LEWISTON – Best-selling historian David McCullough, host of public television’s “The American Experience,” told the 387 graduating seniors at Bates College on Sunday that “however little television you watch, watch less.”

McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “1776” and “Truman,” also advised students to choose work they love and to work hard at it.

“Don’t let setbacks or skeptics get you down. And when, as is bound to happen, some supposedly all-knowing somebody says to you, ‘Well, welcome to the real world,’ remember that Bates College, too, is the real world. Remember that Shakespeare and Cervantes, Botticelli and Tchaikovsky are the real world,” he said.

The college awarded honorary degrees to McCullough, Shakespearean scholar and cultural critic Marjorie Garber, AIDS researcher David Ho and choreographer Mark Morris.