Sloe Times

A journal of my adventures in learning and growing personally and professionally

Saturday, May 15, 2004

 

General Commentary

So I just got back from my brother-in-laws graduation at Bradley. Funny, their commencement speaker wasn't really anyone uber famous but he was a historian, and apparently was the head of a number of presidential libraries. His speech above anything else, truly outlined the generation gap between me (30) and the kids graduating from college today. I'd like to think I'm a bit wiser now than I was 10 years ago... some days I'm not so sure. The point of this fellows speech, to me, was that he wanted the graduating class to be a collection of leaders as opposed to spectators of life and the events around them. This is of course something that many (not all) people learn over time once they've existed in the real world for awhile and decided they really want to get somewhere. It made me sad to think that his speech will languish in the alcohol addled brains of the graduates for 5 or so years before they've been kicked around by life enough to remember it.

I'm what I'd like to consider a self made man. I didn't know my father growing up (died while I was too young to remember) and the host of substitutes really didn't make any impact until the last one. The sad part about the last one is, he died before he could really know how much I appreciated him. Anyway, so no real proper influence on me until I was pretty much already grown and while my mom tried, she didn't have all the answers either. Needless to say I managed to get myself into college after getting myself thrown out of high-school. I also managed to piss away college in a drinking binge that lasted about 2 years. I must have thought I had it too easy and needed to add some challenges to my life. Fortunately for me I was gifted with the skills to pay the bills. First it was as a temp for Kelly Temporary Services. It makes sense doesn't it? What does a UNIX admin with no college degree do before that whole dot com explosion? Anyway, being a reasonably bright individual (especially after easing up on the sauce) I was able to work my way up from job to job, catching the beginning wave of the dot com rush and riding it past into a respectable job with a respectable company. Now I'm going back to school, of course making sure I have plenty of challenges like a new kid and a demanding job. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I realized early on that I screwed the pooch pretty good and that the only way back up was to actively go after what I wanted rather than just take the beating and put myself in a downward spiral. A lot of the younger people I deal with, especially those who entered the work force during the peak of the dot com boom, have this sense of entitlement that makes me want to retch. Fresh out of college and no clue how the real world works. They got a job that most people with 10 years in a career could only hope to have in terms of a paycheck and benefits and when things finally burst, they pissed and moaned about the lack of jobs and the fact that no one wanted to pay them six figures a year for barely being able to drive a mouse. I hope that many of these folks got the wake up call they needed. I suspect that there are still some out there that did not. I think I'll end my spew here and go do some homework.



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