• by George Simpson , Featured Contributor, May 30, 2019

It’s graduation season, and you know what that means: meaningless advice from people who the school would like to rope into becoming major donors. 

Nothing says “write me a big check” louder than an honorary degree and the chance to opine on the meaning of life in front of 5,000 hungover kids on the verge of finding out that in fact there ARE worse things in life than an 8 a.m. class.

Inevitably, the advice from the podium centers around not backing down from challenges, finding your passion (beyond ecstasy), and having the courage to fail.  It makes for good headlines and great news highlight reels, before it is swept into the dustbin of history — much like what you learned in Introduction to Theory of Literature.

Some presenters approach this mission to enlighten with style and a sense of humor, making the graduation ceremony seem more like two rather than the usual four hours. The good news for graduates is that from their seats in the bleachers, their parents cannot tell they have fallen asleep in the first 15 minutes. 

Every talk has a shout-out to a special teacher and to your parents, who sacrificed so much to put you into that folding chair (unless of course you are from L.A. and they simply wrote bigger checks to lock up admission, grades and a diploma.) 

I was once asked to address a class about to graduate from a prep school, and leaned into the task with my usual sense of irony and sarcasm. The end product was deemed horrifying enough by my wife (a former board member of the school) to move to defcon 5 in her threats to remove me from this earth if I delivered those remarks. That I am still here hints at how that all played out.

It’s amusing to think that someone selected to be the commencement speaker has any more insight into how to become a success than say, your Uncle Henry who drinks his sweet tea with a shot of bourbon, thinks computers are a tool of the devil and that Trump has indeed made America great again. His advice to “shut up and keep working” may not ring with beauty — but is advice worth taking.

While droning on about finding your passion is a staple of send-off admonitions, the reality is that by the time you are in a career long enough to make enough money to stop thinking “if only I made another 10 grand, that would do it,” you are locked into a profession that is devoid of meaning beyond the paycheck anyway.

Unless you are saving lives or keeping the peace, you can be sure that you will suffer long moments of pondering how what you do adds little to the quality of life on this orb -- and  in many ways detracts from it. So feel free to continue to sleep through that part. 

There are no easy formulas or checklists to assure you will be successful once you end the “best four years of your life.” But you can get pretty far by working harder than the next guy, staying until the job is done and not caring who gets the credit.  Worked for me.