The Apocalypse is Yours Now

This is the speech I gave at the Haverford College commencement on Sunday May 20.

Thanks so much for inviting me to share this day with you. I’d like to start by saluting the parents here. What I want to know is: After paying tuition for four years, how did you manage to get here today – by Greyhound?

I’d also like to acknowledge another group of people for their contribution to higher education. It’s not just the faculty and administrators who make education possible, you know. Everyone who works on campus plays a role, and I mean the custodians, the maintenance workers, the food service staff, the clerical workers, and the security staff. Let’s give them a big round of applause!

Now I want to thank you so much for this honorary degree. Maybe, I’ll finally be able to get a decent job!

Of course I’m hoping that all of you graduates will also find decent jobs – meaning jobs that are fascinating, challenging and compatible with your ideals. I know that won’t be easy.

At the moment you accept your diploma today, you will have an average debt of $20,000 and no health insurance. You may be feeling desperate enough to take whatever comes along. Some of you will get caged in cubicles until you’re ejected by the next wave of layoffs. Others – some of the best and brightest of you in fact—will still be behind a counter in Starbucks or Borders three years down the road.

Parents, if that happens to your child, don’t blame him or her, because the sad fact is that the middle class is crumbling under our feet just as these accomplished young people are setting out to find a place in it – destroyed by layoffs and outsourcings and by severe under-funding for vital fields like science, social work, and education. Benefits are evaporating, and job security is a thing of the past.

That’s just one regrettable feature of the world today’s graduates are entering. There are others. Most of you are Americans, meaning that you are citizens of a nation that is busy making enemies much faster than it can kill them.

You know, they say it’s not so easy to get out of Iraq. Well, I have a plan: Thousands of Iraqis flee their country every day. Just find out how they’re getting out and take the same route!

And let me mention the most terrifying feature of the world you are entering: Ever notice how many movies, novels and TV series today are about a post-apocalyptic world? I’m thinking of everything from Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer-prize winning novel The Road to the new movie “28 Weeks Later.” Well, there’s a reason for that: Our planet may be becoming less and less inhabitable, at least in any civilized way. And the change will be painfully evident within your lifetimes.

One thing that’s for sure: Our way of life – our gas-guzzling, tree-destroying, extinction-producing way of life – is finished. We have to find a new way of life, and that’s going to be your task. But if I have my say in it, it’ll be one that involves having more fun, while using a lot less stuff.

Look, I’m really sorry about the mess my generation and your parents’ generation is leaving to you: the cruel economy, the bloody quagmire of US foreign and military policy, our threatened habitat. And I just want you to understand that we tried to do better – maybe not enough of us, maybe not hard enough – but we tried. And now you have to try, only with one big difference. For us it was matter of idealism, for you it’s a matter of survival.

So, my final instruction to the class of 07: Go out there and raise hell!

Comments

[ryandake]

barbara, much as i am a lifelong fan of yours (been with you since Witches, Midwives, and Nurses), i have to say that this sort of speech isn't any better than the crap McCarthy wrote in The Road. telling them that their sky is falling, and then weakly exhorting them at the end to go out and raise hell?

our generation *has* left an unspeakable mess for the next generation. i think we owe it to them to try to help them find a way out, and also to encourage them in the search.

[K.R]

*tear* any chance that the world won't suck when I graduate in 2 years??? Arg yeah as much as I try to hold on to some optimism your speech is completely true.Hopefully I have a decent amount of brains to trudge through and make the life I want in the end.

[Graeme]

sometimes reality is pessimistic

[Hattie]

My son in law who has a PhD in science from Cornell would
sure like a job.

[Jennifer]

Congratulations, kids...YOU'RE FUCKED!

[20 something]

I'd like to thank the Boomers for fucking us in a variety of ways. Your speech hits close to home.

I am a fan. Nickled and Dimed is a favorite, because that has been my lifestyle since college. I studied Philosophy. Good school. Great grades. Big mistake.

I got A from guys who went to oxford and cambridge.

I picked Philosophy, because the story goes that studying liberal arts would make me a better person and all that shit.

5 years later, still lost of loan, and I have never had health insurance or made made more than 10.25 per hour and my life has been a endless string of pointless temporary jobs.

I have sent out untold thousands of resumes, cold called, networked (read: harassed people with jobs), and still to this day I am poor, depressed, and wondering why I went to college to begin with. I figured that if just tried hard enough, despite my liberal arts background, someone would give me a shot and offer me a solid job.

My psychiatrist disagrees. He told me I need to work on lowering my expectations and he suggested that I get a job at a local cannery where I would work on an assembly line for 7.00 per hour. Again, no health benefits for this kind of work. Getting maimed would not help my case.

One of the Boomer social engineering projects, as I understand it, was to make sure that working class kids got off to college. Education as the great equalizer!

This was sad, cruel joke.

We were set up. Our loan money subsidized second rate academics, leagues of workers, administrators, cooks, landscapers, and entire regions. Not to mention that the educational loan industry that has its hooks in us for life.

The experiment has failed. And the easy credit only allowed schools to rape us with insane costs.

There are millions of kids like me. I guess it’s not all bad. At least we can talk about Proust while we landscape our professors’ lawns.

[Tertullian]

It does not get easier, 20 something, when one sees the big-40 on the horizon. I have three advanced degrees, including a doctorate, in Classics and an MLS. I have long abandoned any notions of becoming a professor, and would just like to get a job teaching (I actually like teenagers and working with them) at a school that is not special ed on the one hand or run by a wacko religious group on the other. Public schools would be nice, I suppose, but I have neither the time nor the money left to get another degree sufficient to jump through the amazing amount of hoops the Bush-Kennedy 'No Child Left Behind Act' now puts upon those desirous of 'certification'. I have, thus, for the last eight months, been employed as a customer sales representative for that noted Arkansas-based big-box retain outfit, and the experience has pretty much been what one could imagine. Truth is, however, it may well be said to be a positive experience for me, in the sense that the vast majority of my colleagues are not degreed folks looking (and theoretically able to land) something better, but rather working stiffs more or less condemned to this sort of work till Judgment Day. They are not bad people, but they did not get the advantages of birth, money, opportunity, etc., that others got. Some made some real lifestyle mistakes, but these folks do not have the parents to bail them out like the kids I saw at the special ed prep school. I have read Ms. Ehrenreich's book, especially 'Bait and Switch', and the conclusions are true-- but one now needs to ask the same question the Haverford kids could legitimately ask her-- if we are to fix these problems, HOW?

[chris]

Tertullian, you wrote:

"Public schools would be nice, I suppose, but I have neither the time nor the money left to get another degree sufficient to jump through the amazing amount of hoops the Bush-Kennedy 'No Child Left Behind Act' now puts upon those desirous of 'certification'."

Tertullian, you can become a substitute teacher in the public school system with no problem at all.

At most you will have to show you've had a recent physical and you will have to complete some paperwork. But the cost to become a sub is less than $100.

I speak from experience. Here in NY City.

As for full certification, well, I passed all the tests for becoming a certified math teacher in the NYC public school system. That's the easy part.

[chris]

I see Barbara is selling depression, hopelessness and despair. Her cash register keeps ringing as long a people believe there's nothing ahead but disappointment.

Nice.

I'm not sure I believe she delivered her despairing thoughts to the newest grads of Haverford. I doubt they're foolish enough to believe her. The Haverford grads I know would have booed her.

I'll bet 75% of Haverford grads head to graduate school. Plenty of future doctors, lawyers and MBAs were in the audience she purports to have euthanized with her harangue of life's barrenness.

How did she end that depressive lecture? Telling everyone they were headed to hell?

[Sharon DiLeo]

I must assert that the comments made in response to Barbara's speech confirm for me that we live in a world taken in by denial. For those of you who have had your constitution of denial shaken by Barbara's no-nonsense style of consciousness-raising; so be it. Get out there and raise hell as she suggests! Face it; what she says is very true. The graduates of Haverford and elsewhere should be aware that the world must change and it will not change unless everyone is out there raising hell!

I don’t think that Barbara or anyone else who has deepened their own self-knowledge and understanding of the world would say that education is a worthless endeavor, but it is rather a matter of how employers and others in the world value those who are educated. To be truly educated does not necessarily guarantee happiness---and I don’t think this is a negative outcome.

So, for those of you who are deluded by the prospect of how a college education will definitively give a person a ticket to success and prosperity—keep on wish’n and hope’n. There are no guarantees in life. All that is needed is to read “our stories” at www.unitedprofessionals.org.

[buena]

Why are some of you shooting the messenger? Barbara didn't create the political and environmental mess we're in; she's just telling it like it is. Barbara has been a hell-raiser for years, as have many Boomers.

But it feels like we were always just a small voice in this country. Most people don't care about politics or, god forbid, hell-raising. We care about our stuff -- cars, houses, clothes, gadgets --and we want more all the time. All this stuff uses up a lot of resources that can't be replaced, and its manufacture pollutes our planet.

Yes, Barbara, we do need to find a new way of life. Fast.

[Tertullian]

Random thoughts:

1)when you ask Barbara Ehrenreich to give your graduation speech, you ought to well know what you are getting. If you do not want to hear it, find someone else.

2)College used to be a ticket to the fast lane of life, and many 50+ people, especially older folks who did not get to go to college themselves, still think of it this way, which is why Barbara told parents not to blame their pricily-educated offspring if they did not secure professional-level benefited permanent employment very soon. Sure, many of these kids are headed off to grad or professional schools, but the dirty little secret is that there are almost no professions, certainly almost none that do not artificially deflate the number of professional students who can study for them, such as medicine does, where the supply of eager young credentialed folks does not exceed demand. Professional schools have no incentive to do anything about this, and will not unless forced somehow. Meanwhile, more and more 20- and 30- something young adults find themselves overeducated and underemployed, and this of course does not take into account the plight of 40+ folks who have been downsized, outsourced, etc., and find themselves almost unemployable.

3)Substitute teaching pays very little, except in some urban areas like NYC where they have to pay more to get anyone to do it (and $100/day with no security or benefits is hardly easy street, especially for the City). Around here, in suburban Boston, $60/day is much more normative, with no guarantee you'll ever be called, no benefits of course, and very sh*tty working conditions. Getting full-fledged certification is very hard, and very expensive, even for people like me, with PhDs in field.

[Yarp]

Professional schools are a horrible idea for college graduates. Have you seen those tuitions lately?

People are coming out of law schools today with close to $200k worth of student loan debt, and due to the large glut of entry-level attorneys, many are stuck doing temp work in crowded basements for low wages with no benefits. A friend of mine who graduated from an ivy league law school is living in an apartment infested with rats in the Bronx. http://temporaryattorney.blogspot.com

[Susan Haley]

Kudos to Ms. Ehrenreich for having the moxie to tell it like it is. Those that would utter disdain for her honesty are the expectation clones still viewing the world through rose-hued glasses. Technology and Divine Intervention will solve all the ills.
I find it absolutely refreshing to hear the call of 'raise hell'!
I, too, am a boomer that shudders at the human societies that have shown total disprespect for this Planet under the misguided guise of some god-given 'dominion'. And this Nation, masked in the facade of progress, has devolved rather than evolved.

As a writer myself, I've been raising hell for years only to be thrown on the 'flaming liberal' heap. Reading Ms. Ehrenreich's blog, I'm muttering. . ."I wish I'd said that. . ."

Oh, there's hope, alright. If one wants to look at the real positive side, think 'the still before the storm' and then imagine the adventure of starting over and possibly doing it right next time. The world surrounding us now is doomed, and that might just be a good thing! Apocolypse can be a great equalizer.

[Tina]

I find BE's speech strangely reassuring. Although I am in the "Boomer" generation that supposedly did so much better, I found that my "idealism" long ago became a matter of survival.

BE's speech really helps remind me to stop "blaming the victim," namely, myself.

Thanks sincerely for that, and also for the great laughs!

[Monica]

I wish I could live in an apartment infested with rats where the landlord or administration just left me alone, which, by the way, I did in Canada (funny how I did not have that problem in my less developed country of origin). In my new apartment building, every few months (last time, it was at the end of January), they are spraying for bugs and asking tenants to remove things from kitchen and bathroom cabinets. This time, they even asked us to move furniture 12 inches (!!) away from the wall, which I cannot, being a short woman with back problems and with large bookcases. And I have not even seen one bug since last time they sprayed, and all open packages of food like flour or sugar are in airtight canisters (which I took the trouble to bring, one item at the time, to the office, which is one street from my apartment, to make sure nobody breaks them). I spent more time wasting it like that than doing more useful things like passing the vacuum cleaner, and I really got fed up, especially since I'm very busy and work the equivalent of two or three jobs (I say "the equivalent" because I do it in the same office).

[Chris]

Barb likes to tell it like it is - these days optimism requires rose colored glasses (and a nice trust fund is helpful too)

[SaneChris]

Something struck me about Barb's speech. "Get out there and raise hell!" Why aren't we getting out there and raising hell? Is it because our generation is lazy, irresponsible, or has no sense of collective action?

Or maybe it's just that we are a generation who grew up flipping burgers and pumping gas, we thought everything would be so much better when we finally got our degrees. Maybe it's because we've never had any of these things, job security, benefits, pensions, sick days. We've taken such a big step up from our 7 dollar an hour jobs that we don't want to rock the boat.

I've never negotiated a salary, and I've always done exactly what Barb did in Bait and Switch. Show a smiling face and be happy with what you have, because if you don't, they'll hire someone who will. It's not exactly a seller's market for liberal arts majors.

Have we surrendered to market forces? Given up on the prospect of having a secure livelihood for the luxury of having work at all?

David Frum said, in response to rising tuition "Well, maybe not everyone should go to college." and to the housing market deflation "Well, maybe not everyone should own a home."

I can't help but think that the collective attitude of the corporate world is "Well, maybe not everyone should get a decent job."

[Larry]

Great speech/article. The plight of joblessness in America is more real than many understand.

As a union organizer, I see lines of jobless Americans lined up every week in a different city looking for work.

Foreclosures are at an all time high, the housing and auto industries are rapidly fading into oblivion and the rising costs of healthcare is staggering for anyone fortunate to have such a commodity.

[Larry]

Great speech/article. The plight of joblessness in America is more real than many understand.

As a union organizer, I see lines of jobless Americans lined up every week in a different city looking for work.

Foreclosures are at an all time high, the housing and auto industries are rapidly fading into oblivion and the rising costs of healthcare is staggering for anyone fortunate to have such a commodity.

[Jeff]

C'mon people - things aren't all that bad now. We've been hearing that the world is going to hell in a handcart for decades now and suprisingly we're still here - gas guzzlers and all.

But give B. a break - this is a commencement speech at a liberal college. She's performing for her audience and I bet they loved it!

[chris]

Tertullian, you wrote:

"3)Substitute teaching pays very little, except in some urban areas like NYC where they have to pay more to get anyone to do it (and $100/day with no security or benefits is hardly easy street, especially for the City)."

The daily pay for subs in NY City is $150. Meanwhile, people often begin as substitutes because it opens the door to full-time teaching. If this is news to you, you should wake up.

You wrote:

"Around here, in suburban Boston, $60/day is much more normative, with no guarantee you'll ever be called, no benefits of course, and very sh*tty working conditions."

I doubt you are right about the daily pay. I think you plucked a number from the air. Second, the working conditions for subs are exactly equal to the conditions for regular teachers. There's no special school at which the subs work. But you can be sure the kids will treat subs as headaches.

You wrote:

"Getting full-fledged certification is very hard, and very expensive, even for people like me, with PhDs in field."

Hard? Now I know you have no idea what you're saying.

Most states require prospective teachers to pass a couple of tests.

New York City requires three tests. First, the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test, which is a very, very light-weight SAT. If you can't pass this test without studying, YOU are a moron.

Second is Assessment of Teaching Skills - Written. In other words, everything prospective teachers are expected to learn in four years of undergraduate education courses taken at teacher's college.

What a joke. I bought a review book, studied a few hours a day for a week, took the test and passed. That should tell you how little value there is in education courses.

Third is the course content exam. I took math. The math test was by far the toughest of the three. I hadn't spent much time engaging in high school math since graduating from engineering school. Nevertheless, I bought a review book, studied a few hours a day for a couple of weeks, took the test and passed.

You claim to have a Ph.d. Hence, there is a high school subject for which you are qualified to teach. It should take very little effort for you to pass the high school certification test in the subject in which you hold a Ph.d.

Anyway, you implied you wanted to escape your dead end job at WalMart. Well, you now have an exit strategy. But based on your whining, I'd say you're happier wallowing in self pity. That makes you an excellent mouseketeer member of Barbara's club for depressives.

[Thea]

Hi Barbara,

I can't believe you delivered this speech at a graduation!!! It is so fantastic. Geez, I wish the convocation speech at my grad had been nearly as honest, urgent and hilarious.

I love your blog and it is often a source of comfort when it seems like we can't come to terms with the mess we are in.

The only thing more depressing than the state of the world is a state of denial - recognising and admitting our crisis is the first and only step to making it better.

[Anarcissie]

I am not sure what we are supposed to raise hell about. I can see raising hell about the war (there is almost always a war), the imperialism, police spying, repression, and general obtuseness and stupidity, because raising hell -- protest -- is negative and corrosive and those are things which could be usefully negated and corroded.

However, the same is not true of the economy. Wealth and well-being flow from series of constructive acts.

You can protest that the rich and powerful are not nice enough, but I think this is unlikely to change their behavior much, which is after all based on the same general principle as that of the protest: we want more and better.

[BW]

I think it's a crime that students have to graduate today owing money. I don't necessarily mean crushing debt (which seems the case), I mean owing money at all. I could work my way thru college 40 years ago, but apparently not today. It would seem that the offspring of my generation are not getting the support from us that we had from our parents. If "education" is better today, then what's it worth? If I would come out of it owing $10 or $20,000, I would not take that bet.

Good speech, Barbara. If they don't like the report, they won't like the facts either.