Advice for the Graduate?

It’s the time of year when people are graduating from high school and colleges.  Why preschools or any other grades are included in the graduation phenomenon is beyond me.  I even saw cards specifically designed for a little kid’s graduation!  Wow.

Graduating is a big deal.  It’s the end of one large segment of your life and the beginning of a new one.  If you are done with school forever, say goodbye to homework and three month long vacations.  Also, meeting new people will be tough.  Well, you will have to put a little effort into it.  You’ll no longer have class as an excuse to look for a date.  Not that I got any dates from classes.

Remember back in the Stone Age when that song by Baz Lurhman was popular?  You know what I’m talking about…lots of people thought Kurt Vonnegut wrote the lyrics as a commencement speech, but it was really some random newspaper columnist.

Anyway, graduating class of ’12, like the gal said, “Wear sunscreen.”  All other advice you receive will probably be bunk.

It’s been 20 years since I graduated from high school, and the only thing I know is that I am more comfortable in my skin than I used to be when I was 18.  How I arrived at this state, I do not know.  Maybe as you get older you just don’t give a shit as much as you used to, but it’s kind of nice.  Maybe my brain is just smoother than it was because I had too much fun in college.

Here’s the thing, any advice given you won’t matter until you really get it.  Even the sunscreen advice will fade out of your awareness until one day you realize that you hate getting sunburned and you have no idea what that damage might be doing to your skin.  Suddenly, you are doing everything in your power not to age prematurely.

People will hand out advice to you like mints at a fancy restaurant.  You’ll take it, but won’t appreciate it.  You probably won’t even use it.  The real key is to figure out whose mints to take because they are the yummy butter mint kind you rarely find and whose disgusting stale wintergreen mints you should avoid all together.

The only thing I wish someone had told me when I was ready to go off to college or even the work force was that everyone is shy on some level.  Make more eye contact and smile when you do it.  Don’t be afraid to strike up a conversation with someone when at a party or in public.  They are probably hoping someone will talk to them.

Oh…and the only reason most women join sororities…to meet guys.  Then again, fraternity brothers were never really my type.