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If I had to give college students a single piece of advice about graduating, it would be this: don’t. Don’t ever leave college. The real world is a terrible place where pajama pants aren’t considered acceptable work attire and people look down on you for shotgunning a beer at 2 PM on a Wednesday regardless of whether or not you have a pretty good explanation for doing so.
Unfortunately, it’s not super feasible for most people to pull a Van Wilder. As a result, every May, countless numbers of horribly hungover students don a cap and gown and proceed to a stadium or arena where they’ll focus more on not throwing up than listening to the vague and generic life advice commencement speakers tend to dole out.
However, every once in a while, those speakers manage to say something with actual substance. That was the case earlier this week with LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, who traveled to Philadephia to drop some knowledge on this year’s graduating class at Penn’s Wharton School. Business Insider shared some of the most important aspects of his speech, where he stressed two major issues he believes recent graduates will be forced to grapple with in the coming years.
Weiner first addressed the ever-increasing economic class divide that’s currently being brought to us by late-stage capitalism, saying:
“It’s already hovering at historic highs and threatens to get even worse as new technologies potentially displace millions of people from their jobs. When people lose access to economic opportunity, they become disenfranchised and that can have serious consequences on society.”
He also stressed the potential dangers of tribalism in a time when people seem to be content with reaffirming their belief system as opposed to challenging it:
“By breaking free of our own tribes, even if only for a moment, and seeing things through the lens of people unlike ourselves, we can begin to close the gaps, whether they be socio-economic, racial, gender, political or otherwise.”
It might not be easy to push back against thousands of years of human tradition, but I guess now is as good of a time as any for younger generations to try and change things.