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Unsolicited Advice For Class of '08

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 5, 2008

We are deep now, deep into the season of lofty speech-making, of oratorical reflection and anticipation, of philosophizing that anticipates the moment when tassels will be turned from the side symbolizing near-graduate to alumnus.

This Space respects as important and worthwhile these traditional paeans to education, completion, achievement and anticipation, and it will not gainsay their continuation - even if, by the morning after, no one besides the speakers' immediate families can quote from those addresses.

Satisfied that the reach-for-the-stars valedictories are in eager and capable hands, but tugged nonetheless by the gene that switches on the far side of 50 - the one that demands making our experiences useful to youngsters embarking on adulthood - we proffer these recommendations.

Save, Be Kind, Be Passionate

Take a cue from the Boy Scouts: Leave places better than you found them. Pick up someone else's litter. Tip the hotel/motel housekeeper.

Serve a purpose beyond (and larger than) yourself.

Religiously feed your retirement kitty, even if it's only $5 a week to start. Consider: $260 allowed to grow a mere 6 percent annually (a conservative mix of stock and bond funds) yields nearly $2,700 after 40 years. Keep socking away $5 a week for the duration and the value swells to $45,323 - more than quadrupling your out-of-pocket expense.

Avoid letting your job (or your major or your sorority/fraternity) define you.

Keep your tires properly inflated.

Show kindness to children, animals, old folks and strangers. Be helpful.

Take the occasional risk.

Volunteer at a food bank or a nursing home or a museum or for a political party.

Protest something. Advocate something. Do more advocating than protesting.

Recycle. Turn off lights. Try taking 10 seconds to get from zero to the speed limit.

Respect traffic signals.

Read opinions that challenge your own. Understand that someone can hold an opposing point of view without being evil.

Keep a journal. Discover and nurture the person hiding inside. Ten minutes a day spent recording your thoughts could save a fortune in sessions with a therapist.

Above All, Astonish Yourself

Regularly inspect a daily newspaper or three. I say this not in the interest of self-preservation because, like any alert, self-respecting, entrepreneurial daily newspaper grunt, I own at least the crumb of a nugget of an escape plan. I say this, instead, because daily newspapers are, and will for the foreseeable future remain, the most reliable repositories of (to the extent it is humanly attainable) agenda-neutral reporting.

You can't know whose opinion to value unless you have an acquaintance with all the relevant facts.

Invest in yourself. Develop an unexpected skill - ballroom dancing, public speaking, rudimentary expertise at the piano, the ability to whip up a souffle.

Spend at least one weekend a year unplugged, a weekend being defined as from sundown Friday until Monday trips the alarm clock. Spend it, preferably, in a tent near a spring-fed stream, but out in the backyard works, too.

Doubt anything you read, see or hear on the Internet. Even this.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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