It is that time of year again for high school and college students, including my own daughter, to graduate from their respective thralldoms and either traipse on to higher education, go to work, or perhaps join the ranks of our nation’s armed forces.
If they’re going to work or like me, after a year of college signing up for the forces, they will receive a better education than they would at any college or university on the planet. For the real world always beats the make-believe perennial adolescent nirvana of an academic campus.
But if they’re going on to college or joining the workforce after college then a rude awakening awaits many of them. Shielded from reality by teachers and professors who never have to leave their own Happy Valleys, these kids are lambs to the slaughter when it will come to navigating the treacherous byways of adulthood.
Evidence of this, as if we needed any other proof other than life experience, is found at the rituals of graduation itself.
Various parent pals of mine, and my own encounters, tell of graduation ceremonies where recognition of excellence has been banished, as the valedictorian and salutatorian titles are done away with. They are replaced with awards for “community awareness” (no joke, really) and “social activism.”
By the way, if you haven’t already figured it out, there is no such thing in modern parlance as a conservative “activist.” We are only “the far-right” or “extremist groups.” The noble moniker “activist” is solely reserved for far-left causes and Bolshie fellow travelers.
Can you imagine going to a job interview in the real world and trying to impress the boss with your “community awareness” award? How about trying to convince an HR honcho that your time spent protesting the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh makes you uniquely qualified for any position other than ferret wrangler? Yeah, perhaps not.
Not saying that the superlatives at my 1979 high graduation such as “Best Weed Dealer” and “Sluttiest Smart Girl” are the proper way to go. But at least they recognized achievement, of a sort.
All that is not to mention the coma-inducing rhetorical tragedy of having to sit through some geezer, like the poor wretched students at NY’s Hunter College had to Wednesday when addressed by Hillary, droning on about their pathetic excuses for living. Hagatha of course lightened the mood with crybaby whining over her 2016 loss. So at least there was comedy.
If the prospective graduates could get decent advice at such snorefests it would be to trade short-term sacrifice for long-term gain, don’t get married until you’re thirty (mainly counsel for guys), and never buy cut-rate bourbon or cigars.
That will not be what they are hearing.
And anyway, their minds are just on taking lame pictures with their relatives, getting out of the absurd monkey suit and owl hat, and high-tailing to the party where that cute chick from chemistry is to supposed to be. Their parents, remembering our own debauched 70s- and 80s-era graduation night parties, will be sooooo proud.
The grads may even eventually ascend to the raw power and sheer glory of writing op-eds about graduation for a popular conservative news service.
Lucky, lucky, them.
