Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for May 27, 2023

Taking a flyer

I remember that feeling.

Long ago in a galaxy far, far away…

Ma-trick-you-lation.

On 10/03/2019, Frank and Ernest told school children that learning is a lifetime process, it’s only the graduation ceremonies that end. Wiley’s kids are going to have it tough.

For what it’s worth, I always hated that term, The Real World. I mean, it’s all the real world. College is a lot of hard work, and frankly, post college work was much easier than college itself, with less intense pressure. Even my kids said the same thing, so it’s not just a generational thing.

You won’t need the hat.

“Alma mater” is Latin for “kindly or nourishing mother.” To a very significant degree, schools are focused on fostering the development of the students in a sheltered & nurturing environment, or at least they should be. It’s generally the opposite out in the real world, especially in employment. IRW, one is no longer “special” and the focus is at best only incidentally on one’s personal development – often it’s not the focus at all – the focus is on getting the job done and producing a profit for one’s employer. There are those who simply can’t handle that shocking transition and then fall off the cliff.

I quot my job and took the summer off after I graduated from high school. Never regretted it. After starting college, it was one thing after another until I retired. Even then, I worked a part time job for another eight years.

Just watch that first step.

He’s a real cliff-hanger.

There should be alligators and sharks swimming around off the end of the stage.

Kick you out into the real world with that 500KG anvil of debt around your neck

https://youtu.be/dl3mRjydcPw?t=129

There’s an old joke – “What did the Law graduate say to the Arts graduate?” “I’ll have a large French fries with that ..”

Congratulations on your graduation. Now your education begins.

I was an older student in college, not by a lot, but I’d lived on my own for about 3 years before attending, so I knew a little about paying bills and broken down cars and having to make difficult choices. I’d listen to my classmates talking about what it would be like in the “real world” and I thought about the slap of reality ahead of them. THAT would be a real education…

Congratulations Lemmings of 2023.

More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly …

It is merely a healthy concern for the predicament of modern man. (Modern man is here defined as any person born after Nietzsche’s edict that “God is dead,” but before the hit recording “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”) …

Put in its simplest form, the problem is: How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world given my waist and shirt size?This is a very difficult question when we realize that science has failed us …

Religion too has unfortunately let us down. … I often think how comforting life must have been for early man because he believed in a powerful, benevolent Creator who looked after all things. Imagine his disappointment when he saw his wife putting on weight ….

(Woody Allen’s, “My Speech to the Graduates”)

@ high school grads: avoid liberal arts degrees. They are worthless.

I didn’t experience such a precipitous drop after graduation. I started my own lawn mowing business at 12 and worked frying hamburgers at 15. I enrolled in Work/study in High School and during college worked as a reader for the blind. So when graduation rolled around, there was more of a slide than a cliff.

I’m an alumni of The University of Wossamotta, Class of 1973.

I had a whole week between graduation and reporting for active duty. Well, at least I got paid for that week.

I’m sharing this with all the HS students I counsel who think life is easier after High School

I studied like a lunatic in high school and college. I thought working in the real world was much easier. Except that #&%@# drive.

From someone who knows a lot of young people who are smart and motivated and have both learned & “seen stuff” let me tell you that that is nowhere steep enough. Far too many employers in many businesses I know who still are using pandemic staffing levels and grinding up employees just to keep profits up. Overhead is high but there is some serious BS going on in the workplace just to feather the nest of some already rich folks that goes oh so much beyond that

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten. B.F. Skinner

Guess what animal the school mascot is…

After hs graduation I attended college for 2+ years. Quit in ‘57, beat the draft notice and joined USAF with stations in 2 states and a foreign country. Enrolled in college level courses most years. Mustered out in ’62 and enrolled at a mid-sized southern ivy thinking I should get back in the degree groove to prep for future. Instead I spent 3 years in what seemed to be another planet, wondering how in the world anyone who went directly from hs to college degree ever really knew what was waiting on the outside. The so-called ’liberal arts’ program had absolutely nothing to do with what was ahead for most students.

For the star pupil, the dedicated artist or scientist, medical student, law student, or musician, yes, wholeheartedly, stick it out. But those years taught me that, while a college education is a gift that brings new insights and new experiences, it is not necessarily good preparation for the downright gritty working world for the average person.

Thus, in my experience, the idea of taking a ‘break’ year is not as self-serving as it sounds. I recommended my rural school students to take that year – or more – to try different jobs and locations, new places, new faces, living on one’s own, meeting the daily needs for food, rent, transportation, i.e., all the ‘ingredients’ of the rest of one’s life. That worked for lots of us.

Mind the first step, it’s a doozie!

That step has been replaced with stairs that lead right to their parents basement

For those who relied upon Cliff Notes to graduate

I don’t know which would be worse right there. A chasm or a cliff. I do know that a lot of job opportunities opened up after I got my bachelor’s degree. I didn’t spend crazy money on it though. In all the times I interviewed for a job, the actual college I graduated from never came up. I did have to fax a copy of my degree a couple of times.

Can you hock your diploma to make that first loan payment? :(

“Welcome to the Real World,” she said to me, condescendingly. “Take a seat, take your life. Chart it out in black and white.”

I wanna run through the halls of my high school, I wanna scream at the top of my lungs, “I just found out there’s no such thing as the Real World, just a lie we have to rise above!”

(John Mayer)

More appropriate would be a cubicle with a gerbil wheel. After that, those grads will find their footing.

Makes me wonder if it’s better to be graduated first — or last — from one of my ol’ alma maters, The School of Hard Knox at Heart Knocks.

There is a real world, and it’s around us all right now. It’s the one that deserves to be taken seriously, not blown off as worthless in favor of the completely unsubstantiated afterlife promised by the wild imaginings of the scam artists who run religions.

no jumping into The fray

More like back to Mom and Dad’s basement!!

Someone once told me that the purpose of college is not to educate you but to prepare you to begin learning,

To all college graduates, welcome to the wonderful world of debt payments!

Where’s the pit of alligators?

That’s why they call it “grad school.”

And on top of it all, coming to grief while wearing a ridiculous costume.

Don’t forget about the “Student Loans”.

Schools really should teach us the skills necessary to actually survive in the world. Why do a lot of things have to be “figure it out for yourself”?

Keep it moving, keep it moving, keep it moving…

There are always options and personal experiences and preference will always drive the option chosen (at the time).

My choice after high school was to join the Air Force and go to the flight simulator maintenance tech school (and what a fun job that was!). At that time college was simply not on my radar, I was too busy spinning up on my job with a ton of OJT and a longish correspondence course plus some time in the trenches once I was fully qualified.

After I finished my first four years and re-enlisted for another four I did start college (working toward an electrical engineering degree). On my next PCS move I had to change my degree plan to computer science (because there were no engineering programs at my new location).

It took me twelve years to finish that undergrad degree while working full time (plus TDYs, more PCS moves and another tech school when I changed career fields). I also managed to slip a couple of associate degrees in (pretty much for free) while working thru the undergrad program.

Taking my time like that spread out the cost and I could pay for it as I went with some help from military tuition assistance and the GI Bill.

The graduate degree went a bit quicker, taking just under three years to complete (so no PCS move to slow it down further). But I was still working full time and there were a few TDYs in the mix.

When I got to the research paper at the end I sorted out a deal with my boss to take leave every Friday which I dedicated to working on that paper (I always had a ton of leave on the books, well not so much after I finished). It took about six months to finish the paper at that rate (I did work on it at other times of the week but Friday was my “heavy lifting” day). And again, by taking only one class, sometimes two, a term and paying as I went there was no debt when I finished.

Sometimes the options we chose change as we gain work and life experience, just chose what works best for you right now and the rest will follow

It’s a long drop and just getting back to “still among the living” is a longer climb every year.

the real world is rappelent

And that’s why participation trophies are a bad idea.

“Soon we’ll be out, amid the cold world’s strife. Soon we’ll be sliding down the razor blade of life”. Tom Lehrer

School should prepare you for work life. It doesn’t.

So, that’s why they scheduled this year’s graduation on the Roof.