Cartoonist Guisewite addresses LSA grads

Award-winning cartoonist Cathy Guisewite '72 creator of the widely syndicated "Cathy" comic strip, keynoted LS&A's commencement April 30 at Michigan Stadium.

Guisewite said she discovered her gift for creative writing when she got an A- on a final on the novel Ulysses even though she hadn't read the book.

Guisewite advised graduates that it was wiser to "shoot for five good minutes in a row" than for perfection; to "remember what you love"; that "if you want something to change, do something different"; and to re-evaluate their careers every four years by "regraduating...celebrate what you have done and admit what you are not doing."

In a radio interview, Guisewite said her career began when she started sending her drawings of herself to her mother "to show I had a sense of humor amidst the trauma of love life." Her mother said they were so good she should send them to a newspaper syndicate. And she did.

"The syndicate said it wanted a strip that dealt with changes in women's lives," Guisewite said. There were two roles for women when she graduated, she continued: "You could stand by your man as a housewife or be a career woman. There was no middle ground. A lot of my beginning work dealt with that. Many women were and still are dealing with same kind of confusion. But in the big picture of things, women are doing and are expected to do a thousand times more things than they did when I graduated."