I don't even know why I need to write this, but I feel that there is a cloud of ignorance hanging over the demographic of this and so many other universities, and it is my duty as a fellow human to help. By the way, there is no job. That was just a hook. Well ... the job is actually to get a life. And here's why/how:
I am not ashamed to say I entered Miami University with the full intent of becoming a finance major. To me, it was but a stepping stone on a path that would lead me to a wood-paneled corner office with an expense account and savvy Armani suits. Then, one day I thought to myself, "Do I want the gun now or do I want to wait 20 years?" Seriously, I would have gone down a path of gloom under which I would have been forever entrapped, and for which I would ultimately hate myself and those around me.
I beg of you: if you are any sort of business major or are thinking about going down that path, please reconsider. Yet, I don't mean to say accounting isn't something one cannot have an unconditional love for. In fact, if the thought of bookkeeping keeps your heart pumping so much that you can't sleep at night, go for it. I commend you for making yourself happy. I just find it difficult to comprehend the prospect of becoming the minion of some tyrannical and cruel corporate firm pleases the innermost desires of so many souls. I know it to be erroneous.
I know why you pursue this life. I know why so many others have before you. You have been told and expected to pursue business because it will help you get a job. What's more is that it will give you supposed riches that will ultimately fulfill your life. One day, you'll become so rich and fat you won't have to worry about anything. Except you'll have to worry about your own final judgment. No, I don't mean whether or not God will smite you down to Hell. I mean, when you are an 80-year-old man or woman and you look back at what you've done and what you could have done. This is the moment for which our lives come down to, and that's bleak but true. Did I explore every avenue of living and do I feel like I have some morsel of understanding about the miracle of the human condition? You know, that ultimate enlightenment that overwhelmingly consumes you when you have just read a novel for the third time, and finally get it. If you have a life where there are no moments like that, then what is the point? Compare that to the feeling you get right after you've bought a new plasma TV. Which one dulls faster? Will you be satisfied and feel that warm infusion of giddiness in your stomach or will you be empty with a sense of final and permanent depression?
There are certain aspects of humanity we rarely have the fortune to tap into. One of those times is now, and it is something you will carry forever. Think of the beauty you can encounter, whether it be through the in-concreteness and complexity of any number of wonderful writers and their respective works or through the pleasure of the enlivening debate of politics and philosophy or the joy of discovery in any of the sciences.
We have but precious few days ahead before it all ends. The most potent pleasures don't come externally, but they are derived from within ourselves after we learn to love the art that is life, which so boundlessly surrounds us. Enjoy every part of your life. Enjoy the weekend in your manner of choosing, but don't stop there. Take back the workweek and make it about working to achieve legitimate - not green - happiness.
This may sound like mawkishness of a new level, but I mean what I am about to say. I beg of you (I'm on my knees right now) to take a look at your life right now and what it will shape into 20 years from now as a result. I see the despair and imprisonment of living "the dream." And it sincerely breaks my heart to see you, whoever you are, fall back in life and to maybe even waste it all. It's not pity, it's empathy. I hate to quote a cliche, but money will not make you happy.
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