Deming Tells Seniors Odd Jobs, Lucky Breaks Can Still ‘Add Up to Something Interesting’

Harvard College Dean David J. Deming told seniors at the College’s Class Day about his own uneven path after college — recounting years of odd jobs, a tech-bust job market, and a string of lucky breaks that eventually led him to academia.

Deming nodded to the uncertain moments graduates were entering, including the rise of artificial intelligence and a recent string of commencement speakers — “usually guys,” he said — who had been booed for lecturing graduates about AI.

“I hope you don’t boo me today, but if you do, I could understand why,” Deming said.

Rather than dispensing advice, Deming spoke about growing up without wealth in the 1980s and 90s, losing access to his parents’ financial support at 18, and cobbling together jobs through college and after.

“I hustled for money. I painted windows, I washed cars, I sat middle seat in a pickup truck mowing lawns and weeding east Cleveland homes in the sweltering heat,” Deming said. “I worked briefly as a singing waiter at the Macaroni Grill.”

After graduating in 2002 into a tech-bust job market, Deming worked as a telemarketer in Washington, D.C. before landing a job at a law firm — an experience he said taught him that he did not want to be a lawyer.

He eventually enrolled in a public policy graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley, where a summer research stint analyzing HIV prevention data in South Africa led a professor to suggest he pursue a Ph.D.

“That sounds like a pretty boring story,” Deming said. “But that’s my point: a slow start, a little bit of adversity, a bunch of odd jobs, and some lucky breaks over time can still add up to something interesting.”

Deming said he was wary of the standard commencement-speech format, in which “a successful, established person imparts wisdom” to graduates.

“It’s like taking financial advice from someone who won the Powerball lottery,” he said.

He told seniors that the value of his early struggles was the empathy and moral character they had built — not the resilience or resourcefulness others typically emphasize.

“The world needs moral character now more than ever,” he said.