"You are the future."
College is commencing, guys! Skidmore’s 100th commencement ceremony is happening at the SPAC on May 21st, which, in case you forgot, is the same day the world is ending, so you really want to make an effort to be there. Especially you graduating seniors. You don’t want to have to go stand in front of the Almighty Creator and have Him judge you when the last thing you did was sleep through your own college graduation, right? Also, maybe do a good deed or something. It can’t hurt. Have you donated to Senior Gift yet? But I digress.
The commencement speaker is a Skidmore professor named Erica Bastress-Dukehart. Can we talk about that for a minute? I don’t know who Erica Bastress-Dukehart is, but I’m sure she’s a very smart, very nice lady who will have a whole bunch of intelligent and insightful things to say. And I’m sure she’s a very impressive person. But I’m also sure that the one thing that nobody is saying is, “Having completed college, what I would really like now is to find out what a professor at the college I went to has to say about it!”
I love professors as much as—if not more than—the next guy, but have we not been finding out what they have to say about everything for the past four years? Wasn’t that, like, kind of the point or something? I thought that graduating meant that we were done listening to professors and we got to listen to a B-list actor or a controversy-ridden politician or something. You know, a famous person. Not that famous people necessarily have better things to say than college professors. For instance, I heard that Denzel Washington is giving the commencement address at UPenn, which is fucking awesome, but what advice is Denzel Washington really going to give people? “Graduating seniors, remember to always work hard, be strikingly handsome, and glare at everyone like you are going to rip their intestines out with your teeth. Also get a good agent.”
Famous people probably don’t have anything better to say is my point. College professors are, generally, very smart. But it’s just that I’ve listened to a lot of college professors over the years, and now I think that I would much rather hear Norm MacDonald tell some jokes. Or even somebody less famous/impressive. Weird Al, maybe? Chris Pontius? I don’t even care who. If I’ve heard of them outside of Skidmore, I’d be excited. Was Susie from Basketball Wives not available?
I’m just playing, Professor Bastress-Dukehart. I’m sure you’ll be great. I had some other things I was going to write about, but if anybody is still reading at this point it’s a miracle, so I’ll just save them for another post.
