SCSU Commencement Speech 2006

(5/8/06)

First, I must congratulate all of the members of the 2006 graduating class. Very few individuals escape the black hole of Southern Connecticut State University and those who do rarely have enough time off from their retail jobs to tell the tale of this heroic accomplishment. I will be brief in this farewell address because I know that a good portion of you are headed off to far away places to celebrate this grand day. Some of you will be off to Europe or the Caribbean isles, but most of you will undoubtedly be headed back to Arby’s or Popeye’s.
What will await you tomorrow, friends? When your cap and gown are as worthless as that same dusty outfit from high school that hasn’t moved in four, I mean five years, what will be waiting for you on the outside of this prison? I am here to tell you that the world is an unfriendly place and despite the degree you’ll be mailed in a few months, you are most likely unprepared for what’s coming.
Unlike the coddling and overly politically correct conditioning you may have received at SCSU, the real world is still clinging to merit and the harsh reality of unfair promotions and cronyism. No one will care about your personal sob story or how something makes you feel inside. Production is the name of the game and I’m of the opinion that many of you are ill-prepared for a business world where the emotional cripples are eaten and forgotten about in the time it takes Google to split for the nth time.
Despite what you’ve spent the last several years believing, every person in a wheel chair is not Stephen Hawking, every Republican is not a war criminal, every Democrat is not Robin Hood, every illegal immigrant is not a hero, and every black person is not Bill Clinton. College has failed to prepare most of you for the world that exists off campus: a world that does not have time for informational tables, poorly attended lectures by the minority author du jour, or for seminars on depression. If you rely too much on these pillars of collegiate life then you will fail.
For the percentage of you for whom the aforementioned maladies do not apply then let me be the first to congratulate you on realizing the intangible worth of the college experience. This, of course, is to realize that the world consists of two kinds of people--those who can, and those who can not. The people who expect to get out of here with their miscellaneous teaching degrees or worthless degrees in journalism have most likely fooled themselves in to believing they offer the world something special, and that they are ready to embrace the future of their choosing. Those of you who have succeeded in understanding what it is to have grown up and moved beyond natural ice and clubbing are most likely the same people who understand that succeeding is, in large part, do to hard work and paying one’s dues and not because of a slip of paper handed out after completing irrelevant courses for four plus years.
A little advice for all of you is to understand that a college degree is no more useful than a high school diploma in this, the foul year of our lord two thousand and six. I’m sure many of you believe that you’ll soon pursue a master’s degree: you won’t. You’ll most likely toil away for minimal fiscal gain at a job that has little to do with your field of study. The aspiring journalist with gaudy collegiate credentials will most likely end up working a menial job for their parents or in-laws, while clinging to their time at school the way Al Bundy clung to his glory days at Polk High. The obvious difference is that it is immeasurably more difficult to score four touchdowns in one game than it is to be a big shit on campus.
Do not be fooled, friends, college is not real. The state of the union is dangerous and as soon as you move out of the protective shelter of a college campus you’ll find out what I mean. The only thing that will remain of your college experience is the bureaucracy we’ve all dealt with on campus. No longer will it be impossible to get anything done because of university red-tape or a fear of lawsuits, instead it will be something pertaining to your corporate experience. The bungling administration of Southern is but a small taste of the nonsense you will encounter in the burgeoning politically correct and emotionally sensitive corporate environment.
The only hope for those of you who still believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the worth of a degree from a school like Southern, which is on the fast track to becoming a community college for underprivileged urban youth (so I hear) is to join the dark side and simply stay at Southern in a professional capacity. One only has to look at university offices to see those promoted to and far above their personal level of incompetence. The Student Life or Student Affairs office, which routinely has difficulty telling its collective ass from its elbow is the shining beacon of institutional incompetence as well as a perfect career choice for the huddled masses who would undoubtedly fail miserably in the outside world.
It is not my hope for you men and women, boys and girls, special people, and gutless emotional cripples to fail in life: nay, it is only my aim to inform you of what is to come in order to soften the landing. I have personally spent far too much time at this school and my time here is drawing to a close so I’ve gotten all weepy and nostalgic, not because of the good times, but because of you, the future of this country.
May the Great Magnet deliver us from the individuals in school now who meander to and from class fooling themselves in to believing they’re intelligent, those who will be running the show and making up the majority of the electorate in a decade who now are unable to name high level government figures or tie their own shoes without consulting MTV. Great Magnet deliver us from the social cripples, anime nerds, and faux faculty condemning the future to hell. May we escape the prison we’ve built for ourselves in this society where in place of sports we have video games, in place of socializing we have myspace, and in place of intelligence we have sensitivity.
I now go the way of Communism, Jack Kerouac, and Richard Nixon, muscled out of the spotlight by a generation I don’t understand. Still clinging to an ancient unspoken code of conduct I only wish the best for you graduates and undergraduates alike. May you make the most of your lives, buy low, sell high, and never believe anything you read. Get tough and heed my advice, friends, and maybe, just maybe, you’ll slip through the cracks, overcome your time spent here, and actually make something of yourself. And if you don’t, then don’t worry--chances are you didn’t deserve it.