IRREVERENT Magazine - Features

Details

Written by Scott Meadow

Category: The Editor's Mess

June 7, 2011. Meadow's Alma Mater, Ravenswood, Connecticut

Thank you, Chancellor Banks, and may I say you have an even lovelier posterior in the daylight. Dean McDonald, regents, faculty, dear students, and friends, including new friends from last night. I have the check right here for the damages Delta Phi Gamma, stop by my hotel room later as agreed.

Commencement. WikiPedia calls commencement "the ceremony at which students receive academic degrees." It's also the name of an album by the rock band "Deadsy," it turns out, which proves, once again why I love the Internet. Never before have so many been able to be sidetracked so easily. Still, Groupon made me a fortune so who's complaining.

[inset pos=left]Now you can Tweet your junk everywhere and it's perfectly legal.[/inset]Commencement. It's a time of transition, to be sure. Transition is also an operation of a finite-state machine, in case you were wondering. But in this case, we're talking about a transition from one reality to another. A reality in which you are surrounded by your peers, many of whom are holding and are chronic insomniacs; a reality in which powerfully fun drugs are a campus call away, as I confirmed myself only last night. Jesse, you have a future in logistics, and I'm a man of my word. I'm calling Fred Smith over at FedEx as soon as I leave here, I hope you can start Monday.

The rest of you, however, won't be nearly as lucky as Jesse. I remember graduating from Yalvard myself, too many years ago now, smack into one of the worst job markets in a decade. It was a tough, tough ride. But that was nothing compared to what you're about to face, thank god for that. You guys are pretty screwed.

Yet, there is hope. When I graduated, the prospect of tweeting your junk to coeds across the country was an unthinkable reality. The Internet and Twitter had yet to evolve. If you wanted to send lewd pix of yourself to anonymous coeds, you had very few options. Sure you could mail them, but that made it a federal crime. Now you can Tweet your junk everywhere and it's perfectly legal. Yes, you'll lose your job, but nothing associated with your junk is free, trust me on that.

Read more: Yalvard Commencement Address 2011