Commencement Speech

Dear Graduates of the Class of 2009 – SURPRISE!

My younger sister is graduating from college today. It is a significant and emotional day, full of joy and pride. The culmination and celebration of 21 years of a hopeful childhood, 16 years of successful schooling, 4 years of memorable all-nighters and one-night stands – and 0 years of preparation for what she is actually about to face.

Before my college graduation, nobody told me that all those years of hard-work and achievement would amount to not much more than over $60,000 in school loans and a babysitting-job. I got an expensive college education, why? To pursue my childhood dream with baby spit-up on my shirt sleeve? You hardly need Probability & Statistics 101 to prepare you for that. The only stat worth knowing is this: 2 million recent college graduates are unemployed, which is twice the amount more than last year’s bunch. It’s predicted that companies will hire 22 percent fewer graduating seniors than they did last year. And that’s coming straight from the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Katie Couric told me so.

Dear graduates, let me tell you now, because it’s better late than never, that what you are about to embark on isn’t as exciting as they’ve cracked it up to be. Sometimes the most exciting part of my day is making a really good sandwich for lunch. If you haven’t yet seen it, watch Dustin Hoffman in 'The Graduate. ' It won’t provide you with any answers or life-altering revelations. It’ll just reassure you that it is in fact okay to waste the summer away in your parent’s pool.

Four years ago, you set foot on this campus ready to embrace what you were told would be the best 4 years of your life, eagerly asking yourself: “What should my major be?” “Will I make my lifetime friends here?” and “Will I meet my future husband here?” If only someone told you at that moment: “It doesn’t matter what your major is because you won’t find your first job in that field anyway.” “Friends come and go quicker than spinach-artichoke dip on the appetizer table.” and “No you will not meet your husband now because 20-something men are afraid of commitment.”

Dear graduates, this is the last time for a while that you will be honored and awarded for an accomplishment. From here on out, success is not measured on a timeline. There are no end-of semester deadlines to bookmark our life and there are no end-of-semester grades to chart our progress. Instead, our life will be measured as the musical 'Rent' poetically informs us: in seasons of love. Isn’t that sweet? Quite honestly, the moment you settle down and accept that...it actually is pretty sweet.

Words of wisdom and advice are going to be thrown at you by the older generations that have survived their quarterlife crisis’s because in their time quarterlife crises’s didn’t even exist. The only piece of advice you really need right now is coming from the Quarterlife Crisis Headquarters – my shoebox New York City apartment – and that is that you will be facing more trouble and uncertainty than you anticipated, therefore the only hope you have is to EMBRACE IT! You might be unemployed, you might be scared and uncertain of your future, you might be missing your friends and you might be overwhelmed with conflicted feelings. I hope you realize that although it might feel surreal, there's also something amazing and magical about the realness of it all. The road might be uncertain, but at least it's yours.

The next few months…hate to say it, but years…will give you lots of lemons. I hope you discover creative and unique ways to drink your lemonade.