Wicked words of advice to the Class of 2017

The annual commencement speech at the University of Oz was delivered by the Wicked Witch of the West, her sister unable to attend the ceremony because she was bogged down with housework.

Good afternoon graduates. While it is customary to be warmly embraced by your commencement speaker, it is not in my purview to offer you hollow plaudits and pleasant platitudes. I will not coddle you, I will not play nice-nice with you, and I will most definitely not bull shit you.  You have a legitimate reason to celebrate because you did finish what you started out to do when you graduated from high school. That’s more than the close to 50% of college bound students can say who didn’t pass the finish line. But don’t get a swelled head. Across the fruited plains of America two million undergraduate degrees are being awarded.  Mathematically that means you are not even one in a million.

Economic statisticians love to point out that college graduates have a much higher life-time earning potential than non-graduates. Big deal. So you spent about $200,000 to get where you are today.  It will take you a decade to break even with your non-graduate contemporaries’ earnings. Imagine what you could have done with that $200,000.  Instead of earning 15 credits studying abroad for a semester, you could have actually lived abroad for four years and come away with a lifetime of valuable experiences.  You could have invested your $200,000 and bought a nice car with the interest.

But for the moment let’s forget about earning potential and let’s focus on what happened to you after four years on the Yellow Brick Road. What did you really learn? What did you really learn here in these hallowed halls and rolling hills that you couldn’t have learned somewhere else? How many hours did you spend in class and working on papers and projects that were wasted hours?  If your four years of college were an orange, how much juice would you have actually squeezed out?

If we were to be really honest you would know that it wasn’t the courses you took in college that made all the difference, but it was the course you set to navigate the waters of higher education. If you didn’t set a course, all the credit courses you took were for naught. But don’t think for a moment that your course had to be a rigid one because many a boat has been dashed upon the rocks because the navigator failed to trim the sails or let them fly when necessary.

Graduation is not a final destination. It’s a port. If you got the most out of your education you will see the open seas and be overwhelmed about all the opportunities that await you.

Please don’t think for a moment that your diploma is equipped with a GPS. Your diploma is like a driver’s license. And if you can remember the day you passed your road test you had no problem saying you still had a lot to learn.

Sometime in the next week or so, check your parents’ odometer and see how many miles they’ve journeyed on the Yellow Brick Road and ask them what they’ve learned in all the years they’ve been driving.

It is totally out of character for me to say anything that is not a tad wicked, but I will break character today and say this. You life is what you make of it and if I can offer you a suggestion, your life will be full of meaning if you take full responsibility for your actions, your motives and your decisions. You will never have full control of what happens to you in life, but you can retain control over how you deal with what life throws at you. So don’t spend your life blaming others.

Formal education eventually comes to an end, but learning does last a lifetime…if you choose a lifetime of learning.

Now get out of here before I turn you into a Munchkin.

 

Read Full Post »

Crayola on the YBR. Another one bites the dust.

Word went out on March 30, 2017 that Crayola was going to retire Dandelion, one of eight new colors introduced in 1990. Dandelion wasn’t the first color to be retired. Six colors introduced along with 32 other colors in 1903 when Crayola changed the way we colored as children, bit the dust seven short years later in 1910 (RIP: Permanent Geranium Lake, Dark Venetian Red, Light Venetian Red, Celestial Blue, Charcoal Grey and Raw Sienna.

Yellow crayons have never been given their due in Crayola’s long history.  It should come as no surprise that word of Dandelion’s retirement was met with a degree of sadness on the YBR for two reasons, the first being the direct connection with the Cowardly Lion (The word dandelion is a corruption of the French “dent de lion” – the lion’s tooth) and the second has to do with the “yellow brick road.”

For the moment let’s forget about the color and name connection of the soon to be retired crayon and focus on the word “retired.”

While many people are overjoyed when they “retire,” there are some who rue the day when they are the guest of honor at their own retirement gala. Being retired is, in some ways, like being taken off the shelf.   In baseball jargon it means to be put out…not a very positive term.

With a growing number of baby boomers choosing not to “retire” either because they like to work or because they have no choice, the word retirement needs to be…retired.

We have been conditioned to look upon the time we spend toiling in the market place working or tending a career as the penultimate time of our lives.

I disagree.  While it might be our longest stretch, it does not have to be the most important part of our lives, nor should it be the defining time of our lives.

Consider this. In our youth we don’t say we’ve retired from high school or college. We say we’ve graduated.  The word graduate carries with it a forward motion.  It means growth as in taking the next step.

I say that instead of anyone of us “retiring,” I think we should say we are graduating, graduating to another level in life.

Crayola might be retiring “dandelion,” but our true color never has to, nor should it ever… retire.

Read Full Post »