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The Rejected Commencement Address

Not long ago, I realized that I was thoroughly qualified to deliver the obligatory commencement speech at any number of colleges and universities. While not as famous as typical commencement speakers, I was confident that I could provide more insight than insipid advice like “wear sunscreen” and could certainly provide material that would be more useful to graduating collegians than celebrities who lead lives so removed from the real world that any speech they give may as well be delivered in Aramaic.

So, I sat down and wrote a deeply felt commencement speech, which I dutifully sent off to my alma mater, offering to deliver the speech in person, at no cost to the college, out of my deep commitment to the future leaders of our world.

My manuscript was returned without any comment whatsoever (unless you categorize the typed pages being passed through a shredder before their return a comment). Never one to let a fine piece of writing go to waste, however, I present an abbreviated version of the speech below.

Graduates, before I begin I’d like you all to reach under your seats. Taped carefully beneath your chair is a copy of the complete text of what I am about to say. Knowing that most of you have been drinking heavily this morning – if not longer – I realize that you may miss some, or all, of what I will say, and I wanted you to have a copy of these words for future reference.

With that piece of business out of the way, let me state, right from the start, that it pains me to stand before you today as you participate in what will be the single greatest mistake you will ever make in your life. I’m sure most of you are startled to hear such a declaration, but let me assure you – from the vantage point I have in my life – that graduating from the collegiate life to enter into the “real world” is the last thing any sane person should ever want to do. What you should be striving toward instead is the life of a perpetual student or, failing that, a professor at the college level. Only then will you find true happiness, freedom, and fulfillment…

Some of you, no doubt, already have employment lined-up waiting for you after today. A scattered few of you may even have employment waiting for you that is actually in the field in which you majored. And the likelihood is that you are excited about this prospect. The reality, which you are about to discover, however, is that most of you will soon be working for a boss or supervisor who is – at best – one tenth as intelligent as you are. This boss or supervisor will resent every day you show up for your job and will constantly belittle your efforts, trample your spirit, and steal the credit for every meritorious idea and effort you put forth. Conversely, in college, no matter how hard you strive or pretend otherwise, the professors are always smarter than you are and, while many of these instructors may be haphazard in their grading schemes, the likelihood is very high that you will be rewarded for hard work, effort, and fresh ideas with a suitably high grade…

Then there is the matter of social life. No matter what you have heard to the contrary, no matter what example your parents may have set, I can assure you that at no other place than a college campus is it socially acceptable to consume as much beer as you have consumed on a regular basis during the past four years. In your present circumstance, attendance at a frat party where you can remember anything that happened after 11 pm the next day leads you to believe that the party was a bust. Well graduates, in the outside world, blackouts are not considered cool – believe me, I know, but that is a story for another day.

In the more inclusive sense, parties – as you have come to know them – cease to exist in the outside world. “Cocktail parties,” as they are commonly called on the outside, are generally tremendously boring affairs, populated by people who want to be important, think they are important, or just want to be around either of the two previous classifications of “important” and who, taken as a whole, have the intelligence quotient of an earthworm without any of an earthworm’s benefits to the earth. Only on a college campus can you and a group of friends sit back and consume two or three gallons of Carlo Rossi (“The Madman from Modesto”) Rhine wine while discussing what might have happened if John Keats and William Wordsworth had been alive to travel with Ken Kesey and companions during the “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” days. This just doesn’t happen in the “real” world….

So you, stand at the threshold of the single biggest mistake you will ever make in your lifetime. But it is not too late! If you are graduating with one major, consider a second major, or a third, or a fourth. Graduate school beckons. The pursuit of higher learning is not simply an educational or intellectual goal; it is nothing short of self-preservation! Even in your present state you can find the comptroller’s office! I urge you to rise from your seat and head there now. This moment may well be the last chance you have to save yourselves.