Graduating During Hard Times

Every commencement is the same. The campus is packed fully on Saturday. The graduates and their families are milling. You see former students and those who just became former students. Parents are beaming. There are pictures, sometimes even with cameras instead of phones; the possibility of a literally blurry day still exists. The campus flora have burst into a goodbye serenade.

Sunday comes. I live close enough to walk to campus. The weather is perfect for early May in the midwest—sunny yet cool enough for long sleeves. I turn a corner past the construction, the blessings of a thriving institution, and look at my little corner of the place. Two academic buildings and a large dorm share a sizable parking lot. It is now drained of cars, like a vehicular rapture has come and Cedarville’s automobiles were of the elect. I stroll at an angle across parking lines. “The Only Living Boy in New York” is spilling into my ears. “Hey, I’ve got nothing to do today but smile.”

The graduates have now officially bent into the stiffness of the real world. Some will land softly, already with plum posts in the waiting. Others will flounder a bit, echoing Simon & Garfunkel’s lyric, “Half the time we’re gone but we don’t know where.” They search for something they cannot quite name. Purpose. Calling. Fit. Meaning. The hope that when they look in the daily mirror, they respect what they see. Those are my people.

We in the arts and humanities don’t normally walk into signing bonuses. Consulting firms aren’t beating down our doors. We have to claw our way about and for most it takes precious and patient time.

This year feels different. There are two reasons, I think. For students who are publicly minded, the market is tight. Law school applications have spiked, and graduate school interest has likely followed. The world is flooded with exiles from government cuts, most sporting advanced degrees and years of experience. Politics is also polarized and toxic, especially at the federal level. A good option seems less inviting to many.

The other reason is far worse. I fear the world is becoming less hospitable to my kind of people. We hope to produce thoughtful, curious, bookish, critical people with firm principles but soft hearts. During the past six months, I have been asked some version of this question more times than I care to count:

“What am I supposed to do?”

In the past, graduate school made a great deal of sense, especially for the brightest. Beyond the spike in interest, which makes admission harder, the end result is far more speculative. We have always needed professors, at least to replace ourselves, but that is becoming a much steeper climb. Or maybe these folks would teach in private or public schools, latch onto think tanks as research assistants, or veer toward journalism.

Right now, all these avenues are either full of traffic, closed for construction, or, perhaps, in the process of being obliterated altogether. What do you tell a person who wants to read and write for a living when chatbots are spitting out articles, book chapters, press releases, and social media posts? What happens if universities upload Dr. Chatbot into the cloud and let her hover around for a generation or two? She is much cheaper, requires no travel money for conferences, and can probably be programmed to have no disconcerting opinions.

Even if we put aside making a living, what do you tell people who like to think and read and talk to others as they wade into this world? Will they find others who want to do the same? Sure, there is plenty of good content about. What of good people?

Even five years ago, I am not sure I would have asked that question. But smart phone addiction, social media’s poisonous algorithms, endless rivers of short-form video, and ear buds are pulling people, numbed and glazed, into themselves. Attention spans and conversations are shriveling. If it is, we hear, too much to expect elite college students to read and reflect on a good book—while they are in college!—what will the rest of the world look like?

Ideally, the church would fill some of this space. Good churches should be a collection of thoughtful, reflective, curious people. Pastors should model such a mindset and encourage it in others. Churches are, to be sure, already clubs for The Book. It might be nice if they spawned the other kinds of book clubs as well.

It is also possible things are already turning a little. Schools are waking up to the disaster of students with phones, and maybe they will soon realize the wasteland of computers in the classroom. Dumb phones are becoming more popular. Movements are happening. People want and need other people, live and in the flesh.

What we need is an identifier—a handshake, a lapel pin, maybe a common drink or color. Hold on. We already have something. Read a book. Wherever someone else is on a phone, pull out a book instead. Planes. Trains. Automobiles. Coffee shops. Then, the hard part, have enough courage to ask another person, “so, what are you reading?” For those of us who lean toward introversion, and who are the kinds of people who would be in a coffee shop alone reading (yes, that is me), don’t roll your eyes or respond tartly. Take it as an invitation to know, if even for a few moments, another lost and lonely soul.