'Turns out' learning

Let’s be real here. You know you won’t be listening to the speaker at graduation. Here’s another cliche: Let’s all think about what we learned.

Because chances are, hard as you might have tried otherwise, you probably did learn something here at IU. I’d even hazard a guess that you learned something that could be considered “academic.”

But for some reason the school-related knowledge never seems to be the salient memories of college. So what are you actually going to walk away with, after four years of purportedly nothing but learning?

I, for one, learned disparate things, and they always seemed to come from counterintuitive sources. I didn’t think I’d have the conversation that would realize my current life track while at the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas, but that’s where it happened. The only thing I learned in Boston was the concept of a wind tunnel (unless you count learning that while a yard is good for measuring many things, beer
is not one of them, which incidentally I learned at Harvard ). And the best bonding experience with my roommates occurred in a police station in Athens, Greece .

So too, in line with running contrary to what one would expect, it turns out the main thing I took from this institution of higher learning was that there is so much more to “higher learning” than the summation of your credit hours. In fact, the people who wore their “school blinders” missed out the most.

I’m not saying you should have chucked your grades, your job or whatever your next project turns out to be. But perhaps the best piece of insight I gained at school was, ironically, that school isn’t everything. Of the people I knew, the most multidimensional – the ones who weren’t defi ned by just one thing were by and large the happiest and most successful.

I learned to keep everything in perspective. Whenever you start taking yourself too seriously, remember that you too listened to “I’m Like A Bird” in sixth grade just like the rest of us. So whatever it is, it’s probably not that big a deal.

No, this isn’t an advice column. If this were, I’d tell you to wash your hands a bunch and watch out for swine flu. Maybe it’s just me being Dariaesque and telling everyone to chill. Who knows. But I do know that I hope, in order to counter four years of schoolwork, you take one last night in Bloomington to do something representatively inane, such as dancing to Lady Gaga choruses like they make sense and slurping
that Long Island like you’ve never been there.

So whether you’re Fratty McBoat-Shoes or one of the delightfully insouciant fellows who hang out at Baked! – rejoice! You’re now the guy in yellow pajamas in Dr. Seuss’ “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”

“You’re off to great places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So ... get on your way!”