As often happens with the viral age of You Tube, I strolled upon Harvard College’s Class Day where the student speaker wryly lamented to his classmates that they were not, as had been claimed throughout their lives, special. Obviously, the group in attendance that spring day in Cambridge had been lauded with kudos since probably in utero, but had achieved much distinction by actually graduating from the Miramar of American higher education.[1]
While the speaker was subjecting his classmates to self-deprecation, his larger point should serve as a noteworthy message, we are not inherently exceptional. The problem with the educators of our generation, our parents and teachers, is that this country’s young and well-educated now believe that they can and will achieve regardless of miniscule rates of success.
Case in point, a friend of mine called me for advice the other day about attending a preeminent law school ranked by the only publication that apparently matters, U.S. News and World Report, in the top twenty. By all accounts the school is truly a great legal center with top minds teaching to our nation’s neophyte lawyers. The problem with this school, and ostensibly all legal education today, is that the opportunity costs to attend probably only make sense to those that graduate at the top of their class and land the Big Firm job with its accompanying six-figure salary. In this particular instance, that would mean the top twenty percent. When one considers that tuition remains upward of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and that three years spent in the library usurps the ability to collect a paycheck, one realizes that these costs are real.
My friend has excellent credentials graduating from one of the finest private liberal arts colleges in the nation and spending the last four years in public relations. He has the ability to out-perform eighty percent of his classmates, but he must also recognize that his classmates matriculate with comparable grades, board scores and experiences. Every person believes that they will be in that coveted percentile. Few will actually succeed.
This is not to say that my friend should not to attend this law school. I am as warm-blooded an American as exists and I certainly believe in choice and free will. What I am saying is that we should rethink our thought process before making these decisions. Rather than hubristically thinking one can achieve coveted status, such as the top twenty percent, because of an innate specialness, one can ask, Is this what I want to do if I fail to achieve this particular benchmark. If “no” is the answer, maybe a different path could be found. Ultimately, introspective questions such as this might allow oneself to find something enjoyable, fuel a passion; and yes, maybe even be special at it.
-Michael Gordon is a baseball enthusiast with great taste in white wine. He has an infallible record when it comes to choosing where to have the best Sunday brunch
[1] Apologies if you missed my reference, as I might now be showing my age, but I was referring to the home of the Top Gun aerial combat school depicted in the film of the same name and starring a young and pre-Scientologist Tom Cruise.
