Graduates should break some rules

Post-secondary graduation ceremonies are always both emotional and thoughtprovoking events.

They are moving, of course, for the sight of that special someone stepping forward for congratulations — seemingly just a day or two after you first heard them cry out their entry into your world. But en masse they put a lump in most throats as well: It is the very future, as it were, crossing the stage into the unknown wearing those exalted smiles of hope and pride.

And thought-provoking? Well, what else is there to do on these rare afternoons of enforced inactivity in our go-go world? You can slip down more than one mental rabbit hole just watching just the “M”s taking their turn shaking the dignitaries’ hands.

It is the way of thought that one starts small — perhaps musing about the playlist of the convocation band. How on earth did they come up with a set that included the Beach Boys’ Sloop John B and the theme from Jurassic Park?

Then, perhaps you wonder how long that lock of bright purple hair will survive the compromising practicalities of preparing for job interviews.

But after the speeches from the podium begin, generally about making marks on the world, or becoming the leaders of tomorrow, bigger questions begin their own procession.

What are all these wonderful, optimistic, creative young people going to do with the education their new degrees announce?

Sure, the brightest and the hardest working, the ones who came though at the tops of their classes, will have the opportunity to follow their dreams. Whatever else the previous generation may have done, it put paid to a world that gave most of the opportunity to men, and to the offspring of the wealthy and well connected.

Sure, the most resourceful, agile and entrepreneurial will do well, too, finding their paths in unexpected places, or creating entirely new ones.

But what about the graduates in the middle of the curve — the ones from initials F to T, as it were?

In recent years, we have debated the notion of the “one per cent” in purely economic terms. Could it be that question fizzled out because it missed the mark? That the real problem is a race too few can win in the more abstract sense of truly “become the best you can be,” as university presidents are fond of exhorting in their speeches?

For now, the voices one hears most clearly are not those of young graduates struggling to find satisfying opportunities, but rather the leaders of the present who tend to view them as the latest crop of human resources who should embrace what will satisfy the economy.

At one University of Alberta convocation this week, Tory MLA Steve Young advised that it is creative, hard-working “doers” — not critics — who have built Alberta in the past. He urged them to take a similar, can-do approach to their lives.

The trouble with that is, if you don’t have the ability and willingness to think critically about how things could be better, you are going to have a lot of trouble making it happen.

Members of the older generation may like to think they’ve written good rules for the game, and prefer it when their children work uncomplainingly within them. But we’d be wise to remember that back when we were skinny and wore (shudder) bellbottoms, we often ignored a similar self-satisfied tune from our own forebears.

It would probably be good for the world if today’s graduates were open to doing the same.

And speaking of opening: If members of the graduating class of 2014 think their elders are doing too much thinking up there in the balcony, or are maybe taking that dinosaur music too personally, a bottle of chilled Chardonnay almost always settles us down. Editorials are the consensus opinion of the Journal’s editorial board comprising Margo Goodhand , Kathy Kerr, Karen Booth , Sarah O’Donnell and David Evans.