success?

Last week was graduation. As usual, I went. As usual, sat in the blazing hot sun (in a black robe made of some kind of synthetic that weighs about eighteen pounds). As usual, got a sunburn.

The speaker was some alumna of the place where I teach (normally we get a politician, current or retired).

I wasn't real happy with her talk.

Granted, maybe it was something some of the "kids" needed to hear, but after hearing it, I thought, "If that's how success is defined, I don't want to be successful."

Her definition of success could pretty much be summed up in four words: Top. Of. Corporate. Ladder.

Some of the advice she gave:

be the first one in the office - even before the boss. Be the last one to leave - even after the boss.

don't take spring break. don't take vacations. don't take a day off because you're head's about to explode and you're really close to losing it

she implied, don't take a day off when you're sick.

Nowhere in her talk did she give any of this advice:

love what you do and do what you love.

give back to the community; give back to where you came from.

life is short, and there's more to it than climbing the corporate ladder.

Now, granted - I suppose the corporate world, at least parts of it, is very different from academia. But I just found the speech kind of depressing, kind of like: Welcome to adulthood. No fun for the next 50 years.

I will say I am often the first one in - and I am usually in before my "boss" (depending on how you define it: my department chair, my dean, the college president, the students). I'm not always the last to leave, though. Some days I'm the first to leave. Some days if I get everything done I want to get done, and it's only 3 pm, I'll just take off, go work in my garden or something.

I'm a morning person. I like getting an early start to my days. I like hitting the ground running. But I also like getting done at a reasonable hour so I can go do something non-work-related. I also don't see much of a point of playing some crazy game of "chicken" related to who leaves last: if you're done with your work, if your shift's technically over, why SHOULD you sit at your desk with your thumb up your butt just to impress your boss? I realize this is not a just world, but I'd like to think it's just enough that your work speaks for itself - whether or not you're still in your cubicle at 6 pm.

There is something to be said for having a life.

Now, perhaps part of it is the alumna speaking was (I assume from the fact that her surname was the same as the one given for her parents) was single, without children or spouse to draw her away from the office. But that is not true of everyone, by far.

And if we learned anything from the excesses of earlier years, I think it should be that everyone needs to take time for the people that matter. And that they are not the only one who matters.

I don't know - I'm a single woman without family and yet I cherish the time I get off from work. I find things to do. I'm never bored and rarely lonely. I would hate having a life where I arrived on campus at 7 am every day (including Saturdays) and didn't leave until 6 or 7 pm. Oh, I have to do it sometimes, but it reminds me of how much I hate putting in solid 12 or even 14 hour days.

But this speaker, it seemed that her definition of success, required it.

She also never said anything about giving back, about doing volunteer work, about doing something outside of your work. And this makes me kind of sad - as someone who DOES do volunteer work and often feels a little overextended or even exploited because it seems there are so few who are willing to volunteer.

It's not just dollar signs that make the world go 'round. You can't always just write a check to "fix" things. I would LOVE to have more help with my various volunteer efforts.

But the biggest thing that got me was that she never ONCE mentioned loving or even enjoying what you were doing with your life - and I thought that was a standard staple of graduation speeches. Oh, I know, many people hate their jobs. But isn't part of the point of going to college to gain yourself a bit more flexibility so maybe you find a job you DON'T hate? To find something reasonably fulfilling?

Maybe I'm just in the minority, because I like what I do, and I can't imagine slogging off to a job Every. Single. Day. filled with loathing for the job and my only interest being the check at the end of the month. Because - you're trading your LIFE for what money you get. You don't get more lives - this is not a video game. While it's true you need money to live (living off the land is well-nigh impossible these days, and the other options - for example, picking up aluminum cans and recycling them for whatever it pays - doesn't seem terribly viable), there's also something to be said for not wanting to rip your intestines out for that eight or ten or twelve hours a day you are on the job.

I think the attitude - that the job is the means to the end of the paycheck - is a problem for many. I suspect the bars are filled with people every night who have that attitude, who have to drink themselves into another reality, just to be able to tolerate what's going on.

And she never mentioned families, or friends, or hobbies, or vacations (other than to warn people off them), or sitting down and reading a good book, or pondering just exactly why we're here. None of the deeper things of life - the things I would argue, in my worldview, are important to success.

It was, as I said, kind of a depressing speech. (Of course, it was also possible I was affected by the fact that my robe was basically a personal sauna by that time, and also, the molded plastic chairs they gave us to sit on were configured in exactly the right way to make my slight sciatica flare up miserably.)

I don't know. If I were asked to give a graduation speech, I'd do it differently. I'd choose some other tack.

I've often thought that if I were called upon for this duty, I'd choose to address the class with this advice:

Be kind. Take time to look at the other people around you, regardless of what they are doing, and remember they are PEOPLE just like you. The woman at the checkstand in the wal-mart is a person. The cop writing you a speeding ticket is a person. Treat them with respect (and not just the cop, out of fear of a larger ticket). Treating people civilly and with respect is what makes the world go around and it is what separates us from the animals.

Or, I'd take a different tack and talk about the different ways of defining success, and how it is important for people to determine which definition works best for them:

raising a child to be a decent human being
helping others
creating art, music, poetry, writing, stagecraft, whatever
getting published
being surrounded by a loving family, or people who are like family
plumbing the mysteries of our existence
having lots of friends
winning elections
saving people's lives
cleaning people's teeth
keeping people who are innocent of crimes they're accused of out of prison
seeing to it that society's protected by making sure criminals are caught and punished
not compromising one's principles (I would argue that's essential to any kind of success, however)
making a lot of money
being able to leave a legacy
having students who go out and do great things after learning from you
serving humanity
being a peacemaker
going through military service and winning medals for bravery and good conduct
being able to say at the end of your career that you always did what was morally correct

and on, and on....there is no one definition of success. And I think that's what rubbed me the wrong way about the woman's speech - it was a very narrow definition of success (money and prestige) aimed at a student population where I KNOW many - if not most - of the members would define success differently - more in terms of being true to themselves, of being able to stay near family, of providing service, of serving God (and yes, a majority of our students are fairly religious) in some way that they are uniquely suited to.

Oh, money is nice - I think at least 90% of the students would like to make "good money" along with what they did - but I think for our student population, many of whom come from modest backgrounds, there is something other than money that they're interested in.

And one thing I've learned is that you have to define success for yourself. You can't look at another person and hold them up as the sole definition of success; that would mean, in many cases, being untrue to your dreams and your goals. For example, for me: money is nice (and don't get me wrong; I'm remunerated VERY WELL for what I do; many months I kind of laugh to myself and say "they PAY me to do this!"), but I couldn't be happy in a career where I would be making more money by shuffling papers, or by being a cog in some middle-management machine, or where I had to do something that I considered ethically questionable. As much as the money, I need the feeling that I'm "paying my own way" in some less tangible sense - and whenever I see a student that I helped getting into grad school, or giving a paper based on research they did somewhere, or telling me, "Now I know what I want to do with my life after you talked with me," I feel like I've done that.

And that's a lot better, to me, than getting up one more rung on some "corporate ladder." There used to be an old counterculture saying, something like, "Even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat."