There's nothing that makes me feel older than seeing graduation pictures and congratulations post all over social media. Many of my older friends have children graduating from high school, and many of my contemporaries have siblings, nieces, and nephews graduating. Such bright, exciting moments! And with the privilege of age I look back on my own shining moment, and remember that the aftermath was, well, difficult. The years following my degree were filled with growth and development, much of it painful. This article eloquently captures the sense of loss, of frustrated loneliness, the unexpected difficulty of 'real work' in 'the real world.'
I'll bet most of us remember this transition, and we have all sorts of advice for others on how to deal with it. But that's what all graduates hear, from the rumors of their friends (I heard so-and-so is a great company) to the advice of parents or teachers to the commencement address itself.
Obviously, I don't remember any of the advice I was given. I doubt anyone else does, either.
I mean, there's just so much of it! And it's not like any graduate is eager to plan their life 'in the real world,' not with celebrating to do. And most college graduates are complacent to some degree--by their graduation year they have usually found a comfortable niche in their institution. By the way, the last semester usually doesn't have much impact on class standing, so I suspect that most college seniors spend rather more time socializing before graduation than studying.
So it isn't like anybody paying much attention to those wise words spilled extravagantly over commencement ceremonies. Yet if they did (and I grant some do--not me, I both proud and ashamed to admit, but some do), I doubt they'd get much out of the advice. The sad fact is that college education does not prepare one for 'real world,' and most commencement advice tells of how to succeed in the 'real world.'
By 'college education, I mean the kind of education to be had at institutions found in U.S. News' annual ranking.
I've written before that colleges and universities are supposed to be places that challenge students and train them, through rigorous study and discussion, to solve the problems of the world. There are technical colleges for training people to solve technical problems, there were law schools for training people to solve legal problems, and at the top of the proverbial academic totem pole there were the liberal arts schools, which trained people (theoretically) to solve people problems. Subsets of these liberal arts schools focused on societal problems, or artistic problems (not really great language, the problem that artists solve is that of too little art in our communities), or economic problems. But regardless, the graduates of these 'colleges' were supposed to be molded into the movers and shakers, advancers of society, generally good and reliable and virtuous people ready to make a positive difference in their business and social circles.
This still happens, of course. Excellent niche schools like California Tech or MIT maintain a sterling reputation based on the observable skills and attributes of their graduates. Well-regarded liberal arts (or "general") schools like Harvard, Stanford, and the rest continue to turn out exceedingly well-educated young men and women. But the 'post-college depression' that plagues my generation (and which increases, I bet) argues eloquently that the graduates of 'top-tier' universities are not prepared for the 'real world,' even if they are educated to the max. And I'll go so far as to suggest that today's college graduates may not be all that educated as compared with the graduates of yore.
If colleges and universities are separate institutions dedicated to forming young men and women for success in the real world, then they are also separate from it. That's necessary, but it is also dangerous. Separation breeds unfamiliarity, and unfamiliarity breeds contempt. True to form, a close look at 'college culture' shows that what higher education values in its students, and what it teaches, is a collection of loosely associated ideals that revolve around vague concepts like open-mindedness and experimentation and uniqueness or specialness. In my experience (a decade ago, but more recently via facebook) a great many of today's college students, and therefore graduates, see the point of college as getting an 'experience' (whatever that is--I assume it means mostly social drinking with a little class and sports spectating thrown in). That experience is supposed to be nurturing and consequence-free, so that students can 'find themselves.' It would be easy to launch into a righteous tirade, but those are a dime-a-dozen on the internet. Let's give this idea the benefit of the doubt and say that 'finding oneself' is probably related to being mentally/emotionally healthy, directly impacts a graduates' contributions to society.
Yet research has shown that 'the college experience,' while it may nurture and produce open-minded graduates who have 'found themselves' (actually I think it is probably unhealthy in sum) mirrors the 'real world' less and less. Grade inflation, on the rise since the 1960s, means fewer and fewer college graduates have dealt with failure and had a chance to recover. That's not like the 'real world,' and in fact many commencement addresses I've read (and successful people I've heard) talk about inevitable failures and the importance of learning from failures and doing better next time. Research shows that failure is an essential part of learning, and it's absence can cause excessive fear of risks and (you guessed it) failure. Students at 'top tier universities, crafted for admission by 'magnet' or 'prep' high schools, may not learn about failure at all. It's a particularly hard lesson to learn after college, when the consequences are life-changing.
What would make the university years a good separation is a connection to what comes after. Learning through challenge, failure, and perseverance is direct preparation for the 'real world,' and the separation is insulated from breeding contempt by the learning itself which is external and oriented at the world outside--even if the world available is bounded by university walls. But taking away that external focus and emphasizing reflective learning, or 'finding oneself,' creates a shelter wherein the separation breeds contempt very efficaciously. The contempt is usually expressed in rejecting traditional social metrics of success (a family, real estate, success in one's community), pejoratively labeling them as conformity, settling, or re-imagining them as social slavery, materialism, bourgeois values, or patriarchy (depending upon the ideology at hand). Sadly, such beliefs encourage new graduates to feel that they are better than everybody else because they are somehow independent and free-spirited, non-conformist and appropriately ambitious. And because most people figure out that acting better than others is a great way to make enemies, they simply compromise and disassociate a 'professional life' from what they regard is their 'real life.' I've seen myself and many contemporaries literally wear two faces: a sober, professional face for work and family; and an artificial 'eclectic,' interesting, face in selected social groups.
Certainly the perspective that the value of higher education lies mostly in 'the experience,' which students generally interpret as experiencing independence and fun, subtly relegates studies to an inconvenient but necessary part of 'the experience,' effectively teaching students to develop two faces--one for class and impressing professors, another for parties and Greek life. Essentially, the college years' chief role is providing ample 'find oneself' time to painstakingly craft the right persona for each environment. I know I spent many hours on AOL Instant Messenger, pompously posting impressive quotes and poems in my 'away message' and profile, hoping everyone would see what a sensitive intellectual I was. After college, I continued this personal dimorphism by constantly tweaking my Facebook profile. And I was not alone: I noticed the same behavior in college friends and co-workers. I can't help but think that a lot of the post-college depression had to do with all that focus on self and others, inviting self-doubt and constant comparison.
Worst of all, the values taught by the 'college experience' almost certainly have lasting, perhaps lifelong consequences. Although in humans the temporal lobe of the brain--controlling memory, the understanding of higher meaning, and complex problem-solving--develops by 17 years of age, the frontal lobe--controlling judgment, the understanding of consequences of future actions, and values (determining good and bad)--doesn't finish developing until a person is in their early to mid-twenties. So college or university freshmen are intellectually capable of learning undergraduate academics, but they are still in the process of developing their values. Teaching them anti-social behavior and sheltering them from the need to be valuable during the college is setting them up for failure throughout their lives, because those are the prime years when humans establish values. It becomes much harder to change values, and therefore behavior, after the mid twenties. Believe it or not, there's the science behind the phrase, "people don't change."
The dirty little secret about all of this is that graduates are about to enter society, and none of the things that makes a person fit for society (whether the society is a military branch or a hippy commune) are truly taught in universities--except maybe through having to live with a roommate. People who think they're better than everybody else, or people who are self-focused (what, after all, is 'finding oneself' if not self-focus?) are by definition anti-social. And guess what, post-college depression? Being anti-social leads to loneliness, insecurity, and depression. Reference "The Roseto Study," (thank you, Outliers by Malcom Gladwell), which shows scientifically that human happiness (and health) are tied to functional societies, which may be found in families, neighborhoods, and corporations.
So while the purpose of colleges and universities are to give students value to the societies they'll enter--value in the form of technical knowledge, problem-solving abilities, communication abilities, ethical development--I think that contemporary education falls short. Grade inflation means students don't really have to learn much of anything except perhaps how to charm their teachers into liking them, and their educational inheritance of anti-social qualities hinders their ability to join new companies and social groups after graduation. New graduates may possess a wealth of knowledge, skills, and abilities, but bringing all that goodness to bear in 'the real world' (a job, a relationship, or a new social scene) requires them to be social. In fact, success in the 'real world' usually depends more on one's ability to work well with others--become a part of a team--than on measurable skills.
I suspect that's the origin of the wry and cynical phrase, "[Success is] not about what you know, it's about who you know," which is almost true. Really, success not about what you know, but about your ability to know others and communicate.
That was the thing about Roseto: the town had a strong community. Most of the researchers who studied that place traced it to the fact that it was relatively isolated and it's inhabitants traced a common ancestry to a small town in Italy. But despite being 'as American as apple pie' (in terms of employment, diet, interests, etc.) at the time of all the studies, Rosetans were empirically far happier and healthier than their fellow Americans. They had a functional society, a community where each of them were better known and therefore better appreciated by their peers, allowing individuals both more freedom to be 'who they were' and demanding enough conformity and external focus to keep all members of the community valuable. Whether or not one agrees philosophically with the Rosetan social structure, the facts speak for themselves. Rosetans were happier, more satisfied with their lives, less depressed, and less prone to diseases ranging from heart attacks to cancer. And it's all due to the fact that they were social--something that's hard to accomplish living by the values encouraged in college and university environments.
I wish I'd known back then--really known (because I'm sure many wise people tried to tell me)--that all the hours spent on myself and my various images, all the anxiety I felt about the inevitable post-college setbacks, were wasted. Nobody read my facebook profile, nobody cared how eclectic my 'likes' and hobbies were, and nobody wanted to hear the complicated details of my love life or the reasons why I flubbed a particular task. Everyone was too busy developing their own self-image, simply wanted me to do my job, or cared about me and wanted me to be happy.
That's what I wish I'd know at my commencement, and I'm sure many people tried to tell me these things. Actually, I can remember some advice to the effect of, "be a good person and to work hard." But I didn't listen as well as I should, and maybe that's the story of college students everywhere. Perhaps if 'top-tier' colleges and universities emphasized team-oriented social skills, hard work, and resiliency more than self-focus and nurture, graduates wouldn't need any commencement advice. They'd be formed for success already.
