A Thought from Far Above Cayuga's Waters

Having experienced five graduation ceremonies in person (my brother's undergrad and grad, my cousin's undergrad and my undergrad and now grad), I feel as though I'm something of an expert on graduation speeches...or at least an adequate critic. In the end, they all fundamentally say three things: thank your family for the support that enabled this moment (thanks Mom, Dad, and Billy!), follow your dreams, and don't forget to stop and smell the roses from time to time. These things are all, of course, true, but the notion of following my dreams has always nagged at me.

I wouldn't be doing my semester long psych class justice if I didn't first try to understand the meaning of a dream. In the end, a dream probably breaks down into a collection of conscious and nonconscious goals that are far less concrete than we'd care to admit (creativity, prestige, affirmation, social acceptance, etc.). But what the dreams are is perhaps not as important as what it means to pursue them, and in the context of graduation speeches, this matter of process is always lost in the limelight. The speaker is invariably someone who has achieved great success either through true capability or some random twist of fate, and that success overshadows the gritty (or lucky) moments of how it was achieved.

Ultimately, we (MBAs) are not leaving this place far above Cayuga's waters to follow our dreams, but rather to roll up our sleeves. In the words of Bob Dylan "You do what you must do, and ya do it well." Hopefully, in the process, we will make our dreams. Then, we'll all look back and say to the bright-eyed, aspiring young grads of the day: "see how I followed my dreams--you should too."