Your Career and You: "On to the 'Other' Side"

The past two weeks have been filled with activities and emotions that, while normal...especially in academia...still manage to raise stress levels to astronomical highs.

End of semester. End of year. End of college life. On to the "other side" for my senior student friends at Curry College and my graduate degree friends at Regis College.

If it's possible to be "fearfully intrepid," they're doing it. I can tell in part from Facebook updates, scattered emails, and ad hoc meetings in the Student Center and elsewhere.

The training wheels are off and the water wings stored away. Resumes are undergoing...again...review and edit.

To put it in the words of the inimitable Phineas T. Barnum, "It's SHOW TIME!"

And it is, my young friends. You're moving on into what is, for most of you, the third ring of the circus that is life. The first was high school; the second, college.

I call it "circus" for good reason. There will be thrills; there will be chills; and, occasionally, they will send in the clowns when things don't go well.

But you will always have the safety net beneath, even if you don't see it. It's your family...your friends...and, yes, your professors...all of whom will be there cheering you on and ready to pick you up and dust you off when you trip...as you will once or twice...along the way.

But you will succeed. Why? Because you can, and I believe...deeply and fervently...that you can.

You've made me very, very proud...as your professor, your friend, your mentor, your nagging conscience. You've discovered the spark that will light the way to your future.

You're ready to move on to the other side of life...as an independent, capable, promising young professional.

Life is good.

"Farewell to you and the youth I have spent with you.
It was but yesterday we met in a dream.
You have sung to me in my aloneness, and I of your longings have built a tower in the sky.
But now our sleep has fled and our dream is over, and it is no longer dawn.
The noontide is upon us and our half waking has turned to fuller day, and we must part.
If in the twilight of memory we should meet once more, we shall speak again together and you shall sing to me a deeper song.
And if our hands should meet in another dream we shall build another tower in the sky."
Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet - "The Farewell"