My personal commencement address

So, what advice do you give a brand new college graduate who is about to go out and truly face the world for the first time?

I will soon have one of those in my family. Allie will graduate from the University of Georgia in a couple of weeks. It is so hard to believe. The great John Prine once sang, “Time don’t fly, it bounds and leaps.” It feels like it was just last week when I was dropping her off at the decrepit dorm on a warm and bittersweet August day. It was not the Georgia humidity that caused the wetness on my cheeks as I drove away from Athens.

That is such a wonderful stage of life, a time full of wonder and anticipation and fear and excitement. A time of being on your own, of finding new friends and experiences and eating pizza five times a week. I am so proud of her for how she handled things. I got no phone calls in the middle of the night from the Athens police, never had to post bail or hunt down a male student to deliver justice.

Oh sure, there were some emergencies – a broken foot here, a fender bender there. There were some calls looking for advice, or guidance, or money – well, mostly money – but I don’t mind those. I’ll let you in on a secret about dads, we actually sort of like those kinds of calls. It makes us feel useful.

She made a lot of great friends and did a lot of meaningful work through Navigators, an on-campus ministry, in which her brother David is also active. She went to football games in the country’s greatest stadium, went to parties and dances and cookouts, spent long nights writing papers she’d put off doing and lazy days swinging in a hammock and reading. I am intensely jealous.

But, now what? Here comes the real world, the world of payments and commutes and idiot bosses and premature gray hair. The thought of leaving behind those friends and that social scene has to be frightening. I know it was for me, and I didn’t have nearly the collegiate experience she did. I was only at UGA for two years and lived off-campus with a group of fellow slackers and derelicts known as my friends.

I was completely unprepared for life as my college career ended. I guess my strategy was if I didn’t think about it, it wouldn’t be real. I mean, I had things pretty good. I had a lot of friends, I had my own apartment, I was playing drums in a band, and I was living in Athens, Ga., a town blessed by God and populated by lots of pretty girls. Why would I look forward to leaving that?

And then, about two weeks before graduation, I was at home on the weekend and my dad said “What are you going to do when you graduate?”

I said, “I dunno.”

He said, “Well, I know what you’re NOT going to do, and that’s just sit around here and do nothing. Go find a job.”

Thus ended our one and only conversation about my career prospects. I went out, and got a job, and have had one (mostly) ever since. Some have been good, some have been bad. Some paid me a lot of money, some paid me less than a sharecropper. I have had bosses who were great and I’ve had bosses who shouldn’t be in charge of an outhouse. It’s life.

This is not easy for a parent. On the one hand, you want your child to earn money. You want them to be able to support themselves and pay for their own car insurance and life insurance and cell phone bill and..hang on, I need to wipe the drool off my face.

But you don’t want them to make the same mistakes you have made. You don’t want them driving home from work and wondering if what they’re doing is positively impacting anyone, anywhere. You don’t want them waking up with a stomachache thinking about what they’ll be doing for the next eight hours. And you don’t want them one day to be filled with regret, asking themselves “How did I get here?”

So here’s what I will say, to my kids and to anybody in the same spot who will listen – figure out what you love to do, and find a way to do it. That is simple, but difficult – much like losing weight. Don’t take the path of least resistance. Don’t give up your ideals and dreams just because it’s not easy. (This works better if you play inspirational music while you’re reading, like maybe the theme from “Chariots of Fire”).

Will it be wonderful if this career path offers insurance and enough money so that you can live on your own and not have to eat like Oliver Twist? Well, yes. But never do anything just for the money. Keep the faith, don’t quit, and never forget who you are, and how you were raised, and what you have become. I promise if you do that, we’ll all be all right.