Congratulations to all you recent college graduates, and to your parents, other loved ones, and friends. Commencement is said to be a big day, the start of adult life, a job, a career. But word is that many of you are uneasy about what you will do. You question not only what you studied for its professional opportunities, but perhaps reflect on whether you appreciated what higher education promised: what the word “education” means – a leading up and out, an inspirational vision of the wider world of liberating liberal arts rather than taking comfort in studying yourselves, your communities, your tribes or the latest media or tech fads heralding big bucks.
I don’t think that most of you have much in common educationally with your fellow graduates outside your fields of study. Even though you share your school name and graduation date. Many of you focused on a particular field and kept yourselves in a silo - pre this, pre that, rarely sampling among the humanities and the social and physical sciences.
I try to imagine also typical classroom experiences you may have had, especially in the vital early years. Whether you took full-house courses that could not accommodate exchange with your teachers. Or if you got to confer with tenured professors who would critique your work and goals. Was your voice heard apart from that of AI? And if you gamed the system, did you rationalize by saying that the teacher didn’t know or care, or note that everyone was doing it? In short, did you feel you were a contributing member of a vibrant academic community?
Some of you were, in one sense, fortunate; you had a well-off or well-connected family or friends, and you probably didn’t have to work while studying or worry too much about a job. College was like a home away from home with an active social life. If you didn’t get work immediately, you could still rely on family or apply to graduate or professional school.
But most of you out there don’t have such fallback options, or know that grade inflation has become a national phenomenon that has blurred distinctions among fair, good and excellent.
Still, you made it through, and your résumé looks fine, especially if A.I. says so. But what to do on a job interview if you’re asked to problem-solve or analyze a given strategy? Were you able to acquire such Socratic experience sitting in large lecture halls? Or support the selection and placement of sources in a written argument or thesis that were reviewed by your teachers? Did you write it all without prompts from AI? Did you even read much?
The good news is that if the answer to those questions is no, you’re still in luck. Commencement means beginning. Though 25 has been cited as the age at which your brain finally matures, the truth is, as professionals report, that neural circuit refinement and cognitive maturation keep growing into your 30s. And so you’re on the right track at the right time if you think about what you may have missed in cultivating curiosity and imagination. Now is the time to commence reading, deeply, critically, regularly across disciplines to open your mind, which will surely open your job opportunities. As never before, your world needs you.
As the 19th-century poet Matthew Arnold once said, “… we are here as on a darkling plain / Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,/ Where ignorant armies clash by night.”
And maybe if you get a chance, as an alum and a young voter, you can think about reforming the very system that did not serve you adequately; the best legacy you can leave those who come after you. Good wishes. I’m Joan Baum.
