Life Before Noon: A Millennial’s Manual

The time has come to be blunt: commuting sucks. The ridiculous cost of living combined with rising gas prices and increased summer traffic has led many workers to ask: can I afford to commute?

As a recent college grad struggling to get my foot in the door, the issue is one I’m constantly debating in my own head as I search for jobs. I’ve gone on interviews and received a few offers, but all are far away, and I’m forced to ask myself if a job is really worth the time, money and effort it will take to get there. After all, gas is now over $4 a gallon with no signs of stopping. Some offices are even shortening the workweek in order to lighten the load for commuting employees.

There is some relief in public transportation. If a job has easy access to a bus or metro station, I consider that quite a perk. Web sites such as CommuterPage.com help workers calculate how much they can save by using public transportation. I’ve found that taking a bus as little as once a week can truly increase savings and reduce stress.

I don’t think there is a right or wrong answer to the question of commuting. Each person’s drive is different, and many commuters find other job benefits that far outweigh the stress of transportation. Furthermore, there is always the possibility of moving if you plan on staying at one company for an extended period. In the end, I suppose it’s like anything else in life. There will be good days and bad days, easy drives and drives that make you want to punch the guy who just cut you off for the third time. If you arrive home at the end of the day, even when it takes you two hours to get there, and say it’s worth it, then that’s a very special job indeed.

-Haley

With all the holidays on our calendar it’s sometimes hard to keep track of why we have a day off.

Memorial Day is the day where we remember those men and women who died while serving our nation. Once called ‘Decoration Day’, it is observed the last Monday in May. The significance of Memorial Day has slowly diminished and is instead replaced by the ever-welcomed three or four-day weekend. Families and friends pack their cars and coolers and spend the weekend enjoying their time by some body of water.

As a way to restore the importance of this holiday a resolution, “National Moment of Remembrance”, was passed in December 2000. In this resolution, Americans were asked to observe a moment of silence or listen to ‘Taps’ at 3 p.m. local time every Memorial Day.

So, whether by pool, lake, beach or even at your house take the time today to remember those that have risked their lives to protect yours.

Happy Holiday.

-Aida

Editor’s Note: Michelle Moreau is the Director of James Madison University’s Communication Resource Center where she coordinates presentational speaking tutoring programs. She has taught public speaking at the university level for several years.

Graduations are weird.

Life before noon begins with them, timeless ceremonies replicated on thousands of college campuses each year marking the transition between college and the rest of your life.  Those readers who have recently walked, will walk in the next couple of weeks, or did so years ago, probably approach this ceremony with high expectations for that life altering moment when throngs of family, friends and teachers witness your rebirth onto an exhilarating path to adulthood.

But for many, graduation fails to provide the Dawson Creek-esque scene they have imagined through the years.

It would be easy to blame the heat or the uncomfortable robes, the endless series of pomp and circumstance, the tassels that fly into your lipgloss and stick or even the tedious graduation speakers. (They are bad. This year, our keynote speaker made us all hold hands while the sound system pumped inspirational music over the sweaty crowd.  Really? Really?)

Take it from me, a professor and graduation ceremony veteran, the answer to “why am I not enjoying this,” like the last question on your microeconomics final, is not simple.  It involves dissonance.  Remember dissonance?  A concept drawn from the music field, borrowed throughout the social sciences that posits when discordant elements clash-musical notes, for example-they produce some sort of a negative result.  Well, in this case, our inharmonious notes are:

• Your home away from home-your college campus
• Your family, heretofore not a part of your college home
• Your college family, friends and faculty who have cared for you through your years of higher education

Simply put, graduation is the first but not the last time in your life when you introduce your primary and most important caregivers, your parents and family, to the new life that you are leading without them.  Before you left for college they were an important part of your everyday life, now at graduation they become tourists eyeing the monuments of your last few years of maturation.  And without being able to put your finger on it, graduation seems to be less about you and more about working to integrate all the parts of you into a whole score.

And it’s a lot of work.  Getting family from point A to point B easily is like getting the registrar to send your transcripts for free. It ain’t gonna happen, give it up.  Honestly, families invade campus like a bunch of helpless children on graduation day.  Walking slowly, pointing and snapping lots of pictures.  Seriously, you’ve never seen an oak tree that big?  Seriously?

Another thing, faculty and family don’t mix well.  Both groups are authority figures, after all, accustomed to a measure of respect.  Take for example, an exchange I had with a father during our college ceremony this May.

I was in the middle of a conversation with a fellow professor.  We didn’t know where we were supposed to sit.  A father barges into our conversation, “Oh, so you’ve been to one of these before.  How long is it going to last?  It’s getting hot out here.”  I glared at him.  He had just asked the dad-equivalent of, “Is this going to be on the test?”

I wanted to say, “Look, baldy boy, I care enough about your son or daughter to be here in this hot robe.  Sit down and quit gettin’ your knickers in a wad,” but didn’t.  He is a guest on campus and that whole holding hands thing was traumatic for all of us.

I patiently began explaining quadratic equation that is a graduation ceremony:  time = speakers’ rate of speech + speed of students filing across the stage x number of students/number of students who trip.  Bored, daddy-o cuts me off mid-explanation with, “Are you a professor? My daughter’s Ashley. Do you know her?”

We have three hundred majors graduating that day.  I don’t know his Ashley.  Daddy-o looks at me like I am a total waste of his tuition dollars.  I consider docking his class participation points for the day.

But let’s say I did know Ashley and Ashley introduced us.  I would smile and say, “You have a terrific daughter, Mr. Huffy-Pants (I wouldn’t really call him that).  She has a bright future ahead of her.  You should be proud.”  This is after all why faculty attend.  Our last act of affection for our students is to tell their parents out loud what the parents really know anyway.  And Mr. Huffy-Pants would thank me and launch into a story about Ashley’s childhood, probably designed to embarrass her.  All the while Ashley is standing in her hot robe thinking, “I don’t know where I’m going to be living in two weeks and at the moment I’m responsible for getting the whole family to Cally’s before they give our table to someone else.” Dissonance, my friends, is staring down the rest of your life with a tassel swinging in the corner of your vision.

Ashley will survive graduation day.  And she will find a place to live and a meaningful career.  Her teachers and family share some of the credit for that, but Ashley deserves to revel in the feeling of accomplishment that comes with transitioning from college into life.  The customary authors of this cite are hopefully off doing some of that right now.  While their parents haul them and their stuff off to exotic new locals, they asked folks like me to guest post.

Smart idea, huh?  I wonder where they learned that.