So does this mean I'm a grown-up?

Well folks, I graduated today!

PROOF: Exhibit A

Graduation took about as long as I expected, and it was one of those things for which I would have been more exciting had I not been so tired. Our guest speaker was a fairly interesting guy. Eugene H. Cordes has apparently been involved in UNL in a big way and has done some impressive things in the realm of biosciences and medicine. Perhaps over my head, but I was impressed nonetheless. He was granted an honorary degree of Doctor of Science. After being honored, he gave the commencement speech for my graduating class. Not bad for a day's work.

His speech was entitled "Learning Throughout Life," and he made repeatedly the point "never stop learning." While not entirely thrilling or overly inspiring, the man said some things I wholeheartedly agree with and that was encouraging. I liked his specific point about scientific literacy. He argues our tax dollars are funding government grants for things like research, medicine, and other scientific endeavors. If we paid for them, the information is ours. Thus, we should seek out and demand to learn the information, internalize it, and metabolize it. Yet, information moves and evolves quickly. Merely relying on what you learned in school doesn't keep you in touch. Thus, constant life-long learning is vital. He argued that we as a society could take advantage of all the progress made by various research committees by things as simple as learning physiology or basic pharmacology. We could learn to work with our doctors and have an active involvement in our own health care.

So yeah, the speech was both generic and specific, inspiring and vanilla, and about the last thing I paid attention to before I zoned out. Thankfully, my college got up first and filed through the ranks to get our diplomas. The rest of it was a waiting game.

I am now comfortably at my parents' house and will hang out here until it is time to move to Seattle.

Past experiences have taught me that I don't like being idle and to be idle at my parents' home is just a recipe for disaster. I stayed in touch with a high school teacher from Bellevue West over the past few years and we tossed around the idea of me coming back to speak to her senior classes. I've spoken to high school students a few times before, but it has been about 2 years and the age gap was never this pronounced.

Yet, I love talking to younger students and sharing experiences I had about growing up and succeeding in higher education while it is still fresh in my mind.

I think I'll want to spend time talking about commitment to the community and learning to give back by leveraging our gifts. I'll probably want to talk about being proactive in self-investment and not "waiting until I'm old enough" to start taking things seriously.

Now, I've heard the Van Wilder quote "don't take too seriously; you'll never make it out alive." I can kind of agree with that, and I have recently begun to verbalize the value of being relaxed about life while still being analytical and critical. Honestly, with the way my mind works, it's the only way I can live life without burning out.

However, I kind of have a small peeve regarding college kids thinking it's fine to continually excuse bad behavior, wastefulness, selfishness, and blah blah blah (I sound like an old man), citing "I'm too young to take this too seriously." Well, at what age do young people all of a sudden become useful, contributing members of society? Is college nothing more than an excuse to be a leech? I hope not.

So I'll try to withhold going too crazy, but those are among my more significant life lessons in college. Everything comes with balance. Self-investment in both work and leisure are important. Community service and caring for one's soul are also important.

So those are my starting ideas. Does anybody else have some thoughts on things you think new to-be-college students should hear?