Bravo. Graduation is a phenomenal accomplishment, like Luke Skywalker shooting down his first imperial fighter. So in the immortal words of Han Solo, “Great kid – don’t get cocky.”

Your education supplies your intelligence to accomplish astounding things. But intelligence comes with a curse: pride. Once you begin to believe that you deserve all the accolades you get for your congenital gifts, the less effective they become. Brilliant minds, once corrupted by pride, begin shutting out common sense, and replacing it with theory. They dismiss dissent out of hand as coming from lesser minds. Professing themselves to be wise, they become fools.

It’s a gradual transition. You may not detect it until it’s too late. Humility is the key defense. If you can’t humble yourself, you will eventually be humiliated, and neither your intelligence, your education, nor your accomplishments will be able to save you. The product of intelligence times humility is wisdom. That comes from God as a reward for recognizing that there are things greater than your self, and submitting to His guidance. Else, abandon your common sense and it will abandon you.

Don’t take my word for it. In your own experience you’ve encountered professors who, blinded with intellectual authority, became so full of themselves that they tainted their instruction with their own idiosyncratic twist. You and your peers suffered their arrogance to acquire a grade, but considered them buffoons. Don’t let that happen to you. They were provided as an example for you to avoid.

Dream big, think big, do big things, but stay small, and you’ll earn the respect of everyone around you, inferiors, superiors and peers. Take chances and don’t be afraid to fall. The smaller you are, the softer you fall (that’s the reciprocal of the cliché). You learn exponentially more from failures than successes, and they help keep you humble.

It’s a tough climb to graduation – well done! Don’t let anyone disparage you of your achievement, and don’t forget to thank those who made it possible. When you get a solid footing, help someone else up there too.

Congratulations.

Mike VanOuse
Lafayette