[daepp]

Shocking truth number two: What you will learn here will have little practical use. Again, notice that I did not say that what you will learn here is useless, though I'm sure that a few of my colleagues would call me a coward for not going so far as to say just that. And perhaps I should. The point of this shocking truth is that the core of what we do here is not a specific body of knowledge oriented to a specific job or trade. There are perfectly good institutions which do that, and they do serve a useful purpose (pun intended). We call them trade- and technical schools and ideally their graduates leave prepared for the job market into which they emerge. This ideal would be sufficient if the job market or the world would stay the same, but we can see all too clearly that is simply not the case today. That job for which we have trained ourselves may not be there when we get out of school if we have chosen poorly. Then again, even if we have chosen well, it is often the case that we do not stay on the same career path that we started on as bright-eyed teenagers. I went off to college to become a lawyer and a judge, and in the world I dreamed of then, a supreme court justice. As fate would have it, I happened to take a year of ancient Greek as a prerequisite for another class that I intended to take my sophomore year (a class that incidentally was never offered--so I was duped into this job under false pretenses) and as a consequence, my life has not been the same since. My original career path (assuming that we do not count football player, scientist, or superhero) lasted not quite a month, though in truth career paths last a bit longer than that. In an article on entrepreneurship that I read in the Economist last month it said that in the 60s, workers had an average of four different employers by the time they reached 65 years of age. For the workers of today (and I find this number shockingly high), they can expect to see 8 employers by the time they are 30. That's about one per year out of college. That's a lot of different jobs, a lot of different careers. Even if that number is only half that size, what are the chances that you will be able to pick with a high degree of accuracy the exact body of knowledge while in college that you will need for each of those jobs in the years to come? Is that the best way to spend your time in school: to try and figure out what the next four jobs you will have and prepare for them? If so, than that approach will get you to the ripe old age of 30, and you will have another 40 years or so before you can retire, so good luck with that. There was a time when certain technical careers were advertised on the backs of matchbooks, though now believe they are on late night infomercials. In any event, they offered lucrative careers in fields such as TV/VCR repair. Imagine putting all of your academic eggs in that basket? Your once lucrative career has pretty much gone the way of the 8-track. I wouldn't say that DVD repair would be much better. I'd give the format maybe 10 more years tops. Perhaps I am overstating my case, but you get my point. The truth of the matter is that any new job that you will get will have its own body of knowledge and its own set of skills which you will be trained to tackle, and these skills will have to change over time-- but getting back to our first shocking truth: will you face this need to master these new skill as a reluctant worker who didn't expect to take another test or as a eager learner who delights in the challenge? Which approach better prepares you for the changes in life? Which one, though seemingly useless, provides a better beacon in your life?

So if we are agreed that a liberal arts degree is practically useless and will leave you unsatisfied, what other shocking truth can I tell you except that a liberal arts degree will make you rich. Once the shock wears off, I will have you notice that I am not saying that a liberal arts education will make you a lot of money, though if you go on to do so, that will only be of tangential interest to me and I hope to you as well. I'm certain that you understand the difference between wealth and money, but I want to show how you can enrich your life in a way that a job and the money that goes with it simply cannot. Let us first divide our lives into thirds, by which I mean to think of an individual day as a microcosm of our life which will be repeated as many times as we are blessed to have them. Within that one day (and for the sake of this illustration I am assuming that it is a week day) we must commit a third of it to sleep, assuming that we are allowing ourselves the average needed for health (and I can speak for a lot of the students here that we are going by an average, not a specific day, especially around this time of the year). Another third will be allotted for work, assuming that we have a typical 9-5 job (and no significant commute). The remaining third is what we are left to live in. This is our home time, family time, hobby time, leisure time, the time, I hope that bears the seal of what make you you. It is for this part of life that the liberal arts degree exists. If we can bring purpose and direction to this most important third of your life, an appreciation of the arts, music, literature, the sciences, a knowledge of the events and trends of world history, and an appreciation of the founding principles of our nation, then we have done you a good service, for without that purpose, that enrichment you run the risk of letting your job inform your life rather than letting your life inform your job. Put another way: wouldn't we all be just a little better off if we brought the joy of our life to the necessity of our work rather than the necessity of our work to the rest of our life? If through our work here together we can enrich your life, then we have done you a service that is more precious than any money can buy.

Perhaps it is only fitting that I should conclude this talk and bid you farewell with a poem. It is by the modern Greek poet Constantine Cavafy, written early in the 20th century. A little set-up is necessary. The poem is essentially a propemtikon, a genre of bon voyage poem delivered to a person who is about to go on a journey. Menander, not the 4th century BC comic poet, but the 3rd Century AD teacher of rhetoric, set out in great detail the essential themes, figures, and tropes of the genre, and he tells us that the well-wishes before departure can originate from a person of lower status to one of higher status (as citizens or subjects to a leader or ruler) from a superior to and inferior (as a parent to a child), or from social equals (as from one friend to another). In our poem, the obvious and unnamed addressee is the man of many ways, polutropos Odysseus. The well-wisher too is unnamed, but from reading the Odyssey we know that all of his companions die before his fantastic voyages are completed and he arrives alone on his native shore, and because the well-wisher presciently advises our addressee about adventures that he has not yet encountered, we can be sure that it is no inferior or equal of Odysseus, but a superior, one of the gods, his guide throughout the epic, the goddess of wisdom, Athena. While Odysseus is setting off for his home in Ithaca after the Trojan War, the same well-wishes could be spoken to you as you are about to leave home and embark upon your own adventures. For some of you. perhaps Hillsdale can serve as that destination.
Ithaca, by Constantine Cavafy.
When you start on your journey to Ithaca,
then pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge.
Don not fear the Lestrygonians
and the Cyclopes and the angry Poseidon.
You will never meet such as these on your path,
if your thoughts remain lofty, if a fine
emotion touches your body and your spirit.
You will never meet the Lestrygonians,
the Cyclopes and the fierce Poseidon,
if you do not carry them within your soul,
if your soul does not raise them up before you.

Then pray that the raod is long.
That the summer mornings are many,
that you will enter ports seen for the first time
with such pleasure, with such joy!
Stop at Phoenician markets,
and purchase fine merchandise,
mother-of-pearl and corals, amber and ebony,
and pleasurable perfumes of all kinds,
buy as many pleasurable perfumes as you can;
visit hosts of Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from those who have knowledge.

Always keep Ithaca fixed in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for long years;
and even to anchor at the isle when you are old,
rich with all that you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.

Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would never have taken the road.
But she has nothing more to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not defrauded you.
With the great wisdom you have gained, with so much experience,
you must surely have understood by then what Ithacas mean.