With this being the season for graduations, I look back wistfully at my own college commencement exercises at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, (Mascot: Lumberjacks)in May 1984 where the late U.S. Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, asked the assembled crowd what was to be a haunting rhetorical question for the ages: “Where are my trousers?”
No, actually I don’t even remember what Tower said that morning. I think he said something about Communism and indicated that it was bad. But I figure if that was really what he said and I actually got the context of his message right then he did much better at imparting knowledge than more than a couple of my professors.
Comedian Don Novello, known for his portrayal as Father Guido Sarducci during the golden era of Saturday Night Live, has a well-known comedy routine known as “The Five-Minute University” with his comedic thesis being that everything one learned in college can be reduced to five minutes. (Example: Economics? Supply and Demand.)
Fr. Sarducci’s hyperbolic observations aside, certain members of the human race do indeed expect much to come out of much more when there really is much less. “By God, your A) Mother & Dad B) Government C)Prison System (Pick one) is/are paying tens of thousands of dollars/Euros/pesos to put you through four years of college (or more)and so you are expected to give us four years (or more) of knowledge.”
Right. Like you really would want to listen to someone who absorbed every single word spoken to them by some windbag professor or gleaned from some august text sold for $56.50 retail at the university center bookstore and can be resold at the end of the semester for $1.62.
One must never forget, however, that a higher education is more than a sum of its parts. It is part of the sum. Or some of the part. Or something.
So as I rapidly dissemble as a means of escaping that which one might mistake for meaning, I bid you a good day and a bright future grads and future grads as well, both young and old. You deserve it. Remember to always brush after each meal. Walk facing traffic and not directly in front of it. And please remember, all aspirins are alike.