Greeting class of 2006. What can I tell you? Not much that you haven’t heard already.
Your generation is so super-saturated by multi media that there’s not much of your life that you haven’t been hearing something on you earphones, on the TV, on your computer or game system. If anything you’ve been inoculated against actually hearing anything valuable. Few of you really read, you skim. Few of you focus and pay close attention when you’re spoken to, you multi-task.
Actually, I’m not dumb, I know that very few of you are actually reading this. Most of my readers are over 30. Really a lot of us in my age group don’t have time to sit down and read a column like this, most of my readers are probably over 50….60…..okay, 70 even. See the wonderful thing about those folks is that they read because the want to and they- you won’t believe this, they enjoy reading and like to do it as a leisure activity. Someday you should try it. Who knows, you might even like it.
It’s not necessarily your fault that you ignore most of what’s thrown at you, you’re wired that way. How can you know what’s important when the stream of input, information and stimulus never stops? And it’s just as well, who can blame you for only paying attention to what you choose to? Your generation is probably more cynical, jaded, and skeptical than any generation before you.
I’m not sure if that’s my generation’s fault or that of the Baby Boomers before us, but you’ve been sold to, lied to, and pandered to more than any generation before you. When the Boomers went to college someone told them that television was a vast wasteland. Today, pretty much most of the society you’re about to enter into as adults is such a wasteland.
The good news is that together capitalism and technology are simultaneously providing you with more opportunities for choice and at the same time more and more isolation. Download your own mix onto your MP3 player, cell phone or personal game/media/entertainment device and close out the rest of this mixed up world.
I’ve lost you already haven’t I? Say, could whoever’s cell phone with the ring tone “My lady humps” by the Black Eyed Peas, pleas answer the call or shut it off?
Oh, by the way, you’ll appreciate this- don’t worry about either of the two wars that are going on or the ones on the horizon. Unless you volunteer, you probably won’t have to fight them. When the Boomers were your age, they got drafted. Today it’s us Generation-Xers who are over their fighting and dying because they keep calling up all of our National Guard units. You’re welcome.
I guess I don’t know what you’d like for a job. Hmmmm, let’s see…Gee, it looks like most of the ones where you could have earned a decent living for yourself and a family out of high school have been sent overseas. A lot of them are being filled by illegal aliens.
Gosh. I guess you’ll have to go to college if you want something barely adequate where you can at least eke out a living paycheck to paycheck.
Oh, I’m sorry, you may not understand a big word like “eke.” I understand that our collective vocabulary has been suffering some atrophy as you’ve grown up. Let’s see, to eke is to… to eke is to… well, trust me, you’ll be doing a lot of it. Hope you get good at it. “Atrophy?” That’s where things sort of unravel and fall apart and…sort of like this paragraph.
Of course, you weren’t hoping for job security or health or retirement benefits were you? There haven’t been many of those since they killed most of the unions twenty or thirty years ago. Oh, I guess you could enlist in the military, they certainly need people lately.
I guess that most graduation commencement addresses contain advice. Hmmm…I’m stumped on this one. It’s a little too late to suggest that you pay attention, do your work, put your name on it and turn it in. Do your best sounds a little bit trite. My advice would be to get rich. The richer you are, the easier it is to stay that way. The Richest 2% keep getting the most tax cuts. It’s also funny how the more money you have the lest you need, there are lower interest rates, fewer penalties, more complimentary perks.
No, no that’s not good advice because that’s too hard to accomplish and too many kids make that their only goal or dream for their futures when they’re in high school.
I guess that the best advice I could ever give you would be to stay positive. Yeah, that’s it, “Stay Positive.”
Oh, and how about, “Do as I say, not as I do.” ? That’s a good one. But I bet your parents have shared that one with you.
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