Parting Grifts

Today marks Commencement Day at Columbia University, the first in over a decade without me working there. While I do sincerely congratulate the new grads -- or at least those with real degrees in legitimate fields -- I'm also relieved not to have to cover the ceremonies anymore. For eleven years straight it was part of my job to write up the days of various graduation gatherings as if they were special and significant, unforgettable even, rather than platitudinous spectacles for nostalgia and fundraising.

But every year was essentially interchangeable, even the COVID ones conducted via web video: the same inoffensive pop music about New York City leading up to several loops of the famous bit from Elgar’s Pomp & Circumstance, the same array of honors and awards, the same heavy-handed hints to give generously to the annual fund, and the same hackneyed speeches packed with the same stilted cliches.

After you’ve written your fourth or fifth graduation story there’s really nowhere else to go; it gets harder and harder to cough up something that isn’t a carbon copy of the previous year. But it wasn’t just the repetition making things a slog—every year I found the boilerplate about finding your calling and loving your job and changing the world a little more dishonest and thus more cruel.

Even for privileged Ivy Leaguers the reality is that most will never find a calling, love their jobs, or make any appreciable impact beyond their immediate backyards. Like most mortals, the majority are bound to find the working world frustrating, dysfunctional, and full of colleagues they might not necessarily treasure.

Which isn’t to say that plenty won’t like their jobs or derive some satisfaction from contributing to slow incremental progress, but that finding happiness and meaning in life tends not to neatly align with paying the bills. A lucky few will genuinely love what they do, and feel like they’re changing the world, but even many of those are delusional narcissists making things worse—typically in supposed do-gooder fields lowering others’ standards of living.

Grads should absolutely aim high and hope for the best, but in the context of hardheaded realism about the world as it is. Alas, telling impressionable young people the truth has never been half as important as buttering them up for fundraising. If grads and their families truly want to change the world, a great first step would be to stop giving money to their alma maters.

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Next: How Strategic Lingo Swallowed Progressive Thought

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