I'm extremely busy today so I'm not getting a lot of time to get on here so I thought I would re-post a blog that I read last night about the recent JMU Graduation. Its a great letter to the class of 2012 and I will share it for you all here. I also wish someone told me this when I graduated from there in 2004. (OH MY GOD I'M OLD) Hope you have a great weekend planned!
Read the entire article right HERE.
Dear Class of 2012: You Have No Idea What You've Gotten Yourself Into
Over 3,500 graduates joined the ranks of JMU alumni last Saturday. And to each of you, we say congratulations. It’s only been a few days, so we’re sure things haven’t really sunk in yet. You’re probably still bumming around with your friends, drinking heavily, and paying the tab with money dear old mom and dad put in your pocket. Over the past 4 (or 5) years, you were blessed to be a part of the pleasant little utopia in the Shenandoah Valley known as JMU. We were there once to and we loved it. Like you, we had grown accustomed to the rather comfortable little JMU lifestyle. We left campus anyway and marched out into world confident that JMU had prepared us for all the future could throw at us, convinced that the good times would never end. Only we were wrong. JMU did not prepare us for the real world. At all. And it didn’t prepare you for it either. It actually set you up to be disappointed. Very, very disappointed. And that’s because JMU is awesome and the real world sucks. In the real world you can’t just walk into a house, grab a beer, drink yourself silly, and stumble home with an attractive member of the opposite sex. That doesn’t happen. In the real world the drinks are expensive and most people are ugly.
By now you’re probably sick of old people giving you the terrible advice and pumping you full of sunshine. You should be sick of it because old people suck. Trust us. We are old people. And like all other old people, you will find us insufferable. Because we are. We are tired and worn out and we’ll try very hard to act young and hip when we meet you. It will come across as very sad. Because it is. And once we realize that you pity us, we will lash out and start raving about insignificant things like how you young people just don’t get it. Or we’ll lecture about how all those pictures on Facebook and Twitter are going to prevent you from getting a job. Which is ridiculous, because those pictures should help you get a job. Provided of course that you find out who else is interviewing for the same jobs as you and you tag them in every single incriminating photo you can find. It’s a tough job market. Dog eat dog.
And about those job things. Most of you probably don’t have one. Those of you that somehow did manage to secure an offer are about to be very disappointed. You are not going to be on the fast track working on important projects. You are going to do the same old boring sh*t everyone else does. And you’re going to do it the same way it’s always been done, because that’s how the world works. And you’ll do it every day. For 8 to 10 hours a day. For the next 45 years. You thought that having two classes on Fridays that one semester was bad? You’ll long for those days when you’re in the third hour of a 115 slide presentation on “synergies” being given by a guy in short sleeves and a knit tie. Oh, and that project that you work your ass off to complete because they tell you it’s “high visibility” and it will serve as a “launching pad” for success? They lied. Great job though. In exchange for all this, you might get a whole 2 weeks of vacation your first year. Which means that you’ll be the one stuck in the office by yourself between Christmas and New Years while everyone else takes off. Getting paid to sit around all day and do nothing for a week might sound OK. But once you finish reading the internet (yes, the whole damn thing) by the second day, you will come to experience boredom the likes of which you can’t imagine.
Life won’t be all work though. There will be new people to meet, and parties to go to, and bars to explore. But things won’t be like they were in Harrisonburg. At JMU people are inordinately attractive. And nice. And fun to hang out with. That is not normal. Plus, things are expensive after college, so you might be tempted to save money on rent and live way out in the suburbs. Do not do that. Doing so will sentence you to a life of happy hours at the TGI Fridays in the mall with 45 year old divorcees while your smarter friends hang out with people their own age in places that are actually fun. And if you somehow defy the odds on a rare night out in the ciy and convince someone to hop in a $58 cab ride home to suburbia with you, you’ll be in for a rough morning. I’m just guessing here, but driving some stranger back to their house 45 minutes away in a car filled with the stench of regret probably is even more awkward than it sounds. And hangovers? Yeah, you’ve never had one before. You might think you have, but no you have not.
So we hope you enjoyed your time at JMU. Living, learning, and partying with smart, funny, and let’s face it, extraordinarily attractive people, was awesome. We know that. But it set the bar sort of high. Unreasonably high. So don’t leave JMU. Don’t ever leave. Give back your diploma. Get another major. Or a Masters. The real world will be right here waiting for you when you’re done. And it won’t be like JMU.
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