When I Think Back on All the Crap I Learned in College...

NOTE: This was originally intended for Trop's "Worst Graduation Speech" competition.  I did not realize, however, that their midnight deadline was Eastern time.  So when I submitted my entry at 10pm, I was time zone cock blocked (TZCB).  Despite my brave attempts to argue that procrastinating until the last minute encapsulates the true spirit of college, I was shot down by a woman via e-mail (bringing back even more college memories).

So here is the speech in its entirety.  Being modest, I assume it would have won at least second prize.

******

May 7, 2013

Dear fellow soon-to-be graduates of the Class of 2013,

Wikipedia defines Crossroads as “a 2002 comedy/drama starring Britney Spears.”  And that is exactly where we are right now.  Today marks a fork in the crossroads of our lives. 

During the first semester of sophomore year, I enrolled in "Intro to American Poetry."  Pointless class.  Dropped it after two weeks when the professor wouldn’t let me write my midterm paper on Jewel.  There was one lecture, however, that I actually paid attention to.  It was on Frost’s “The Road Not Taken," a poem about selecting one path instead of the other and how that makes all the difference. 

While I can’t speak for all of you, I was selected to speak for you today.  And I, for one, would prefer to offer the advice of another poet: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

The college is offering us a doorway to a brighter future.  A gateway to tomorrow.  When we pass through it, we leave this comfortable summer camp and move to a scary world.  A world without dining halls, meal plans or school-sponsored parties.  A world where no one cares about the usage of “whom.”  A world where Radiohead is just another band and The Matrix isn’t considered a philosophical treatise on reality and metaphysics.

Before you take that plunge, I offer you a choice.  I offer you an opportunity.  I offer you a second road.

Here is what I ask of you, classmates: When you walk up on this stage and shake President Osbourne’s hand, do not grasp the diploma.  In fact, tell him that you aren’t graduating.  Hand it back and continue to live as a carefree college child for another year. 

Right now you’re chuckling.  You’re laughing.  You’re saying, “Wow he is so witty.  I really regret not sleeping with him junior year" *cough*Carly Mitchell*cough*.  But I am not kidding.  I am not messing around.  I am not fucking around.  And I truly hope that my use of profanity in a public forum emphasizes that point. 

The real world is terrible, like going back to Kansas after living in Oz.  Why would I want to go back?  My life is here.  My friends are here.  All my stuff is still in my dorm.  Hell, my PS3 isn't even boxed up yet.

The real world is no place for ambitious scholars like us.  Right now we have potential.  Until the moment we act, we can be anything we want.  But as soon as we go out into the world and look inside the box, the cat dies.  Trust me.  I have a semester of physics under my belt.

We don't have the necessary tools to survive.  I'm not sure what we learned over the past four years, but it doesn't prepare us to leave.  How do you negotiate a lease?  How do you change a spark plug?  How the hell do you fold a fitted sheet?  How can we navigate a world where Pluto isn’t a planet and the Food Pyramid is now some geometric shape that I can't even name?

You know why no one ever talks about over-age drinking?  Because it's normal!  As soon as we turned 21, alcohol becomes a bore.  It's legal.  It's ordinary.  It's what everyone does.  So how do people find the impetus to keep drinking?  By having dreary, dreadful, sucky lives.  A 9 to 5 job and an aching back is your new beer bong.  I like drunkenly singing along to Springsteen songs on Saturday night, but I never want to understand where he's coming from.

The answer is clear.  Don't leave.  And hopefully I can convince the skeptics to stay here.  I will continue to talk until you change your minds.  I will filibuster our graduation.  Trust me.  I took a course on film theory and we watched “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”  I know what I’m doing.  And believe you me,  I won't run out of things to say.  I have memorized Lebowski and Fight Club and will start quoting verbatim before you can say Tyler Durden.

After we take that diploma in our hands, we are adults.  We are functioning members of society.  We will be responsible, tax paying citizens.  We will have become our parents.  Ladies, how many times have you been confronted with the insult "You're turning into your mother?"  I know for a fact that Carly Mitchell has heard that one a few times.

Much like this sentence, it is going to be a rough transition into adult life.  Although, thanks to Obama we can stay on our parents’ health insurance plans until we’re 26.  But that’s all the help we're getting!  Why the hell did we campaign so hard for that guy?

Sure, we can “apply to law school," but that’s not a real job.  We’ll wait tables.  We’ll work temp jobs.  We'll live in lofts, and not by choice!

I was a philosophy major--  Correction: I still am a philosophy major for another 15 minutes.  And as an expert on the subject, I tell you that you do not have to accept this world.  We can create our own reality.  We have the power to shape our own future!

It looks as though campus security has charged their stun guns and are going to jump me momentarily, so I will offer one last quote.  A great philosopher once said: "What you know, you can't explain.  But you feel it.  You've felt it your entire life.  There is something wrong with the world.  You don't know what it is, but it's there like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad."

Which brilliant mind said it?  Kant?  Hegel?  Schopenhauer?  Descartes? 

Wrong.  It was Morpheus from The Matrix.  I beg of you, do not graduate.  Keep taking the blue pill, fellow non-grads!  I am not ready to be unplugged!

********