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College graduate, as you clutch that new diploma, look upon it as more than a ticket to a good job.
Your degree certainly can open the door to employment opportunities – though maybe not as quickly as you, or your parents, had hoped. It might catapult you into a rewarding career. A better life, even.
All those things are possible and desirable, but, for many reasons, we hope they don’t blot out the bigger picture.
Your college experience also should have prepared and motivated you to be a person who works for the common good, someone who’s engaged in the community, someone who cares about more than self-interest – and whose actions prove it. If not, well, the institution that ushers you off campus this spring with pomp and circumstance has failed.
As Drew Stelljes, an assistant vice president at The College of William & Mary, wrote in a November 2014 blog appearing on the Huffington Post, “What we need, maybe now more than ever, are colleges with the guts to commit to teaching civic values and skills.”
University officials in Northeastern Pennsylvania seemingly aspire to that goal. At King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, for instance, administrators are fond of saying the college emphasizes “not only how to make a living, but how to live.” Similarly, the top dogs at Wilkes University, also based in downtown Wilkes Barre, and Misericordia University, in Dallas Township, trumpet their efforts at encouraging students to pursue purposeful lives.
All three institutions are scheduled to hold commencement exercises this weekend, sending a fresh crop of grads into the world.
If you are among them, or recently have finished a degree program elsewhere, know this: Your enthusiasm and desire to make a difference are sorely needed. Our nation can benefit from additional doers of noble acts, more foot soldiers in social movements. In fact, there is much to do here in the Greater Wyoming Valley.
But don’t be naive. No lasting improvements will be made with only your half-hearted involvement, your re-tweeting of an online meme, your spotty appearance at the voting booth. It takes deeper commitment, as President Barack Obama said in a commencement address earlier this month at Howard University. “You have to go through life with more than just passion for change; you need a strategy. … Not just awareness, but action,” he said. “Not just hashtags, but votes.”
Frustration? Hope? Righteous anger? These emotions might fuel your desire to spark a revolution in thinking or push for a legal reform, but they won’t make it happen. Instead, you might need to start a campaign. Pass a referendum. Create a program. Draft letters to the editor. Respectfully argue. Demonstrate. Join a service organization. Serve on a board. Consistently vote. Hold elected office. Or all of the above.
In short, you will need to draw on everything that you have so far learned.
Don’t be intimidated by that realization.
Be inspired.