Getty Images Look to your left and then to your right. Is that pretty girl Phi Beta Kappa? Marry her. 
  
 Class of 2012, 
  
 I became sick of commencement speeches at about your age. My first job out of college was writing speeches for the governor of Maine. Every spring, I would offer extraordinary tidbits of wisdom to 22-year-olds—which was quite a feat given that I was 23 at the time. In the decades since, I've spent most of my career teaching economics and public policy. In particular, I've studied happiness and well-being, about which we now know a great deal. And I've found that the saccharine and over-optimistic words of the typical commencement address hold few of the lessons young people really need to hear about what lies ahead. Here, then, is what I wish someone had told the Class of 1988: 
  
 1. Your time in fraternity basements was well spent. 
  
 The same goes for the time you spent playing intramural sports, working on the school newspaper or just hanging with friends. Research tells us that one of the most important causal factors associated with happiness and well-being is your meaningful connections with other human beings. Look around today. Certainly one benchmark of your postgraduation success should be how many of these people are still your close friends in 10 or 20 years. 
  
 Charles Wheelan checks in on Mean Street with some advice for the Class of 2012: pay very close attention, because there are key things you need to know that you won't learn by simply donning a cap and gown. Photo: AP. 
  
 2. Some of your worst days lie ahead. Graduation is a happy day. But my job is to tell you that if you are going to do anything worthwhile, you will face periods of grinding self-doubt and failure. Be prepared to work through them. I'll spare you my personal details, other than to say that one year after college graduation I had no job, less than $500 in assets, and I was living with an elderly retired couple. The only difference between when I graduated and today is that now no one can afford to retire. 
  
 3. Don't make the world worse. I know that I'm supposed to tell you to aspire to great things. But I'm going to lower the bar here: Just don't use your prodigious talents to mess things up. Too many smart people are doing that already. And if you really want to cause social mayhem, it helps to have an Ivy League degree. You are smart and motivated and creative. Everyone will tell you that you can change the world. They are right, but remember that "changing the world" also can include things like skirting financial regulations and selling unhealthy foods to increasingly obese children. I am not asking you to cure cancer. I am just asking you not to spread it. 
  
 4. Marry someone smarter than you are. When I was getting a Ph.D., my wife Leah had a steady income. When she wanted to start a software company, I had a job with health benefits. (To clarify, having a "spouse with benefits" is different from having a "friend with benefits.") You will do better in life if you have a second economic oar in the water. I also want to alert you to the fact that commencement is like shooting smart fish in a barrel. The Phi Beta Kappa members will have pink-and-blue ribbons on their gowns. The summa cum laude graduates have their names printed in the program. Seize the opportunity! 
  
 Related Video 
  
 Successful people are often asked to deliver a university or college's graduation speech, Here are some words of wisdom offered in commencement speeches over the last few years from President Obama, Conan O'Brien, Hillary Clinton, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Carter. 
  
 5. Help stop the Little League arms race. Kids' sports are becoming ridiculously structured and competitive. What happened to playing baseball because it's fun? We are systematically creating races out of things that ought to be a journey. We know that success isn't about simply running faster than everyone else in some predetermined direction. Yet the message we are sending from birth is that if you don't make the traveling soccer team or get into the "right" school, then you will somehow finish life with fewer points than everyone else. That's not right. You'll never read the following obituary: "Bob Smith died yesterday at the age of 74. He finished life in 186th place." 
  
 6. Read obituaries. They are just like biographies, only shorter. They remind us that interesting, successful people rarely lead orderly, linear lives. 
  
 7. Your parents don't want what is best for you. They want what is good for you, which isn't always the same thing. There is a natural instinct to protect our children from risk and discomfort, and therefore to urge safe choices. Theodore Roosevelt—soldier, explorer, president—once remarked, "It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed." Great quote, but I am willing to bet that Teddy's mother wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer. 
  
 8. Don't model your life after a circus animal. Performing animals do tricks because their trainers throw them peanuts or small fish for doing so. You should aspire to do better. You will be a friend, a parent, a coach, an employee—and so on. But only in your job will you be explicitly evaluated and rewarded for your performance. Don't let your life decisions be distorted by the fact that your boss is the only one tossing you peanuts. If you leave a work task undone in order to meet a friend for dinner, then you are "shirking" your work. But it's also true that if you cancel dinner to finish your work, then you are shirking your friendship. That's just not how we usually think of it. 
  
 9. It's all borrowed time. You shouldn't take anything for granted, not even tomorrow. I offer you the "hit by a bus" rule. Would I regret spending my life this way if I were to get hit by a bus next week or next year? And the important corollary: Does this path lead to a life I will be happy with and proud of in 10 or 20 years if I don't get hit by a bus. 
  
 10. Don't try to be great. Being great involves luck and other circumstances beyond your control. The less you think about being great, the more likely it is to happen. And if it doesn't, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being solid. 
  
 Good luck and congratulations. 
  
 — Adapted from "10½ Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said," by Charles Wheelan. To be published May 7 by W.W. Norton & Co. |||||  
  
 Laugh now... (Jessica Hill/AP) 
  
 The one trouble with this piece is that all the observations seemed vaguely familiar — from graduation speeches. 
  
 Here’s what they really don’t tell you. 
  
 1) Next year, you will probably be unemployed, or live in your parents’ basement, or be unemployed and live in your parents’ basement. This is not cruel. It is factual. Fifty percent of new graduates are either unemployed or underemployed. And 29 percent of 25-to-34 year-olds live in what the poll-taker was kind enough to refer to as “multi-generational living arrangements” rather than “your mother’s basement” or “your old room with all the anime posters and Admiral Ackbar figures carelessly splayed on every surface.” You will probably have the urge to respond to this by going to graduate school. Why not? Your only areas of expertise so far are “lacking marketable skills” and “having lots of debt,” so this is a logical next step. Later, when your six friends who did manage to find jobs after college wind up getting booted from the workforce, they will be unable to compete ever again because everyone around them will have six PhDs, at least one of them in a useful field that does not include “Medieval” in its name. 
  
 2) You will keep in touch with friends, but not the ones you thought. Of the friends who were so obviously friends for life that just before graduating you lovingly tattooed each other’s names across your faces, some will stay in touch and others won’t. But this is okay. That person from middle school you never talked to will wind up in the same city and turn out to know good places to play Skeeball, and a few years later you might wind up in each other’s weddings. Speaking of weddings. . . 
  
 3) When you hit a certain point in your 20s, everyone around you starts to get married, for no apparent reason and without any warning. This is first cute, then alarming, like Justin Bieber. First you go to one wedding. “This is nice,” you say to yourself. “Open bar!” Then suddenly it’s like popcorn kernels. Several start popping at once. Poofy white things surround you, along with the vague smell of burning. “This is fine,” you say to yourself. “They are my friends and I am happy for them! Open bar!” Then by your sixth or seventh you become the disgruntled person wandering from table to table in unsteady new heels muttering that “You know, all relationships end in break-ups or in death.” On the bright side you stop being invited shortly after that. 
  
 4) In life, no one rewards you for performing mundane tasks. You do not get gold stars for cleaning your shower. Most effective cleaning product commercials are based upon the false premise that a bald man or anthropomorphic sponge will give you a high-five once you finish grouting the tile. This is seldom the case, unless you accidentally inhaled some of the cleaning product as you worked. 
  
 5) Regardless of anything the rampant college hookup culture has taught you, you are suddenly expected to Start Going On Dates. You are no longer you; you are a Single Person who needs to Find a Human Companion, if only so he can accompany you to weddings. This leads to actual dates, with actual people, where you have to sit at restaurants with or without tablecloths and talk about your hobbies and/or interests. Otherwise you’ll wind up at the candy shower alone! That’s a fate worse than halitosis! (Adulthood consists of the creeping realization that the events you thought romantic comedies made up to generate conflict actually happen.) 
  
 6) Something strange happens to music as you age. You can remember more and more of it, and you notice that the hip youngsters around you cannot. This is deeply alarming. Before you age out of the coveted 18-to-24 demographic, take as many audience preference surveys as you can so that you can continued to enjoy entertainment for a few years after your views cease to be relevant. 
  
 7) Being young isn’t everything, but it’s a good thing. Life can be divided into two sections: the years when you know that if you fall over you are unlikely to break a hip, and the years when you’re not so sure. Enjoy your time in the first half! You are probably going to live a long time, thanks to modern medicine. Of course, you will spend most of your life trying to fund your parents and grandparents’ elaborate health and retirement benefits, benefits premised on the basic belief that they will never die and that until they do, they deserve to live in a style generally reserved for absolute monarchs of the 18th century. Voting will not change this. They outnumber you. So what I mean is: Make those weekends count! 
  
 8) As Cynthia Heimel says, “There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.” 
  
 9) You have no idea how personal finance works. Actually. There are only two things that your education should have taught you: how to deal with having money and how to deal with not having money. (“Go to grad school?”) It has taught you neither. Instead, you know the names of Renaissance poets and different things you can do with ribosomes in the privacy of your home. People have offered Millennials financial literacy tests and their only conclusion is that we have no idea what to do with money. Save it? Spend it? Invest it in something that will accrue in value over time, like ironic wall-paintings of Michael Jackson? Who knows? You had better figure it out quickly, though, before someone arrests you for tax fraud. 
  
 10) Some days will be better than others. Some days will be worse than others. If you are lucky enough to be graduating now, you will have the creeping sense that all your worries fall under the heading of First World Problems. “No one who owns this many sweaters is entitled to be unhappy,” you will tell yourself. This is wrong. Let yourself be unhappy because it will tell you what needs fixing. When your body feels pain, it alerts you that something is wrong. If the 1950s taught us anything, it is that you can only spend so much time pretending to be contented before you rupture something. 
  
 11) No one in book club has ever read the book. 
  
 More on commencements: 
  
 From Bill Nye to Michelle Obama: Notable Commencement Speakers This Year 
  
 Funniest commencement speeches of all time: 
  
 Enjoyed this? 
  
 Further sundry Petri opinions: 
  
 Stop Hugging 
  
 Facebook makes us worse than lonely 
  
 Is Shakespeare still relevant? 
  
 Also, I’m on Twitter: @petridishes |||||
What is a one-paragraph summary of the above article?
– Wish you could ditch the inspirational commencement speech for something a bit more realistic? So does Alexandra Petri. But she wasn’t satisfied with Charles Wheelan’s recent list in the Wall Street Journal, “10 Things Your Commencement Speaker Won’t Tell You,” because she kinda remembered hearing all of the observations it contained ... in commencement speeches. So, in the Washington Post, she offers up “the 10 things they really don’t tell you at graduation.” Get ready to be unemployed and living with mom and dad. She’s not trying to be cruel, just stating facts, she explains, and she has the statistics to prove it. Here's one: "29% of 25-to-34 year-olds live in what the poll-taker was kind enough to refer to as "multi-generational living arrangements" rather than "your old room with all the anime posters and Admiral Ackbar figures carelessly splayed on every surface." Don't expect a "gold star" for doing mundane chores like cleaning your bathroom. Though TV commercials may try to convince you that "a bald man or anthropomorphic sponge will give you a high-five" once you've mopped your floor, that'll only actually happen if you "accidentally inhaled some of the cleaning product as you worked." You should really, really appreciate your youth. "Life can be divided into two sections: the years when you know that if you fall over you are unlikely to break a hip, and the years when you’re not so sure," so make sure to have fun during that first part. Your education did not teach you the most important thing. Which is: "how to deal with having money and how to deal with not having money." Since it instead taught you all about the Renaissance poets, you’ll have to learn about personal finance on your own. Click for Petri’s full, amusing list, which includes a hilarious tip about book clubs.
Getty Images Titta till vänster och sedan till höger. Är det den söta flickan Phi Beta Kappa? Gift dig med henne. Klassen 2012 tröttnade jag på att börja tala i din ålder. Mitt första jobb var att skriva tal åt guvernören i Maine. Varje vår erbjöd jag 22-åringar extraordinära visdomsbitar – vilket var en stor bedrift med tanke på att jag var 23 år då. Under årtiondena sedan dess har jag tillbringat större delen av min karriär med att undervisa i ekonomi och offentlig politik. I synnerhet har jag studerat lycka och välbefinnande, om vilket vi nu vet en hel del. Och jag har funnit att de sackarin och överoptimistiska orden i det typiska inledningsanförandet rymmer få av de lärdomar som ungdomar verkligen behöver höra om vad som ligger framför dem. Här är alltså vad jag önskar att någon hade berättat för klassen 1988: 1. Din tid i studentföreningens källare var väl använd. Samma sak gäller för den tid du ägnade åt att spela idrott inom landet, arbeta på skoltidningen eller bara umgås med vänner. Forskning säger oss att en av de viktigaste orsaksfaktorerna som förknippas med lycka och välbefinnande är era meningsfulla förbindelser med andra människor. Se dig omkring i dag. Ett riktmärke för din framgång efter examen bör vara hur många av dessa människor som fortfarande är dina nära vänner på 10 eller 20 år. Charles Wheelan checkar in på Mean Street med några råd för klassen 2012: vara mycket uppmärksam, eftersom det finns viktiga saker du behöver veta att du inte kommer att lära dig genom att helt enkelt ta på en keps och klänning. Foto: AP. 2. Några av dina värsta dagar ligger framför dig. Examen är en lycklig dag. Men mitt jobb är att säga att om du ska göra något värdefullt, kommer du att möta perioder av malande själv-tvivel och misslyckande. Var beredd på att gå igenom dem. Jag besparar dig mina personliga detaljer, förutom att säga att jag ett år efter collegeexamen inte hade något jobb, mindre än 500 dollar i tillgångar, och jag bodde med ett äldre pensionerat par. Den enda skillnaden mellan när jag tog examen och idag är att ingen har råd att gå i pension. 3. Gör inte världen värre. Jag vet att jag ska säga åt dig att sträva efter stora saker. Men jag ska sänka ribban här: Använd inte dina fantastiska talanger för att förstöra saker. Alltför många smarta människor gör det redan. Och om du verkligen vill orsaka social förödelse, det hjälper att ha en Ivy League examen. Du är smart, motiverad och kreativ. Alla kommer att säga att du kan förändra världen. De har rätt, men kom ihåg att "omvandla världen" också kan inkludera saker som att kringgå finansiella regler och sälja ohälsosam mat till alltmer överviktiga barn. Jag ber dig inte att bota cancer. Jag ber dig bara att inte sprida det. 4. Gift dig med nån som är smartare än du. När jag fick en doktorsexamen hade min fru Leah en stadig inkomst. När hon ville starta ett mjukvaruföretag hade jag ett jobb med hälsoförmåner. (För att klargöra, att ha en "make med förmåner" är annorlunda än att ha en "vän med förmåner.") Du kommer att göra bättre ifrån dig i livet om du har en andra ekonomisk åra i vattnet. Jag vill också varna er för att det är som att skjuta smart fisk i en tunna. Phi Beta Kappa-medlemmarna kommer att ha rosa-blå band på sina klänningar. Summa cum laude-utexaminerade har sina namn tryckta i programmet. Ta tillfället i akt! Relaterade Video Framgångsrika människor ombeds ofta att leverera ett universitet eller högskola examenstal, Här är några visdomsord som erbjuds i inledande tal under de senaste åren från president Obama, Conan O'Brien, Hillary Clinton, Stephen Colbert och Jimmy Carter. 5. Hjälp till att stoppa Little Leagues kapprustning. Barnidrotten håller på att bli löjligt strukturerad och tävlingsinriktad. Vad hände med att spela baseboll för att det är kul? Vi skapar systematiskt raser av saker som borde vara en resa. Vi vet att framgång inte bara handlar om att springa snabbare än alla andra i någon förutbestämd riktning. Men budskapet vi sänder från födseln är att om du inte gör det resande fotbollslaget eller komma in i den "rätta" skolan, då kommer du på något sätt avsluta livet med färre poäng än alla andra. Det är inte rätt. Du kommer aldrig att läsa följande dödsruna: "Bob Smith dog igår vid 74 års ålder. Han slutade livet på 186:e plats." 6. Läs dödsrunor. De är precis som biografier, bara kortare. De påminner oss om att intressanta, framgångsrika människor sällan lever ett ordnat, linjärt liv. 7. Dina föräldrar vill inte ditt bästa. De vill ha det som är bra för dig, vilket inte alltid är samma sak. Det finns en naturlig instinkt att skydda våra barn från risker och obehag, och därför att uppmana till säkra val. Theodore Roosevelt – soldat, upptäcktsresande, president – anmärkte en gång: "Det är svårt att misslyckas, men det är värre att aldrig ha försökt lyckas." Bra citat, men Teddys mamma ville säkert att han skulle bli läkare eller advokat. 8. Var inte modell efter ett cirkusdjur. Att utföra djur gör tricks eftersom deras tränare kastar dem jordnötter eller små fiskar för att göra det. Du borde sträva efter att göra bättre ifrån dig. Du kommer att vara en vän, en förälder, en tränare, en anställd – och så vidare. Men bara i ditt jobb kommer du att bli explicit utvärderad och belönad för din prestation. Låt inte ditt livs beslut förvrängas av det faktum att din chef är den enda som kastar dig jordnötter. Om du lämnar en arbetsuppgift ogjord för att träffa en vän till middag, då är du "shirking" ditt arbete. Men det är också sant att om du ställer in middagen för att avsluta ditt arbete, då du smiter din vänskap. Det är inte så vi brukar se det. 9. Allt är lånat tid. Ta inget för givet, inte ens i morgon. Jag erbjuder dig regeln om att köra buss. Skulle jag ångra att jag tillbringade mitt liv så här om jag blev påkörd av en buss nästa vecka eller nästa år? Och den viktiga följden: Leder denna väg till ett liv jag kommer att vara nöjd med och stolt över om 10 eller 20 år om jag inte blir påkörd av en buss. 10. Försök inte vara bra. Att vara stor innebär tur och andra omständigheter utanför er kontroll. Ju mindre du tänker på att vara stor, desto troligare är det att det kommer att hända. Och om det inte gör det, är det absolut inget fel med att vara solid. Lycka till och grattis. — Anpassad från "101⁄2 Saker ingen början talman någonsin sagt," av Charles Wheelan. Kommer att publiceras 7 maj av W.W. Norton & Co. »» Skratta nu... (Jessica Hill/AP) Det enda problemet med detta stycke är att alla observationer verkade vagt bekanta — från examenstal. Här är vad de verkligen inte berättar. 1) Nästa år kommer du förmodligen att vara arbetslös, bo i dina föräldrars källare eller vara arbetslös och bo i dina föräldrars källare. Det här är inte grymt. Det är fakta. Femtio procent av de nyutexaminerade är antingen arbetslösa eller undersysselsatta. Och 29 procent av 25-34-åringarna bor i vad opinionsbildaren var vänlig nog att kalla "flergenerationsboende arrangemang" snarare än "din mors källare" eller "ditt gamla rum med alla animeaffischer och amiral Ackbar figurer slarvigt spelad på varje yta." Du kommer förmodligen att ha lust att svara på detta genom att gå till examen skolan. Varför inte? Dina enda områden av expertis hittills är “brista säljbara färdigheter” och “har massor av skulder”, så detta är ett logiskt nästa steg. Senare, när dina sex vänner som lyckades hitta jobb efter college slutar få start från arbetskraften, kommer de inte att kunna konkurrera någonsin igen eftersom alla runt omkring dem kommer att ha sex doktorsexamen, åtminstone en av dem i ett användbart område som inte inkluderar “Medieval” i sitt namn. 2) Du kommer att hålla kontakt med vänner, men inte med dem du trodde. Av de vänner som var så uppenbart vänner för livet att strax innan du tog examen tatuerade du kärleksfullt varandras namn över dina ansikten, vissa kommer att hålla kontakten och andra inte. Men det här är okej. Den personen från mellanstadiet som du aldrig pratat med kommer att hamna i samma stad och visa sig känna till bra ställen att spela Skeeball på, och några år senare kanske ni hamnar på varandras bröllop. På tal om bröllop. . . 3) När man når en viss punkt i 20-årsåldern börjar alla omkring sig att gifta sig, utan någon uppenbar anledning och utan förvarning. Det här är först gulligt, sen alarmerande, som Justin Bieber. Först går du på ett bröllop. — Det här är trevligt, säger du till dig själv. ”Öppna bar!” Då är det plötsligt som popcornkärnor. Flera börjar dyka på en gång. Poffiga vita saker omger dig, tillsammans med den vaga lukten av brännande. — Det här går bra, säger du till dig själv. — De är mina vänner och jag är glad för deras skull! Öppna bar!” Sedan vid din sjätte eller sjunde blir du den missnöjda personen vandrande från bord till bord i ostadiga nya klackar muttrar att "Du vet, alla relationer slutar i uppbrott eller i döden." På den ljusa sidan slutar du bli inbjuden strax efter det. 4) I livet belönar ingen dig för att du utför vardagliga uppgifter. Du får inte guldstjärnor för att rengöra din dusch. Mest effektiva rengöringsprodukt reklam bygger på den falska förutsättningen att en skallig man eller antropomorfisk svamp kommer att ge dig en high-five när du är klar grytläggning kakel. Detta är sällan fallet, om du inte av misstag inhalerar en del av rengöringsmedlet som du arbetade. 5) Oavsett vad den hejdlösa college hookupkulturen har lärt dig, du förväntas plötsligt börja gå på datum. Du är inte längre du; du är en enda person som behöver hitta en mänsklig följeslagare, om bara så han kan följa med dig till bröllop. Detta leder till faktiska datum, med verkliga människor, där man måste sitta på restauranger med eller utan dukar och prata om sina hobbyer och/eller intressen. Annars hamnar du ensam vid godisduschen! Det är ett öde värre än halitos! (Vuxetskap består av den krypande insikten att de händelser du trodde romantiska komedier som gjorts upp för att generera konflikt faktiskt händer.) 6) Något konstigt händer med musiken när man åldras. Du kan komma ihåg mer och mer av det, och du lägger märke till att de höfta ungdomarna omkring dig inte kan det. Detta är djupt oroande. Innan du åldras ut ur den eftertraktade 18-till-24 demografiska, ta så många publikpreferens undersökningar som du kan så att du kan fortsätta att njuta av underhållning under några år efter att dina åsikter upphör att vara relevanta. 7) Att vara ung är inte allt, men det är bra. Livet kan delas in i två avsnitt: de år då man vet att om man faller över är det osannolikt att man bryter en höft, och de år då man inte är så säker. Njut av din tid i första halvlek! Du kommer förmodligen att leva länge, tack vare modern medicin. Naturligtvis kommer du att tillbringa större delen av ditt liv med att försöka finansiera dina föräldrars och morföräldrars genomarbetade hälso- och pensionsförmåner, förmåner som bygger på den grundläggande tron att de aldrig kommer att dö och att de tills de gör det förtjänar att leva i en stil som i allmänhet är förbehållen absoluta monarker på 1700 - talet. Omröstningen kommer inte att ändra på detta. De är fler än du. Så vad jag menar är: Se till att helgerna räknas! 8) Som Cynthia Heimel säger: ” Det finns en mikroskopiskt tunn gräns mellan att vara genialt kreativ och att bete sig som den mest gigantiska idioten på jorden. Så vad fan, hoppa.” 9) Du har ingen aning om hur privatekonomi fungerar. Faktiskt. Det finns bara två saker som din utbildning borde ha lärt dig: hur man ska hantera att ha pengar och hur man ska hantera att inte ha pengar. ("Gå till examen?") Det har lärt dig heller. Istället känner man till namnen på renässanspoeter och olika saker man kan göra med ribosomer i hemmets avskildhet. Människor har erbjudit Millennials finansiella läskunnighet tester och deras enda slutsats är att vi inte har någon aning om vad vi ska göra med pengar. Spara det? Spendera dem? Investera det i något som kommer att öka i värde med tiden, som ironiska väggmålningar av Michael Jackson? Vem vet? Men det är bäst att du listar ut det snabbt innan någon griper dig för skattebedrägeri. 10) Vissa dagar kommer att vara bättre än andra. Vissa dagar kommer att bli värre än andra. Om du har turen att ta examen nu, kommer du att ha den krypande känslan att alla dina bekymmer faller under rubriken Första Världsproblemen. — Ingen, som äger så många tröjor, har rätt att vara olycklig, skall du intala dig. Det här är fel. Låt dig själv vara olycklig, för den kommer att tala om för dig vad som behöver lagas. När din kropp känner smärta, det varnar dig att något är fel. Om 1950-talet lärde oss något så är det att man bara kan spendera så mycket tid med att låtsas vara nöjd innan man bryter något. 11) Ingen i bokklubben har någonsin läst boken. Mer om starter: Från Bill Nye till Michelle Obama: Notable Invigningstalare I år Roligaste inledande tal genom tiderna: Njutte detta? Ytterligare diverse Petri åsikter: Sluta hugga Facebook gör oss värre än ensam Är Shakespeare fortfarande relevant? 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Getty Images Look left and then right. Is that the pretty girl Phi Beta Kappa? Marry her. In 2012 I got tired of starting talking at your age. My first job was to write speeches for the governor of Maine. Every spring I offered 22-year-olds extraordinary pieces of wisdom—which was a great achievement considering I was 23 years old at the time. In the decades since then, I have spent most of my career teaching economics and public policy. In particular, I have studied happiness and well - being, about which we now know a great deal. And I have found that the saccharin and over-optimistic words of the typical opening speech contain few lessons that young people really need to hear about what lies ahead of them. So here's what I wish someone had told the class in 1988: 1. Your time in the fraternity basement was well used. The same applies to the time you spent playing sports within the country, working in the school newspaper, or just hanging out with friends. Research tells us that one of the most important causes associated with happiness and well-being is your meaningful relationship with other people. Look around today. A benchmark for your success after graduation should be how many of these people are still your close friends in 10 or 20 years. Charles Wheelan checks into Mean Street with some advice for the class in 2012: pay close attention, because there are important things you need to know that you will not learn by simply putting on a cap and dress. AP photo. 2. Some of your worst days are ahead of you. Graduation is a happy day. But my job is to say that if you're going to do anything valuable, you're going to face periods of grinding self-doubt and failure. Be prepared to go through them. I save you my personal details, except to say that a year after college I had no job, less than $500 in assets, and I lived with an older retired couple. The only difference between when I graduated and today is that no one can afford to retire. 3. Don't make the world worse. I know I'll tell you to strive for great things. But I'm going to lower the bar here: Don't use your amazing talents to destroy things. Too many smart people already do. And if you really want to cause social devastation, it helps to have an Ivy League exam. You're smart, motivated and creative. Everyone will say you can change the world. They are right, but remember that "transforming the world" can also include things such as circumventing financial rules and selling unhealthy food to increasingly overweight children. I'm not asking you to cure cancer. I'm just asking you not to spread it. 4. Marry someone smarter than you. When I got a doctorate, my wife Leah had a steady income. When she wanted to start a software company, I had a job with health benefits. (To clarify, having a "husband with benefits" is different than having a "friend with benefits.") You will do better in life if you have a second economic oar in the water. I also want to warn you that it's like shooting smart fish in a barrel. The Phi Beta Kappa members will have pink-blue ribbons on their dresses. Summa cum laude graduates have their names printed in the program. Take the opportunity! Related Video Successful people are often asked to deliver a university or college degree speech, Here are some wisdom words offered in opening speeches in recent years from President Obama, Conan O'Brien, Hillary Clinton, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Carter. 5. Help stop the Little League arms race. Children's sports are becoming ridiculously structured and competitive. What happened to playing baseball because it's fun? We systematically create races of things that should be a journey. We know that success is not just about running faster than everyone else in any predetermined direction. But the message we send from birth is that if you don't make the traveling football team or get into the "right" school, then you will somehow end life with fewer points than everyone else. It's not right. You will never read the following obituary: "Bob Smith died yesterday at the age of 74. He ended life in 186th place." 6. Read obituaries. They're just like biographies, just shorter. They remind us that interesting, successful people rarely live an orderly, linear life. 7. Your parents don't want what's best for you. They want what's good for you, which isn't always the same. There is a natural instinct to protect our children from risks and discomfort, and therefore to call for safe choices. Theodore Roosevelt – soldier, explorer, president – once remarked, "It's hard to fail, but it's worse to have never tried to succeed." Good quote, but Teddy's mom probably wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer. 8. Don't model after a circus animal. Performing animals makes tricks because their trainers throw them peanuts or small fish to do so. You should strive to do better. You will be a friend, a parent, a trainer, an employee – and so on. But only in your job will you be explicitly evaluated and rewarded for your performance. Don't let the decision of your life be distorted by the fact that your boss is the only one throwing you peanuts. If you leave a task undone to meet a friend for dinner, then you are "shirking" your work. But it is also true that if you cancel your dinner to finish your work, then you escape your friendship. That's not how we usually see it. 9. It's all borrowed time. Don't take anything for granted, not even tomorrow. I'm offering you the rule of driving a bus. Would I regret spending my life like this if I got hit by a bus next week or next year? And the important result: Leads this road to a life I will be pleased with and proud of in 10 or 20 years' time if I am not hit by a bus. 10. Don't try to be good. Being big means luck and other circumstances beyond your control. The less you think about being big, the more likely it is that it will happen. And if it doesn't, there's absolutely nothing wrong with being solid. Good luck and congratulations. — Adapted from "101⁄2 Things No Beginning Speaker Ever Said," by Charles Wheelan. Will be published May 7 by W.W. Norton & Co.  Laugh Now... (Jessica Hill/AP) The only problem with this piece is that all observations seemed vaguely familiar — from graduation speeches. Here's what they really don't tell you. 1) Next year, you will probably be unemployed, living in your parents ’ basement, or unemployed, and living in your parents ’ basement. This isn't cruel. That's the facts. Fifty percent of recent graduates are either unemployed or underemployed. And 29 percent of the 25-34-year-olds live in what the opinion-former was kind enough to call "multi-generation living arrangements" rather than "your mother's basement" or "your old room with all the anime posters and admiral Ackbar figures carelessly played on each surface." You'll probably want to answer this by going to graduate school. Why not? Your only areas of expertise so far are “lack of marketable skills” and “have lots of debt”, so this is a logical next step. Later, when your six friends who managed to find a job after college stop getting started from the workforce, they won’t be able to compete ever again because everyone around them will have six PhDs, at least one of them in a useful area that doesn’t include “Mediaval” in their name. 2) You will keep in touch with friends, but not with those you believed. Of the friends who were so obviously friends for life that just before graduating you lovingly tattooed each other's names over your faces, some will keep in touch and others won't. But this is okay. The middle school person you've never talked to will end up in the same city and turn out to know good places to play Skeeball, and a few years later you might end up at each other's wedding. Speaking of weddings. . . . . . . 3) When you reach a certain point in your 20 ’ s, everyone around you begins to get married, without any obvious reason and without warning. This is first sweet, then alarming, like Justin Bieber. First you go to a wedding. “This is nice, you say to yourself. “Open bar!” Then it’s suddenly like popcorn kernels. Several start diving at once. Poofy white things surround you, along with the vague smell of burning. “This is going well, you say to yourself. “They’re my friends and I’m happy for them! Open the bar!" Then at your sixth or seventh you become the disgruntled person wandering from table to table in unsteady new heels muttering that "You know, all relationships end in breakup or in death." On the bright side you stop being invited shortly after that. 4) In life, no one rewards you for carrying out everyday tasks. You don't get gold stars to clean your shower. Most effective cleaning product advertising is based on the false premise that a bald man or anthropomorphic sponge will give you a high-five when you are clear potting tile. This is rarely the case, unless you accidentally inhale some of the detergent you worked on. 5) No matter what the rampant college hookup culture has taught you, you are suddenly expected to start going on dates. You are no longer you; you are one person who needs to find a human companion, if only so he can accompany you to weddings. This leads to actual dates, with real people, where you have to sit in restaurants with or without tablecloths and talk about your hobbies and/or interests. Or you'll end up alone at the candy shower! It's a fate worse than halitos! (Adultship consists of the creeping realization that the events you thought romantic comedies made up to generate conflict are actually happening.) 6) Something strange happens to music when you age. You can remember more and more of it, and you notice that the hipping youths around you cannot. This is deeply worrying. Before you age out of the coveted 18-to-24 demographic, take as many audience preference surveys as you can so you can continue to enjoy entertainment for a few years after your opinions cease to be relevant. 7) Being young is not everything, but it is good. Life can be divided into two sections: the years when you know that if you fall over, you are unlikely to break a hip, and the years when you are not so sure. Enjoy your time in the first half! You'll probably live a long time, thanks to modern medicine. Of course, you will spend most of your life trying to finance the elaborate health and pension benefits of your parents and grandparents, benefits based on the fundamental belief that they will never die and that until they do, they deserve to live in a style generally reserved for absolute monarchs in the 18th century. The vote will not change that. There's more of them than you. So what I mean is, make sure the weekends count! 8) As Cynthia Heimel says: “There is a microscopic thin line between being ingeniously creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, jump.” 9) You have no idea how personal finance works. Actually. There are only two things that your education should have taught you: how to handle having money and how to handle not having money. ("Go to graduation?") That's taught you, too. Instead, you know the names of Renaissance poets and various things you can do with ribosomes in the privacy of the home. People have offered Millennial financial literacy tests and their only conclusion is that we have no idea what to do with money. Save it? Spend them? Invest it in something that will increase in value over time, like ironic murals by Michael Jackson? Who knows? But you better figure it out fast before someone arrests you for tax fraud. 10) Some days will be better than others. Some days will be worse than others. If you are lucky enough to graduate now, you will have the creeping feeling that all your concerns fall under the heading First World Problems. — No one, who owns so many shirts, has the right to be unhappy, you should tell yourself. This is wrong. Let yourself be unhappy, for it will tell you what needs to be fixed. When your body feels pain, it warns you that something is wrong. If the 1950s taught us anything, it's that you can only spend so much time pretending to be satisfied before you break anything. 11) No one in the book club has ever read the book. More about starts: From Bill Nye to Michelle Obama: Notable Inaugurator This year Funniest introductory speech of all time: Did this enjoy? Additional assorted Petri opinions: Stop stabbing Facebook makes us worse than alone Is Shakespeare still relevant? I am also on Twitter: @petridishes <unk> What is a summary of a paragraph of the above article?
– Önskar du kunde strunta i det inspirerande inledningstalet för något lite mer realistiskt? Det gör Alexandra Petri också. Men hon var inte nöjd med Charles Wheelans senaste lista i Wall Street Journal, "10 Saker din början talman kommer inte att berätta," eftersom hon typ kom ihåg att höra alla de iakttagelser som det innehöll ... i början tal. Så, i Washington Post, hon erbjuder upp "de 10 saker de verkligen inte berätta vid examen." Gör dig redo att vara arbetslös och leva med mamma och pappa. Hon försöker inte vara grym, utan bara säga fakta, förklarar hon, och hon har statistik som bevisar det. Här är en: "29% av 25-34-åringarna bor i vad opinionsbildaren var vänlig nog att kalla "flergenerationsboende arrangemang" snarare än "ditt gamla rum med alla animeaffischer och amiral Ackbar figurer slarvigt spelad på varje yta." Förvänta dig inte en "guldstjärna" för att göra vardagliga sysslor som att städa ditt badrum. Även om TV-reklamen kanske försöker övertyga dig om att "en skallig man eller antropomorf svamp kommer att ge dig en high-five" när du har torkat ditt golv, kommer det bara att hända om du "av misstag inandas en del av rengöringsprodukten som du arbetade." Du borde verkligen, verkligen uppskatta din ungdom. "Livet kan delas in i två avsnitt: de år då du vet att om du faller över du är osannolikt att bryta en höft, och de år när du inte är så säker," så se till att ha kul under den första delen. Din utbildning lärde dig inte det viktigaste. Vilket är: "hur man ska hantera att ha pengar och hur man ska hantera att inte ha pengar." Eftersom den istället lärde er allt om renässanspoeterna, måste ni lära er om personlig ekonomi på egen hand. Klicka på Petris fullständiga, roliga lista, som innehåller ett dråpligt tips om bokklubbar.
– Wish you could ignore the inspiring opening speech for something a little more realistic? So does Alexandra Petri. But she wasn't happy with Charles Wheelan's last list in the Wall Street Journal, "10 Things Your Beginning Speaker won't tell you," because she kind of remembered hearing all the observations that it contained...in the beginning speech. So, in the Washington Post, she offers up "the 10 things they really don't tell you at graduation." Get ready to be unemployed and live with Mom and Dad. She does not try to be cruel, but merely to say the facts, she explains, and she has statistics to prove it. Here's one: "29% of 25-34-year-olds live in what the opinion-former was kind enough to call "multigenerational living arrangements" rather than "your old room with all the anime posters and admiral Ackbar figures carelessly played on each surface." Don't expect a "gold star" to do everyday chores like cleaning your bathroom. Although the TV commercial may try to convince you that "a bald man or anthropomorphic fungus will give you a high-five" once you've dried your floor, it will only happen if you "inhale accidentally some of the cleaning product that you worked." You really should, really appreciate your youth. "Life can be divided into two sections: the years when you know that if you fall over you are unlikely to break a hip, and the years when you're not so sure," so make sure to have fun in the first part. Your education didn't teach you the most important thing. Which is, "how to handle having money and how to handle not having money." As it taught you all about the Renaissance poets, you must learn about personal finances on your own. Click on Petri's full, fun list, which contains a hilarious tip about book clubs.