I Paid $120,000 and All I Got Was This Lousy Diploma: Postmodernity Post-Graduation

As countless Classes of 2009 commence (my own included), I've found myself with a growing pit in my stomach and a constant feeling of nausea at the possibility of pure freedom. The conflict of the graduated is one between the limitless possibility of the next 50 years combined with a bright eyed earnestness that will no doubt fade in the next 5, and a kind of guilt in letting a perfectly good college degree (a B.F.A. no less!) go to waste with frivolous thoughts of "changing the world" through "eco-nazism" or "living on a boat and totally making a movie about it." And so, to show exactly what the Class of 2009 intends to do (but mostly to prevent this from coming Joel's Personal Blog of Detroit Thoughts), I'm going to blog.

There are, as so many have said, but in so many permutations, only two kinds of people in the world. There are those who, when faced with real, bona fide freedom, welcome it with tenacity and optimism. Those are the true Americans, the pioneers that will change the world, and I feel I am privileged to know at least a few of these kinds of people. And then there are those who cower in the shadows of the familiar when the towering challenge of personal liberty looms over them. I say those, but really I mean "me" because if there is anything I've learned from graduating college, it's that I wish I had never graduated college. The weight of educational life has been lifted, and the weight of the diploma has replaced it. College is an excuse to have the purpose of a goal that in reality is hardly more than somebody saying "Yeah, this kid's alright. You can give him a job if you want." Many people either see this fact and ignore it, or are in fact completely oblivious to it, and these moronically heroic souls find perfectly acceptable lives in what others may deem to be meaningless drone-producing desk jobs. That said, if you are one of these souls who can take the diploma with a smile and say "Yes, I'll gladly pay you a vast sum of money for a piece of paper with my name on it that actually no longer even guarantees me a middle-class existence after I walk across this stage," then perhaps this post is not for you. Or maybe it's precisely for you. I suppose it depends on your perspective.

While I'm attempting to make this conflict a universal trial of the Class of 2009, I can only speak of my own experience as a film student, and hopefully it's thematically relevant to all the other schools and disciplines that claim to be just as important. You see... there's this little thing called postmodernism. And having been bombarded with it for four years (and probably even further back than that), I find it increasingly difficult to let go of it in the post-graduate world. Is it okay for me to be whoring myself, selling a personality that isn't necessarily my own, just for an opportunity to be rejected (or even worse, accepted) by someone whose opinion I hold no stake in? Am I the go-getter in the most zealous sense of the word, heading into the Real World with a chip on my shoulder and something to prove? Or am I the slacker who looks down upon the automatons who come out of college thinking they're going to change the world, while I go get an ironic job as a taxi driver? Or am I the guy who cashes in on being the slacker who looks down on the automatons by making a hit reality show that ironically follows the slacker who ironically became the taxi driver and is now the star of a hit reality show? These are the things that keep me up at night, but then I remember that Larry David was a taxi driver before he made Seinfeld and I feel comfortable with my choice of in fact doing the only thing I came out of college really knowing how to do--drive a taxi.

It's impossible to tell if the cynical approach is the right one for this particular conflict, one that quite literally determines my (our) future. The carrot of limitless possibility and bright-eyed earnestness sure looks a helluva lot better than the stick of becoming a soulless "Hollywood" "player" out of a sick feeling of guilt over letting a lifetime of debt go to waste. But that earnestness will die, and at the same time that guilt will most likely enable me a fairly comfortable lifestyle for myself, so the question becomes is it better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Do I let my bright eyes become jaded so soon? I cannot allow myself to let my soul die this swiftly. Our earnestness, or zealousness (or even zealotry), our drive to succeed is what has bound us to each other, or at least what has bound me to the people that I've come to call my closest friends. It's this guilt more than any other that drives me to succeed in the truest, purest, most spiritual sense of success. Not the guilt of the empty diploma case sitting in my room waiting for its prize to be mailed to be in 4-6 weeks. But the guilt that I may let my friends down. That I may in fact have been riding on everyone else's coattails, that without a direct circle of support I may never be a part of anything I find to be important ever again. My biggest fear is that without you I am nothing, that all this time I've been faking--tagging along on the brilliance and creativity of my peers. In short, in a post-graduate existence, am I still going to be cool?

I have friends that have written books, directed films, music videos, and experimental art pieces, started websites and businesses, and produced some fantastic musical creations, all before even graduating, and I'm glad to have known them. And while this discourse may seem to be off-topic and personal, it should in fact be all that decides this theoretically universal post-collegiate conflict. I spoke of earnestness and how it will fade, but there is strength in numbers. Without such a strong support system, I would have long since yielded to the shadows of familiarity, cowering in the face of true freedom, and for this newfound confidence I am ever-grateful. But now I look forward to a future on my own, where people come and go, but the idea stays the same. This is my earnestness, my wide-eyed view of what's to come--that even though I may be shedding a layer of skin, a new one will grow underneath.

So to the Class of 2009, I (and who am I but one of you?) say this: Look to the future, don't cling to the past. It'll only get you down.