Do something with yourself. Get a job. Cut your fucking hair–no one’s going to want trash like you in their office. When are you going to start making some money? Try supporting yourself for once. You can’t make a living with a major like that.

It is doubtful that any of you are entirely unfamiliar with such suggestions. Perhaps your parents expressed their philosophy on life in a similar vein. Or perhaps you feel a nagging, subconscious impulse directing you to a fate of financial success, and you find yourself wondering whether a life like that would be fulfilling. I know I certainly feel it, and I sense a common bitterness in our generation at our subjugation into the "work force." After all, the American work ethic has been beaten into our skulls from day one, and those left unscathed are among the blessed few. For the rest of us, we are impelled to acquiesce to American society’s lucrative lobotomies and to spend the rest of our lives climbing up that proverbial ladder of success until we reach its inevitable end and fall back to the earth to decay with the rest of humanity. Why are we at college, if not to establish a vocational ability to propel us faster into the stagnant waters of our society of capital? And isn’t that what we’ve been doing since we were first put into preschool, preparing and preparing and preparing ourselves for our eventual societal success?

Have your parents expressed their desire for you to be a doctor, a lawyer, a businessman, a typical, Grade A, all-American financial success, holding you close with the tight rein of their investment? Have you already thrust yourself (or found yourself thrust) into the social construct of "practicality?" Are you now choosing classes that add up to an impressive major, an impressive resume, and an impressive life? Whom are we trying to impress? Why do we let them suppress us, and in turn suppress ourselves? What does practicality do for our souls, or our minds? In my opinion, it extinguishes them. I believe that those who readily enjoin their intelligence with the working world are stunting the human intellectual evolution and are turning our societies into hives of mindless, purposeless insects.

In the position most of you are still in, you still have time to make a choice of your own volition, and you can use your education as a stepping stone to greater intellectual achievement. You can create a new idea, develop a deeper comprehension of who you are and what you are capable of, perhaps save our species from its utterly precarious existence. Ask yourself if money really does equate to happiness, or true success, and whether you would rather be of service to a company, or to humankind. Can one become successful in the absence of a bank account or a corporate drive? Ask some of the greatest minds of human existence, those who lived in poverty but drove the human race to greater heights.

Maybe none of it matters to you anymore. You may have abandoned that angst-filled, idealist ambition of your adolescence long ago; you have realized that the struggle is far too difficult.

At the very least, examine or re-examine the course you have staked out for your life, and for once and for all, throw off the shackles of our overworked, depressed, and masochistic society, and search for an existence worthy of yourself and of the rest of humanity. Don’t take your will for granted. And don’t let yourself feel like a coward for not immediately accepting everything on your plate, and whining about it (as I am whining now). Any revolution of thought or culture requires that someone complain about the status quo.