A Commencement Address
The future lies ahead. At least it used to.
Members of the Class of 2026:
As I stand before you today, preparing to deliver your commencement address, I am reminded of the advice I once received from a very wise man.
“Dave,” he told me. “If you ever have to deliver a commencement address, make sure you go to the bathroom ahead of time.”
I wish I had remembered that advice 45 minutes ago, before I put on this rental graduation gown. Because right now my bladder is approaching Defcon One, if you know what I mean. What I mean is, the surrounding organs are cowering in fear. So I will keep this brief. I may sprint off the stage in mid-sentence.
I will begin, as is customary in commencement addresses, with a joke or humorous story that sets a lighthearted tone yet serves to impart a meaningful lesson. A man goes to see his doctor, who runs some tests and says, “I’m afraid I have bad news. You have a rare disease that is extremely contagious and is almost always fatal.” The man says, “Ohmigod! What are you going to do?” The doctor says, “I’m going to put you on a strict diet of pancakes and pizza.” So the man says, “Will that cure me?” And the doctor says “No, it’s the only food we can slide under the door.”
Ha ha! But all joking aside, Class of 2026: Sometimes life sucks. That is the meaningful lesson I am imparting to you via this lighthearted story. Life is unfair. You are about to experience this truth personally, because, through no fault of your own, you’re graduating into a terrible job market. There are more than two million of you receiving bachelors’ degrees this spring, and according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, you will be competing for a total, nationwide, of eleven full-time positions, of which three are with Applebee’s.
So your employment odds are not good, Class of 2026. Many of you will wind up back home living with your parents. Make no mistake: Your parents love you very much. But for the past four years they have been fantasizing about being empty-nesters, about enjoying a childfree, carefree lifestyle with the freedom, if the mood strikes them, to have passionate spontaneous sex on the family-room floor. Granted, it’s highly unlikely that this mood ever would strike them, and if it did, they’d be looking at tens of thousands of dollars in orthopedist bills. But the point is, as much as your parents love you, they were looking forward to loving you from enough of a distance that they would not be doing your laundry.
OK, I have just been notified that two of the three Applebee’s positions have been filled, in both cases by summa cum laude Harvard graduates. So as bad as the job market was when I started this commencement address, it’s worse now.
Why is it so brutal? A big reason, of course, is Artificial Intelligence. Which is pretty ironic, right, Class of 2026? I mean, you thought AI was great when you were using ChatGPT to do to all those class assignments for you, thereby freeing you from the drudgery of having to physically read books and write papers about them, which was putting a damper on your college experience. But now that very same AI has come back to bite you on the butt by taking away your jobs. It’s not fair, Class of 2026. It sucks! That is the heart of my commencement message to you.
At this point you’re thinking: “Really, Dave? Do you think this message is helpful? Do you seriously believe we need to be reminded that things are bad? Also, do you think we need to be lectured about technology by a person whose iPhone photo library contains several hundred extreme closeup images of his own left forefinger? In fact do you think there’s ANYTHING relevant we can learn from an old fart who graduated from college many decades ago in a completely different era, a time when good jobs were plentiful and a three-bedroom house cost $87.50 and families of four ate dinner in business attire with huge amounts of product in their hair at a tiny round table that was missing some chairs and for some reason had five place settings?”
Point taken, Class of 2026. Right now you don’t need negativity. What you need is specific, practical career advice to help you succeed in these difficult times. So here it is: Avoid going into any field that AI can do better than you. Basically that means you should rule out anything you studied in college. In fact when you come up here on stage to receive your diploma from the president, maybe you should tell him or her you’d rather receive a full tuition refund.
Ha ha! I am of course joking, Class of 2026, although I note that your parents are nodding in vigorous agreement. But the point is, you need to find a career doing something that AI doesn’t do. Welding, for example. There’s a big demand for skilled welders, especially in Industry, because Industry requires many pieces of metal, and without skilled welders these pieces would be lying separately all over the ground.
Also, believe it or not, welding is fun. I know this because in 1961, when I was in eighth-grade shop class at Harold C. Crittenden Junior High in Armonk, N.Y., we were for some reason permitted to use an acetylene torch, which produced a flame with a temperature of SIX THOUSAND DEGREES. Yes! You cannot even imagine the range of objects we melted when the shop teacher wasn’t looking. To this day I am at a loss to explain why the authorities allowed eighth-grade boys to get anywhere near that thing, or how we avoided turning the entire school into a smoking crater. But it was fun.
Although I did not prove to be an adept welder. I spent the entire school year attempting to weld three pieces of metal together to form a magazine rack, which, when completed, was supposed to look something like this:
This was going be a gift for my mom, but I could never, no matter how much acetylene torching I did, get the three metal pieces to stick together, the result being that the Barry family magazines continued to lie around our living room in a lawless unregulated sprawl. But my mom loved me anyway, just as your moms love you, the members of the Class of 2026, although they’re not wildly excited about having you move back in with them. So think about welding. You’d probably be better at it than I was. That is the new heart of my commencement message to you.
I will conclude my remarks by wishing all of you graduates, no matter what career path you choose, the best of luck with your job searches, bearing in mind that the final fulltime Applebee’s post has just been filled by an MBA from Stanford. I hope you all attain a level of success that enables you to attain the lifestyle you dream of, which I fervently hope involves become a paying Substack subscriber.
And now, Class of 2026, I have to go. I mean, I really have to go. Because I
As of now, I don't think they are replacing humor columnists, and the current crop are dying! A great opportunity!
Prompt: write a humor column about graduation in the style of Dave Barry:
## The Big Walk to Nowhere##
The time has come once again for graduation, a sacred tradition where we gather in a sweltering gymnasium to watch several hundred young people, dressed in polyester bathrobes, receive an expensive piece of paper that officially certifies them as being "unemployed."
I remember my own graduation well. The keynote speaker was a very important local dignitary whose name I forget, but who possessed the oratorical range of a leaf blower. He told us that we were the "leaders of tomorrow," which was a terrifying thought considering most of us still hadn't figured out how to operate a washing machine without turning our underwear pink.
### The Graduation Processional
The ceremony begins with the **Processional**, which is Latin for "The part where the faculty walks very slowly so they can get paid for an extra forty-five minutes." They wear elaborate hoods and velvet stripes to indicate that they have spent more time in school than most of the graduating class has been alive.
Then come the students. They are wearing "mortarboards," which are flat, square hats designed by a committee specifically to look ridiculous on every human head shape ever created. The goal is to keep the hat level while walking, which is difficult because your brain is currently occupied by the fact that you are about to enter a "job market" that currently consists of three openings for a "Vibe Consultant" in Sheboygan.
### The Speech
Every graduation speech is legally required to contain at least four of the following:
* **The Horizon:** You are looking at it.
* **The Future:** You are currently entering it.
* **The Road Less Traveled:** You should take it, even if your GPS is screaming at you to make a U-turn.
* **The Wings:** You have them; now you must fly, despite the fact that humans are biologically flightless mammals.
The speaker will inevitably tell you that "the world is your oyster." This is a terrible analogy. Oysters are slimy, difficult to open, and occasionally contain grit that breaks your teeth. If the world were actually an oyster, we’d all be standing around with specialized knives, smelling like a wharf.
### The Diploma
Finally, your name is called. You walk across the stage, shake a dean’s hand, and receive a leather folder. Inside is a note saying your actual diploma will be mailed to you once you pay your outstanding $14.50 fine for a library book you lost in 2022 titled *How to Succeed in Life*.
Then comes the **Turning of the Tassel**. This is the moment where you move a piece of string from the right side of your face to the left. This symbolizes that you are now a Graduated Person. It is a profound, life-altering shift, roughly equivalent to moving your car keys from your left pocket to your right.
**In conclusion:** Congratulations, Class of 2026! You’ve done it. You have the knowledge. You have the degree. Now go out there and show the world what you're made of. And by "the world," I mean your parents' basement. They’ve been expecting you.
Bad news... after time of publishing, those aforementioned three positons at Applebee's were just replaced by AI waitresses