A Commencement Address You'll Never Hear

From Dauten.com:

But today I have a message for those of you who did take your silly coursework too seriously, to those of you who finished near the top of your class. I was once one of you. Now, nearly a quarter-century later, I can tell you that one day you'll look back on these years and think: "What a moron I was!" In a decade or two, you top students will recollect dimly a few sentences from the classes you took, but you'll reminisce with fresh pain about the trip to Europe you didn't take, the instrument you were too busy to master, the love you never expressed, all the days and the nights you were too busy learning the meaning of the term "opportunity cost" to realize what opportunities you were paying with.

Even so, these are probably the best years of your life. What does that say about what you learned and didn't learn here at Ordinary State?

While here you learned to be logical, to take orders, to be patient, to stay in line and to fill out the forms. You have been well prepared for a dissatisfying life. The giant bureaucracy called higher education has stamped you with its seal of approval, proving you are fit to be employed by the bureaucracy of your choice.

Click here for the rest.

I came across this little gem while I was researching Smith's commencement address (see post below), and I figured, what the hell, as long as I'm talking about graduation, why not? It's also rather fitting because this is essentially the message of the play I'm currently doing, You Can't Take It With You (see the third post down). To quote Grandpa, the play's lead character, just after he has returned from watching the graduation ceremony at Columbia University, "They just sit there in cap and nightgown, get their diplomas, and then along about forty years from now they suddenly say, 'Where am I?'" Ain't that the truth.

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