silverstein’s book, “The Giving Tree.”
“I like to think of it as a story of happiness,” he said. “Silverstein got some things right about happiness. At every point when the tree gives of itself, as a swing, or of its apples, or its branches and eventually it’s trunk, the tree is happy. But what Silverstein didn’t get correct was that the tree was only happy when it was giving and that’s not just the way giving works.”
He noted that the book ends with the boy featured in the story having grown to an elderly man and the tree being reduced to just a stump. The old man sits on the stump and the tree is happy.
“If you can be that tree, if you can reach the end of your life and at every point will have given what you have, you will have lived a happy life,” Peterson said.
The Fourth G Is Growth
“You will continue to learn new things every single day,” he told the students, “but the growth I’m talking about is not about how much you know or how fast you can run or how well you can play. It’s really about a process.
Growth, he said, is about small, incremental change.
“And I do mean small,” Peterson said. “Sometimes it’s so small you won’t notice it from day to day … Yet, if you ask any of the people who are here for you, particularly those who have known you for some time, they will tell you you have changed a lot.
“That’s one of the most important things to remember about happiness and about life in general – it’s these little, small changes, the ones you hardly notice, that add up to become something very basic,” he said. … “Growth never stops and it rewards patience and commitment, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. It’s not. It’s work, but it’s work that’s worth it if you embrace greeting people, being grateful, and giving of yourself.”
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