The Leader

Issue date: 4/23/09 Section: Film

There's a certain comfort level that we get used to in college. Our parents don't expect too much until after graduation, the talk of "when are you gonna get married" hasn't yet escaped their lips. Their expectations, and our own, are deferred for a few years as we figure out, with wide latitude, who we want to be in the world. Our empty wallets aren't such a huge burden anyway, right?

Now, the specter of graduation looms ahead in the shadows. For myself, it's a shock, an absolute shock that I'm graduating after being expelled for poor academic performance. Until I opened the envelope that contained my letter of expulsion, I'd assumed that college was just a given, that you did it as a matter of course. Like junior prom. Watching my friends around the country gather degree after degree didn't help any either. It seemed so easy for them! Maybe I'm not cut out for college, I started to think.

Two years I spent in exile, working, drinking, working, drinking. I felt like (maybe I was) a regular Joe. It was exhilarating in a way, joining the ranks of Americans maintaining our country. I gained more respect for the working class than I ever had before and felt closer to my Milwaukee roots as a result. The strangest thing is that I wasn't afraid. It was too late to worry about college; that ship had sailed. All there was now was today, tomorrow and how to improve my situation. Failure had already been achieved and was fading fast in my rearview mirror.

So why am I writing this? Is it to bloviate on my own accomplishments? Maybe a little, although there isn't much to mention there. Is it to prepare this graduating class for the "real world"? Sort of. I mean, if you've done college better than I did (and it wouldn't be hard), you maybe haven't had the harsh palm of reality thwap your cheek. Maybe the failures you've encountered were merely set-backs easily recovered from. Maybe not. What I do know is that if I'd taken my failure as the end-all, be-all of my life, I wouldn't be writing this right now. In all seriousness, I'd probably be a UPS driver.

Any graduates, if you're looking for advice in this column, here this is it: you will fail, and how you respond to it will determine who you are and who you become. Our cultural climate doesn't allow for redemption anymore. You get pigeon-holed into the crevice of your worst moment, sometimes by the ones you love the most. Don't let yourself be defined by others. No one knows my failures better than I do, and the lessons I take from them are mine only. In the end you're the judge, jury, and executioner in your own trial.

Go forth boldly! Ask out a girl who is way, way out of your league. Apply for jobs you're under-qualified for. What's the worst that could happen, you interview poorly? A life lived mistake-free is an isolated existence in your mother's basement. Wouldn't you rather fail?!

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