Commencement Time

It is the end of the spring semester, and campuses everywhere are preparing for Commencement Day, a time when students are forced to spend money to rent a ugly bathrobe and sit in a crowded auditorium with inadequate air conditioning while someone the administration hopes will donate money delivers a boring speech giving advice to students who neither asked for it nor will listen to it.  Neither the proud parents in the stands, the assembled faculty, nor the administration will listen to the speech, either, as it is their job to just sit and smile and wonder who started this stupid tradition.

Over the years at Enema U, I sat through dozens of these ceremonies as I owed countless favors to my department head, a kind man who gave me my start in edjumacation.  The university had three commencement ceremonies a year, and I was invariably asked to attend.  I quickly learned the only way to survive the boredom was to take along a book.  After the faculty were seated at the front of the auditorium, I’d pull out my book, receiving strong looks of disapproval from my colleagues sitting close by.  Long before the speeches were over, however, these same colleagues would whisper, “Don’t turn the page yet!”

Having attended dozens of these ceremonies, I’m an expert on graduation advice.  I should qualify that statement with two caveats, however.  First, while I have been to way too many of these silly proceedings, I’ve never been to one of my own graduation ceremonies, though I had half a dozen opportunities, including one this year.  I finished a degree in art history last year, but the pandemic delayed the ceremony until just a few months ago.  I thought about attending, then I laughed and decided I could just read a book at home.

Secondly, I don’t have a lot of advice for students leaving college, as I haven’t done that yet, myself.  I have no idea what these students should do, personally, I’d suggest they don’t.  Just stay in school forever, it’s working for me.

While I have no idea what college graduates should do, I can offer some advice as to what incoming college students should do.  Let me give some advice, both unrequested and probably useless, to those high school students who intend to go to college this fall.  I was a student for a long time, then spent a couple of decades teaching, and now I’ve been a student again for several years.  Who could possibly know the system better than I?

Here’s how to go to college:

First, don’t go to a college you can’t afford.  Every university, and every department within the university, will look you right in the eyes and tell you that if you graduate from their program, you can easily pay off those hideous student loans they want to saddle you with.  Notice, however, that none of those hucksters will offer to cosign the loan with you.  Ask either the recruiter or your prospective department head what the average starting pay is for their graduates that find work.  If your student loans require more than 10% of what you can reasonably expect to make, that is not a viable major.

Note:  I can just hear you asking, “But isn’t the government getting ready to pay off our student loans?” TANSTAAFL.  If you don’t know what that means, look it up.  (Better yet, improve your education and read Robert Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.)  Eventually, even the bloated plutocrats in Washington will realize that if your education doesn’t have enough value for you to pay for it, it doesn’t have enough value for the taxpayers to foot the bill.

As a student, pick a major that with which you can reasonably expect to earn a living.  Those liberal arts degrees are a lot of fun—I should know, I have a handful of them—but there are no pressing needs for more people with degrees in Music Appreciation.  If your prospective department head doesn’t have employment data for recent graduates, that’s probably a good indicator that you should pick a different major. 

Here’s another way to evaluate a major:  How many math courses does your major require?  There is a direct link between future earnings and how much math is required to graduate.  If your major only requires you to take a math course titled “Hooray for Numbers!” and is taught in the Education Department, the average pigeon is far more likely to put a deposit on a new car than you are.

As a student, maybe you can take the required general education courses the first year, but as soon as possible and at least by the second year, you should have a plan that will take you through a degree and into your career.  If the only thing that will make you happy in life is that degree in English Literature, then go ahead and get one, but earn that degree at a university that you can afford and preferably while working to defray the cost.  If you think working while going to school is hard, just wait until you try to earn a living with a degree in Gender Studies.

Far too many bright and capable students have been told their whole lives that they should “do something good with their lives.”  These students come to college, do fairly well, and simply drift through the curriculum, usually winding up majoring in education, sociology, or one of the liberal arts.  These students have no real passion for these fields, they just either find them interesting or fairly easy to finish.  These are the students who end up with high cost degrees, large loans, and little desire to work in those fields.  I’ve lost track of the number of students who worked for a couple of years in either social work or public education, only to quit and look for something more rewarding.

Okay, you’ve picked a major.  Now what?

Pick the right professors.  Sad to say, not every professor in every department is worth a glass of warm spit.  Unless you have absolutely no choice, never take a class from a professor until you find out what the class is going to be like.  Make friends with other students in the department and ask them about their experiences.  Look up the professor’s class schedule and sit in on a class.  And always look up your professor in RateMyProfessors.Com.  The student evaluations at this site are generally far more honest than those done by the department, as the students believe, all too frequently correctly, that those evaluations are not as anonymous as the university claims. 

Upon taking the class, see who turns up to teach it.  If your professor doesn’t show up for the first two weeks, sending either a substitute or a teaching assistant for the first two weeks—drop the course and take it from someone else.  A professor who doesn’t respect the class is unlikely to respect a student, either.

Now, that we have a major and the right professor, what’s next?  Go to class.  Go to every damn class. 

You would not believe the number of students who regularly skip class.  Why students choose to pay for a class and then do not attend has always puzzled me.  I doubt that movie theaters have a problem with patrons buying a ticket and then not sitting down to watch the movie, yet a ticket to a movie is far cheaper than what every single class costs.  Needless to say, if for no other reason than the instructor will notice who regularly attends, students who are present for every class do much better in the course.

Do the required reading.  Most people would be surprised to learn that a significant portion of every class never buys a copy of the required reading.  Campus bookstores know this and usually only order enough copies of the required textbooks for a fraction of the class.  An even larger portion of the class evidently keeps those books under their bed, hoping to absorb magic vibrations from the pages while they sleep, since they certainly never open the books and actually read them.  Read the damn book before the relevant lecture and you will be more than halfway home.

And my last piece of advice is to learn how to take notes, which is a subject that most schools seem not to bother with.  Learn a good note taking system and use it.  I recommend the Cornell Note Taking System, but there are other good systems.   Take notes, then later that same day, type your notes into a computer, adding information from the professor’s PowerPoint slides.  Take a look at the two pages of notes to the right.  Which do you want to study the night before the exam.  Not only will this be easier to use, but by typing them the same day as the class, it reinforces your understanding of the material.  Try and find a study partner in the class who will do the same thing and exchange copies of your notes—sometimes another student will hear something or understand something you didn’t.

That’s it.  Want to go to college?  Pick a good school, a realistic major taught by good professors whose books you read while going to class and taking notes and you will graduate on time and have a decent career. 

Having done all that, if you feel like it, you can even go to that commencement ceremony and hear a boring speech.  I recommend taking a book.