No Sweat’s Anti-Commencement Address
My pal No Sweat Kosinski is back. He’s sharing his thoughts on what he’d say if invited to give a commencement speech to graduating high school seniors. Feel free to pass it along to members of the Class of 2015.
Mikey,
I’ve attended two high school commencements in the last two weeks. Both were boring as hell and featured speakers full of happy horse shit about the places these seniors will go and the things they’ll do by the time they’re 25. Neither offered one nugget of insight about college life. The experience motivated me to create No Sweat’s instruction manual for college-bound seniors. This manual includes just seven tenets to assure a successful college experience. Here’s the list:
1. Your mission in college is to learn to think.
Learning to reason, to think and to defend your point-of-view orally and in writing is the primary reason you go to college. If you earn a degree in one of the STEM academic disciplines, you won’t have to convince people that college prepared you for the real world. For other majors, employers may be skeptical and you’re the one who will have to do the convincing. Internships, working on research projects with professors and publishing are three ways you can demonstrate how well you exercised your brain as a student.
2. Not all colleges are created equally.
Rightly or wrongly, some schools have better reputations for turning out high-quality graduates. Don’t be in denial about how potential employers perceive your school. Northern Illinois University isn’t Harvard in a cornfield despite what the NIU website says. While you can’t control what others think of your school, you can control how they perceive you and your talent.
3. College majors are overrated.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says a college grad is likely to have 11.7 jobs in a lifetime. It’s likely you’ll change careers at some point or work in a job that doesn’t exist today. All this makes the major you choose less relevant. Don’t fret over your choice; take courses that demonstrate to potential employers that you’re smarter and better prepared than your peers. If you can find a counselor who can think out of the box, work with them to design your own unique major with emphasis on courses and activities that will stretch you and your intellect.
4. Think for yourself.
While the purpose of college is to learn to think, many college faculty members and administrators believe their true mission is to tell you what to think. Having a PhD doesn’t mean your professors aren’t carrying around a bunch of self-limiting beliefs. Though they have terminal degrees and have learned more and more about less and less, don’t forget that they’ve lived most of their adult lives in an academic cocoon that is not at all like the real world. To paraphrase Sherriff Ed Earl in the play Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, learn to tell the difference between a rainstorm and someone pissing on your boots.
5. Your secondary mission to grow socially and emotionally.
That means it’s OK to have a good time. It also means that if you have a hometown honey, say good-bye to him or her when you leave for campus. You won’t grow up socially if you spend Friday and Saturday nights in the dorm. Don’t stick around with classmates who’ve made a commitment to limit the fun times that are part of the college experience.
6. Don’t do really stupid shit. If you’re going to grow socially while in college, you’re going to do stupid shit.
That’s OK; just avoid doing really stupid shit. Don’t leave your drinks unattended and remember that once your friend clicks send, the photo they took of you doing really stupid shit will be in cyberspace forever. Throughout my career, I was told to surround myself with people smarter than me. The same applies to the friends you make in college. Smart friends don’t let friends do really stupid shit.
7. Life isn’t fair and bad stuff happens.
Commencement speakers paint a rosy picture that implies that members of the Class of 2015 will be high-tech millionaires wearing jeans and a hoodie to work and driving a Tesla all before turning 30. That’s not reality; college isn’t always a bed of roses. There will be hard classes, difficult professors and incidents that will keep you up at night. Don’t complain, Snowflake; be resilient. It’s all part of the experience.
Best wishes and happy motoring,
No Sweat
I’d add one additional tenet to No Sweat’s list: Study abroad for a semester.
Both my daughters studied abroad, Kate in London and Liz in Galway, Ireland. When they weren’t in class experiencing the European system of education, they traveled extensively, immersing themselves in new cultures. It was a source of good times, real beer and interesting wines that taught them resourcefulness and helped them grow up. A semester abroad also looks good on a resume.