Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You
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Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You
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Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You
#2Be sure to click on the embedded video. The segment by Conan O'Brien is particularly insightful.
Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You
#3Interesting read. Although I don't agree with all the points, it does shed light on the realities faced by recent college graduates.
Looking back on my own experience a decade after my graduation, point one is definitely true. The relationships you build in college are very important and I wish someone told me this when I was in college. I have lost touch with most of my fraternity friends and other colleagues which was not wise. However, I did meet my wife in college which was a great success (point four)! She remained in contact with all her friends and has benefited greatly from it.
As a parent, I can relate to point five. There is definitely constant pressure placed on you by peers to push your children into all sorts of activities (this also ties in to point seven). Just be cognizant of the volume of activities you place you child into -- children do experience burn-out, but it manifests itself in different ways (such as behavior in the classroom). There is nothing wrong with just playing in the park or pick-up games -- not everything has to be structured.
Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You
#4When I graduated, it felt like the hardest part of my life was going to be over, and I was going to reap the rewards of my hard work in school. So no.. I don't believe in commencement speeches.
Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You
#5Another point would be to save. When you're young, it's easy to spend and not save. However, it's important to get into a disciplined habit of saving - don't depend on someone else to force you to save.
Also, while it's financially advantageous to have a two-income family, once you have kids priorities might change. The better choice may be to have a parent at home with the kid(s) instead of utilizing day-care.
You're mileage may vary.
Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You
#6Most commencement speakers are double outliers.
1. They're highly successful. Most people aren't.
2. The validation of an academic meritocracy where many top members (compared to anything else in society) hate the corporate world means that they're likely to be people of merit. Most highly successful people aren't.
They're great at inspiring, but they've had just too much good luck to know how the world really works and what people are actually like. You have to fail in a hard-core sort of way that most people wouldn't survive to get that understanding.
Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You
#7I prefer commencement speeches with more of a personal touch to them, namely Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford in 2005 [1]. This article definitely gives good advice but at the end of the day, it's pretty superficial. Steve Jobs tells 3 stories which beautifully take students through his life, but also give life long lessons that actually carry substance.
Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You
#8When I graduated, it felt like the hardest part of my life was going to be over, and I was going to reap the rewards of my hard work in school. So no.. I don't believe in commencement speeches.
Did a commencement speaker tell you it would be smooth sailings? I imagine the cookie cutter speech would involve something like "it's going to get tough, keep your head up".
Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You
#9The only bit of advice that I can pass on regarding UK graduations is to not get really drunk until after they have taken the graduation photographs.
Re: Things Your Commencement Speaker Won't Tell You
#10Excellent points! I had my undergrad graduation more than two decades ago, so get to appreciate some of these a bit differently from the twentysomething "younguns" here. If I had to pick two most important, I'd say point 1 (with the caveat that his point is generalized to all socializing) and 7 (maybe not so for US but for countries where parents play a huge role in shaping kids' future career choices).
I would also add time, that's the most important thing! When you get older you'll see that a lot of the breadth-first approach to life that you can do in your youth has now become depth-first, i.e. you won't have the time or opportunity to branch out to much. So experiment a lot when you're young.
That's what I would want my son to learn are the most important things, not just to get a good job but for everything in lide: maintain and build a good network and manage time choices wisely.