My fellow recent grads,
We've done it - we've finally made good on that long-posed, lofty challenge beset by all those, formerly, better-acquainted than us to obtain a college degree. From one American Youth to another, sincerest congratulations.
We are oft accustomed, at milestones such as these, to being recipient to heaps of praise, if not wholly-disproportionate adulation, from those closest to us. We are bombarded with hopelessly cliché allusions to skies, limits, aboves, and beyonds, and, although the affection and encouragement from our nearest and dearest is always appreciated, this milestone, this graduation, feels different.
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Like many of you, I have just completed my bachelors' degree -it's in political science, if you're interested. Also, like many, I daresay almost all of you, I began college immediately after high school, partially at the behest of my parents, and partially at my own conviction that opportunity would not present itself to someone who has only a high school diploma. Throughout our lives, this sequence of events has repeated itself time after time - each new year brought a new phase in our academic careers, every graduation brought a change of scenery. Through each of these mandatory and heavily-orchestrated transitions, although our environments changed somewhat, the activities in which we participated and the standards to which we were expected to comply remained constant. Surely, high school was different from eighth grade, and college was divergent still, but, in each, there were still desks, and chairs, and lectures, and term papers. Over our years of academic advancement, these recapitulations of structure and of motif, although, perhaps, beckoning the bane of adolescent boredom in our more recent years, have served as forces of stability and of comfort for us, who have been witnesses to so many jarring transmutations and fragmentations throughout our world, despite our short tenure within it. Amid the present newfound realities of terrorism, bird flu, and economic hysteria, perhaps the smell of textbooks and the squeaks of neo-vintage classroom furniture were just the reassurance we needed.
Today, however, our school days, for most of us, are finished. As our experiences in the classroom begin to fade into distant memory, we are collectively confronted with two predominant present realities -
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1. For the first time in our lives, we do not possess a definitive, concrete mental picture of what lies next for us - there is no longer a classroom to which to return, nor is there a teacher to tell us what to do.
2. We are residents of a country in decline. Most of the indicators of the distress in which the United States finds itself are economic. I am not an arithmophile, so I'll refrain from interpreting these figures, but I'm happy to present them. Currently, the national debt is $17.53 trillion, with 151,000 of those dollars, if evenly distributed, allocated to each taxpayer ⁱ. There are, at present, 6.3% of the American population unemployed, and for our demographic, 11.1% of 20 to 24 year olds do not have jobs ⁱⁱ.
Think, for a moment, of all of your friends. How many of them, if they have also graduated from college, have jobs? Of those who do, are they in jobs which they wanted to have, or jobs for which they studied?
At this point, I would like to speak directly to those who are dismissing this essay as a tirade of a disgruntled, yet incredibly privileged, if not spoiled, youth. This is a tirade. I am disgruntled. I am disappointed. I am disappointed because my parents did their best to give me everything that I would need in order to be able to capitalize on my own talents and on any opportunities that might come my way. They worked hard and sacrificed for me; they paid for me to go to private school and, so that I would be able to go to college without accruing any student debt, my mother earned her masters' degree, just so she could make more money to put toward my education. Nevertheless, my parents' sacrifice, and my own achievements, trivial in comparison, mean less today than they would have just a decade ago. The sacrifices of your parents and the achievements of all of you are worth less today as well, and it's just plain unfair, because none of us and none of our parents are at fault - everybody simply did the best that they could. Because of this, however, I'm disappointed in those leaders whose myopic worldview has turned the peace and prosperity of the final years of the 20th Century into the conflict and uncertainty we have faced through the first 14 years of this one. I'm disappointed in the decision makers who forfeited thousands of lives in the invasion of countries that did not attack us, nor possess weapons that endangered us. I'm disappointed in the abysmal job market, and I'm disappointed in the congressional representatives who choose to gloat about their own personal accomplishments whilst delivering university commencement addresses. Most significantly of all, however, I'm disappointed in you, my fellow American Youth.
Throughout my years, I've had the opportunity to meet many of my peers, as have all of you as well. Among my personal friend group, I have future doctors, lawyers, linguists, writers, and professors - at least, I know that they're all capable of achieving such illustrious posts, if granted the opportunities to do so. I remember my days in elementary school, and today, I'm fascinated by how imaginative we all were. Throughout high school and college, I watched with pride as I saw my fellow students begin to realize what they wished their place in the world to look like, and I am greatly encouraged by the tremendous amount of patience, tolerance, and compassion I have witnessed from our demographic. My friends and my personal experiences are but a minute sliver of what the complete picture of 2014 American Youth must be, though, and I am convinced that there are many more of us out there who do understand what's going on here.
So, we are educated, we're imaginative, innovative, tolerant, and accepting. These are all wonderful, and critically necessary, character attributes. However, out demographic is also extremely disengaged by and disinterested with our political and social processes. We love to complain, and we're probably better at it than any previous generation, but, when it comes to acting on our grievances, we, largely, stand by idly while we hope that somebody else takes care of our gripes for us. I'm sorry, but liking something on Facebook or changing your profile picture to the latest symbol associated with the in-vogue equal rights movement doesn't do anything to actually secure equality for anybody. Sure, such symbolic actions connote a stand of solidarity, but posting a picture of your lunch on Instagram doesn't solve world hunger. In the eyes of older generations, who tend to have a much more black and white worldview, these actions denote narcissism and laziness. By and large, most older people with whom I have spoken view our generation as a right bunch of spoiled whiners.
Although we do love to complain, we know otherwise - we are not whiners, we love to dream. We dream of being able to do what we want without having to ask for permission. We dream of opportunities, real opportunities of equality and fairness that we can build our lives around, not unpaid internships or volunteer arrangements. We want to end the senseless violence that afflicts our society, and we want to stop gambling with the health of our environment. We dream of many things, and we want quite a lot, but, right now, we, as a collective cohort of the American population, don't do very much to attempt to realize these desires.
So, what's the answer? Well, there isn't any one, single appropriate response - this isn't one of those confounded multiple-choice tests. The answer can be whatever you, my compatriots, desire, but I can assure you that it will consist of much more than simply commenting at the bottom of this page or sharing this article on Facebook (which I do hope you do). I encourage all of you to follow my lead - let your voices be heard. Learn about the society from which you come. Learn its history, its values, its dynamics, and, once in possession of such knowledge, form your own opinion, and make sure you can justify them, with actual facts, not simply "I feel this way so it must be true" sorts of statements, regarding what this society should be. We've graduated, we've done our time. We've done everything that we were supposed to do, and we have the proper tools required to do something with our lives. We're adults now, and we matter. It's time for us to recognize this, and it's time for us to stop looking to everyone else to do everything on our behalf. Before long, everyone else will be looking to us.
So, my fellow recent grads, my fellow American Youth, once again, congratulations - we did it. Now, let us begin.
