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At Kenyon College's 2005 commencement , author David Foster Wallace delivered the address later published as " This Is Water . " The speech is a useful occasion to ask how a commencement address can give advice , make an argument , and choose a rhythm that asks listeners to slow down . A graduation address is delivered within a ceremony , yet a single list can tell an audience what a speaker thinks deserves attention . Imagine a speaker beginning with an original line : " You leave with drafts , questions , sleepless nights . " The sentence offers three nouns without a conjunction . That choice is asyndeton : a list in which expected coordinating conjunctions are omitted . The commas create a terse cadence . The objects arrive quickly , almost as if the speaker is setting them on the stage one by one . A writer might choose this form when the list should feel crisp , finite , or quietly insistent . Then the speaker turns from possession to process : " We read and argued and rewrote and began again . " Here each conjunction is visible . This is polysyndeton , the deliberate repetition of a conjunction in a sequence . Rather than treating the actions as one smooth bundle , the sentence makes the listener pass through each action . In a graduation address , that slower movement can honour work that has been repetitive , communal , and unfinished . The difference is not merely decorative . Say , " No trumpet , no verdict , no final map . " The asyndetic pattern denies the fantasy of a clean ending . A ceremony may mark a transition , but it cannot hand every graduate a complete route through work , friendship , or public life . The sentence's clipped units give the thought a hard edge ; it resists the easy consolation of a triumphant finale . Now compare a line that sounds out toward others : " Take room for doubt and correction and another voice . " The repeated and does more than lengthen the line . It refuses to make doubt , correction , or another voice seem disposable . Polysyndeton can give each element its own weight , especially when a speaker wants an audience to feel that several obligations must remain together . A careful writer must still ask what the rhythm serves . Lists can conceal weak thought as easily as they can sharpen strong thought . A sentence such as " We need courage , excellence , vision " may sound elevated while saying little . A more accountable list names the work : " Listen to the complaint , record the evidence , answer the question . " The second sentence is more useful not because it lacks conjunctions , but because its verbs identify actions that someone could perform . For a graduation address , the two patterns can also create contrast . " Do not leave seeking certainty ; leave ready to learn and revise and return . " The first clause contracts the future into one clear refusal . The second expands it into a practice . The conjunctions matter because learning is not a single event . It involves change and delay and repair , sometimes in an order nobody planned .
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