Hey graduating seniors, bleak job market got you down? Don’t lose heart: read the obituaries. ‘Tis the season for graduating seniors to get that most obnoxious of all questions, “What’s next?”
Any soon-to-be-graduate should not be downcast if they don’t have the slightest idea what’s next, or what they want to do with their life. My suggestion is to find solace in the obituaries. These short bios of notable lives offer life coaching that rivals anything you might get from Career Services.
Lesson number one, life is not linear. For example, Ralph Klein, a Canadian politician who died two weeks ago at age 70, was raised by his grandparents, dropped out of high school, joined the army, went back to business school, became a teacher and principal, worked in public relations for the Red Cross, hosted a radio show, became a weatherman and then reported for the local newspaper on the city’s local biker gangs before he ever thought about politics. Then, with no political experience, he ran for, and won, the mayorship of Calgary, Alberta.
Lesson number two, don’t crush anyone else’s dreams. Eddie Bond, the former radio host and rockabilly singer who died March 20 at age 79, is best remembered for having advised a young Elvis Presley to keep his day job as a truck driver “because you’re never going to make it as a singer.” Although Bond was born into the music scene in Memphis and was singing in bands by the time he was 16, the New York Times noted that he never had a major hit as a singer. Whether his comment to Presley was spurred by insecurity or hubris we don’t know, but either way he — and we — should keep a lid on the discouragement.
Lesson number three, follow your passion — it may just get you some killer memories. Paul Williams, considered to be the father of rock criticism, died fairly young at 64, but he spent every precious minute on earth focusing on his primary loves: rock ‘n’ roll and intelligent writing. Williams founded the alternative rock magazine “Crawdaddy” as a 17-year-old freshman at Swarthmore. He dropped out after a year to run the low-budget publication, which was the first of its genre, though the slicker Rolling Stone soon overtook it. Williams wrote frequently for Rolling Stone, published two dozen books about rock ‘n’ roll, freelanced as a literary critic, managed Timothy Leary’s campaign for governor, lived in a commune, smoked his first joint with the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson and hitched a ride to Woodstock in a limo with the Grateful Dead.
So just because you don’t bust a splashy career move right out of college, your life might still be full of worthwhile experiences. On the other hand, if you’re planning to be a genius, the trend indicates that your brilliance is likely to peak in the next few years. So don’t blow it.
Einstein said that anyone who hasn’t made a significant contribution to science by the time he’s 30 won’t make one. Sir Isaac Newton leads the pack of accomplished twenty-somethings. By the time he was 27, Newton had invented infinitesimal calculus, set foundations for his theory of light and color and gained significant insight into the laws of planetary motion. Notably, these achievements occurred during a hiatus from his formal study at Cambridge. Mozart and Keats also created their best-known works before they were 25. Unless you aspire to this grand level of achievement, take a load off, enjoy the rest of the semester and tell those pesky post-graduation interrogators to read the obituaries.