Conan O'Brien '85: Magna Cum Laude

I'm Conan O'Brien on class of 1985 one of the most surreal experiences of my adult life is I spent a very intense period in my senior year writing a thesis called literary progeria in the works of Flannery O'Connor and William Faulkner it's this idea that I had fallen in love with that the South was prematurely old because it was part of a young undefeated nation yet it was old and new defeat and this is captured in children that are prematurely old and that's a condition it's a real disease called progeria so I called it literary progeria and that you can see these children in Faulkner and you can see them in Flannery O'Connor so I wrote this thesis and finished it at the last second and handed it in it did pretty well one professor thought it was genius and gave it a summa another professor said this guy's an idiot gave it laude and then they gave it to a third professor to figure it out and he said I think he's a genius who's also an idiot and then magna that's how academics works so I get to graduate magna I get out of Harvard and then I go off and I have this wild career in comedy and ups and downs and downs and ups and all these things happen and then about two years ago I'm on tour when this one fan says look what I have and hands me a copy of my thesis they had gone to Lamont library checked out my thesis photocopied it and brought it and handed it to me half you know just before I was going to do a show for 5,000 people and I hadn't seen it since 1985 I'm holding it and I'm opening it up and it's like a Vietnam vet going back into the jungle without being prepared beforehand so I was shaking and looking at it and suddenly flashing back to the hamburgers that I kept under my bed because I you know would eat them while he was writing the thesis and doing the bibliography and put them into the bed and they would rot and how I lost my mind and so that was crazy that was a full coming of the coming full circle I knew then it was time to die you

Channel: Harvard University

Views: 112,104

Rating: 4.964242 out of 5

Keywords: harvard, harvard university, harvard alumni, alumni, conan, conan o'brien

Id: o28r3ltn-V4

Length: 2min 14sec (134 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 25 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/Agave666]

Gross, he needs to keep his sex life private!

[u/SylvetubeTali]

Still can’t believe he went to Harvard.