2 notes to graduating seniors:
Dear Graduate by Timothy Egan, NYTimes
Wear sunscreen. Stretch. Do one thing every day that scares you.
That was Mary Schmich’s famous fantasy commencement advice, falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut in a talk he never gave.
A columnist for the Chicago Tribune, Schmich wrote the piece in an afternoon while high on coffee and M&Ms. My kind of muse. Unfortunately, her words were sucked into the “unruly swamp of cyberspace,” as she called it, and she never got enough credit for pure distilled genius. Take a bow, Mary. Every spring, your immortality is renewed.
I’ll try again: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Yes, I know that’s the “Eater’s Manifesto” of Michael Pollan, but it cries out for an addendum. Which is: Eat a hot dog. With lots of mustard. The kind you can get for two dollars from street vendors just outside the ballpark, a trick I picked up from Ash Green, gentleman editor at Alfred A. Knopf. He passed this wisdom on before the recession.
While we’re on the subject: Learn to cook, something they don’t teach at fancy-pants colleges. Millions for quantum physics and deconstructing Dostoevsky, nothing on how to make enchiladas for 20 people.
At times, your life will have moments, days, even weeks of despair. Trust me: there is no bout of blues that a rich Bolognese sauce, filling every cubic inch of kitchen air, cannot cure.
And that brings me to: Take risks. I don’t mean ski the double diamond runs, ask for a card in blackjack with 15 showing and the dealer holding a king, or hit a high note in a karaoke bar, while sober. That goes without saying.
Fear of failure can be a motivator or an inhibitor. The latter is crippling, and ultimately leads to a life of missed opportunities. That’s why Teddy’s Roosevelt’s most famous dictum, sadly wasted on the French during a speech at the Sorbonne, was praise for the person “who comes up short again and again,” praise for the man “who fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Avoid phony controversies. Especially ones over religion. Just now, there’s a perfect example of this in the kerfuffle of President Obama’s upcoming graduation speech at Notre Dame.
It is said that a handful of devout Catholics cannot bear to let the president of the republic speak at one of America’s great universities because Obama is pro-choice on abortion. What would Jesus do? Take a seat on the lawn and hear the man out.
One word: plastics. That was the advice given Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate,” circa 1967. Ha-ha.
One word, 42 years later: volunteer. Easy for me to say, I know. It’s not news to the class of 2009 that you’re facing the worst employment prospects in 50 years or so. Who wouldn’t take a job in plastics? Your friends who graduated with honors last year are now competing to be waitresses and nannies. If they’re lucky.
There is another way. As you prepare to shed your flops, as you wade through a sea of rejections, consider the call to service. Even at low to no pay - which won’t do much for those college loans - the dividends later in life are richer than any paper portfolio.
Almost 20 years ago another college senior had an idea, spun out of a last-minute thesis, to get fellow graduates to give up two years of their lives teaching in failing urban and rural schools. Since then, about 20,000 young people have worked with 3 million students as part of Teach for America, founded by Wendy Kopp.
Of course, it’s now almost as hard to get into Teach for America as it is make it to Harvard or Stanford. More than 35,000 people applied for just 4,000 slots in the most recent round, a 42 percent spike.
But other doors have just opened. Earlier this year, Congress passed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which dramatically increases the size of programs like AmeriCorps. It was signed into law by that onetime community organizer who left college with a load of debt.
Nourish your friendships, which requires work and imagination. When the late Meg Greenfield retired as editorial page editor of the Washington Post, she returned to her home town of Seattle and promptly held a party for every friend she could find from her first grade class. First grade!
I doubt if anything said to Meg by some of the most powerful people on the planet in that other Washington gave her the joy she got from sharing a memory with a former seatmate of the crayon set.
Finally: congratulations! It took me seven years to get out of college, just like John Belushi in “Animal House,” and he went on to become Senator Blutarsky, don’t forget. (“Might as well join the Peace Corps,” he said, with an unprintable modifier).
You’re finishing in four, on time. Always with the common sense, my daughter the graduate.
-----------
Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young
A newspaper column by Mary Schmich, published by the Chicago Tribune on 01 June 1997.
Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who'd rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there's no reason we can't entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.
I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt.
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.
Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen.
Wear sunscreen. Stretch. Do one thing every day that scares you.
That was Mary Schmich’s famous fantasy commencement advice, falsely attributed to Kurt Vonnegut in a talk he never gave.
A columnist for the Chicago Tribune, Schmich wrote the piece in an afternoon while high on coffee and M&Ms. My kind of muse. Unfortunately, her words were sucked into the “unruly swamp of cyberspace,” as she called it, and she never got enough credit for pure distilled genius. Take a bow, Mary. Every spring, your immortality is renewed.
I’ll try again: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.
Yes, I know that’s the “Eater’s Manifesto” of Michael Pollan, but it cries out for an addendum. Which is: Eat a hot dog. With lots of mustard. The kind you can get for two dollars from street vendors just outside the ballpark, a trick I picked up from Ash Green, gentleman editor at Alfred A. Knopf. He passed this wisdom on before the recession.
While we’re on the subject: Learn to cook, something they don’t teach at fancy-pants colleges. Millions for quantum physics and deconstructing Dostoevsky, nothing on how to make enchiladas for 20 people.
At times, your life will have moments, days, even weeks of despair. Trust me: there is no bout of blues that a rich Bolognese sauce, filling every cubic inch of kitchen air, cannot cure.
And that brings me to: Take risks. I don’t mean ski the double diamond runs, ask for a card in blackjack with 15 showing and the dealer holding a king, or hit a high note in a karaoke bar, while sober. That goes without saying.
Fear of failure can be a motivator or an inhibitor. The latter is crippling, and ultimately leads to a life of missed opportunities. That’s why Teddy’s Roosevelt’s most famous dictum, sadly wasted on the French during a speech at the Sorbonne, was praise for the person “who comes up short again and again,” praise for the man “who fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Avoid phony controversies. Especially ones over religion. Just now, there’s a perfect example of this in the kerfuffle of President Obama’s upcoming graduation speech at Notre Dame.
It is said that a handful of devout Catholics cannot bear to let the president of the republic speak at one of America’s great universities because Obama is pro-choice on abortion. What would Jesus do? Take a seat on the lawn and hear the man out.
One word: plastics. That was the advice given Dustin Hoffman in “The Graduate,” circa 1967. Ha-ha.
One word, 42 years later: volunteer. Easy for me to say, I know. It’s not news to the class of 2009 that you’re facing the worst employment prospects in 50 years or so. Who wouldn’t take a job in plastics? Your friends who graduated with honors last year are now competing to be waitresses and nannies. If they’re lucky.
There is another way. As you prepare to shed your flops, as you wade through a sea of rejections, consider the call to service. Even at low to no pay - which won’t do much for those college loans - the dividends later in life are richer than any paper portfolio.
Almost 20 years ago another college senior had an idea, spun out of a last-minute thesis, to get fellow graduates to give up two years of their lives teaching in failing urban and rural schools. Since then, about 20,000 young people have worked with 3 million students as part of Teach for America, founded by Wendy Kopp.
Of course, it’s now almost as hard to get into Teach for America as it is make it to Harvard or Stanford. More than 35,000 people applied for just 4,000 slots in the most recent round, a 42 percent spike.
But other doors have just opened. Earlier this year, Congress passed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which dramatically increases the size of programs like AmeriCorps. It was signed into law by that onetime community organizer who left college with a load of debt.
Nourish your friendships, which requires work and imagination. When the late Meg Greenfield retired as editorial page editor of the Washington Post, she returned to her home town of Seattle and promptly held a party for every friend she could find from her first grade class. First grade!
I doubt if anything said to Meg by some of the most powerful people on the planet in that other Washington gave her the joy she got from sharing a memory with a former seatmate of the crayon set.
Finally: congratulations! It took me seven years to get out of college, just like John Belushi in “Animal House,” and he went on to become Senator Blutarsky, don’t forget. (“Might as well join the Peace Corps,” he said, with an unprintable modifier).
You’re finishing in four, on time. Always with the common sense, my daughter the graduate.
-----------
Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young
A newspaper column by Mary Schmich, published by the Chicago Tribune on 01 June 1997.
Inside every adult lurks a graduation speaker dying to get out, some world-weary pundit eager to pontificate on life to young people who'd rather be Rollerblading. Most of us, alas, will never be invited to sow our words of wisdom among an audience of caps and gowns, but there's no reason we can't entertain ourselves by composing a Guide to Life for Graduates.
I encourage anyone over 26 to try this and thank you for indulging my attempt.
Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '97:
Wear sunscreen.
If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists, whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now.
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine.
Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday.
Do one thing every day that scares you.
Sing.
Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Floss.
Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself.
Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.
Stretch.
Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't.
Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone.
Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's.
Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own.
Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room.
Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.
Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.
Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.
Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. Travel.
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.
Respect your elders.
Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.
Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85.
Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth.
But trust me on the sunscreen.