This is my last paper as editor in chief of The Reflector. That means, among other things, I’ll be graduating in about three weeks (fingers crossed).
Through conversations with other seniors, I’ve realized something that our professors and parents probably don’t want to hear: Many of us are not quite sure what we’ll be doing after we cross the stage at The Hump.
The commencement speaker should be happy. We are a group ready for inspiration. Maybe the speaker will suggest the Peace Corps? Sounds like a plan to me. Perhaps the speech will include something about teaching inner-city kids basketball. Great idea. Dare to be great? Why not? We’ve got nothing to lose.
I know what I want-happiness and success. I just don’t know what I want to do.
And, judging by what my fellow graduates are saying, I’m not alone.
Some soon-to-be-graduates have it figured out, or at least seem to. Internships and co-ops led to job offers. They are getting married this summer. They’ve already picked out an apartment and new furniture with which to fill it.
But the place I interned isn’t hiring. The girl dumped me. The hand-me-down couch from my brother will be with me wherever I’ll be living in a month.
So what do those of us with drive but no map do?
Revel in it, I say.
The world can be scary, sure. So can college. What if I take a job and find out it isn’t what I want to do for the rest of my life? Well, I changed majors three times while at State and lived to tell about it.
The unknown can be scary, sure. So are roller coasters. But both can also be a lot of fun.
When I stepped on campus four years ago, I had no idea I’d work for this newspaper, let alone run it. I started here in biological engineering. Readers will note that the end of this column says I study economics, not journalism. But life takes funny turns, and I ended up in the Meyer Student Media Center.
Honestly, the first time I picked up a copy of The Reflector, I felt sorry for the students who worked on it. I wondered what could be written about this sleepy campus?
But I learned. Oh, did I learn.
And the learning experience-an understatement if there ever was one-I had is an argument for the uncharted life.
But what do I know? I’m 22-year-old who will (fingers still crossed) have a BA from a rural land-grant university. The closest brush I’ve had with the real world is writing for this newspaper. And even that isn’t much of a brush.
But I’m not offering advice. It’s more of an attitude: Everyone is facing the unknown. Our choice is to either grimace or grin. We might as well grin.
Like a lot of soon-to-alumni, I’m low on technical skills. This is not the fault of my professors. I’ve learned a lot from them. But the best professors know their main task is not to teach us a trade, but teach us how to learn.
Even the studentsa who attends school to learns a technical skill need more than that because in a few years, that technical skill could be obsolete. Ask a computer engineer who graduated in the early 1990s. The bottom line: We will be unemployed unless we keep learning.
The job of this university is to make sure its graduates have tools, not just knowledge. Tools are dynamic; knowledge is static. And if I know anything about this scary, unknown world, it is that this place is always changing.
I’m confident about what this class can do, thanks to our four years in Starkville.
What will I do? I’m still not sure, but maybe it doesn’t matter.
Maybe the glory isn’t in the specific task, but how one does the task. Maybe happiness and success can be found in the Peace Corps, the inner-city basketball court and everywhere in between. Maybe it just takes a can-do attitude and a few mental tools.
Maybe I’m ready to graduate.
<<i>p>Wilson Boyd is a senior economics major. If you have comments, keep them to yourself, because he can no longer be reached at [email protected].