Graduation is, at its heart, a time for celebration. Most of you have spent the past four years of your lives on the Hill - and yes, parents, in case you forgot, it really is a hill - and now set out on your own journeys. Many of you will start jobs in the coming weeks bright-eyed and earnest. Some of you have decided that 17 years of education just isn't enough for you, and will go back to school for another degree. And some of you will make your first foray into the wonderful world of unemployment. At some point along the road, we will all join you there, whether by choice or by circumstance.
Last year, I gave the graduating class a set of guidelines for life outside the walls of Tisch, and now, one year the wiser, I'd like you to take some sophomoric - get it? - advice from 19-year-old me.
The past 12 months have seen economic change and financial reform. Ok, the financial reform part was a joke, but the world is a very different place than it was a year ago.
Ok, that was a joke too. The big pieces are still there: a Congress and president locked in a stalemate on everything from gun control to same-sex marriage, a financial system that controls an almost scary amount of wealth, a debt crisis in the Eurozone that economists saw coming for years and a Chinese economy that seems to switch from boom to bubble every other week.
But if we delve just a little deeper, we can see some real improvements. On the meaningless numbers side of things, all three major stock indexes (the Dow, S&P 500 and NASDAQ) reached all-time highs in the past few months, as investors have returned to stocks, even if stability hasn't returned with them.
Unemployment is down - like, actually down. Still high, but down nonetheless. Though college graduates still face one of the toughest job markets in recent memory, companies no longer fear their quarterly results like they did just a few years ago, and, as always, smart people like you folks - and not just the engineers! - are in high demand.
Not everything is sunshine and unicorns, of course; the ongoing deficit talks - I think we're on "Part IV: Return of the Fiscal Cliff" now - have continued to slog through their second year. Truth be told, this isn't really a problem that can be fixed overnight, but maybe in a few years, with an all-star Congress that understands the issues and works together, anything is possible. I'm looking at you, political science majors.
So here's my piece of advice: Keep learning. If my four semesters at Tufts have taught me anything, it's that the world is a big place. I'm certainly not the first to say this, but the global economy is more interconnected now than ever before, and that trend is only going to continue. America no longer stands at the forefront of everything. New developments in technology, education, science and medicine have pushed our knowledge of the globe far beyond what previous generations could have ever imagined.
But I'll save you the blustery "Save the world!" speech. If you're graduating with a degree in quantitative economics, keep up on your poetry. If you just finished a thesis on molecular biology, watch some CSPAN. Keep learning. It will prepare you for new jobs, new economies and new experiences in a way that a college education never can.
And it helps on crossword puzzles, too.
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Walt Laws-MacDonald is a rising junior majoring in quantitative economics. He can be reached at Walt.Laws_MacDonald@tufts.edu.
