Finneran: It’s Time to Grow Up
Friday, August 23, 2019
Tom Finneran
Besieged by the noise and claptrap of modern media and bewildered by the abject nonsense of national candidates, the old man mutters a timeless truth: “It’s time to grow up”.
In addition to the pandering candidates, to whom might we offer such sound advice?
My choice would be to the college students whose whining over student loan debt is crybaby nation at its worst. Where oh where to begin with these students……………….
Dear students: Warning! There are no safe spaces or comfort rooms in this lecture. Your professor today is an old man and he does not care about your feelings. In fact, he’s rather contemptuous of those feelings. And now that you’ve been warned, let’s start the lecture:
First, your contemporaries who passed up college to learn a trade or to start a career should not be on the hook for your choices and your debts; they have started businesses and families and are paying taxes; your debt is not their headache; they have headaches enough already, the headaches of grown-ups;
Second, your older fellow citizens who went to college and/or graduate school and who have paid their loans, should not be on the hook either; they played by the rules and certainly struggled to meet their obligations; you can tell by the stoop of their shoulders and the pride in their eyes; they sought no bailout for their obligations; you might learn a great deal from them, certainly a lot more than you’re likely to learn from the grievance indoctrinations offered by tenured radicals;
Third, national statistics suggest that the “new norm” for finishing a traditional four-year program now takes about six years; I’m sorry, but I smell an extended keg party going on in your dorm; I am not paying for your party;
Fourth, you and many of your contemporaries seem to specialize in victims’ studies, perfecting your manufactured outrage to an on-demand experience; perhaps you should have studied accounting; the question must be asked---what did you think your victims’ studies would lead to, beyond your amped-up hysteria? What do you bring to the table of the construction or engineering firm, the law office, or the insurance agency? Can you bring value to the manufacturing company down the street? Or are they all to be denounced and boycotted as “complicit” in some kind of global crime?
Fifth, and finally, I know that this lecture seems harsh to many of you. Welcome to the real world. It’s a beautiful place, filled with choices and responsibilities. In this world you are likely to find real diversity rather than the faux diversity of your campus. The diversity here is diversity of opinion and diversity of thought. And in this new real world you are expected to pull your own weight and pay your own way. I wish you well on your journey.
It’s time to grow up.
Tom Finneran is the former Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, served as the head the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and was a longstanding radio voice in Boston radio
Related Articles
- Finneran: Colorism
- Finneran: Love at Terminal E
- Finneran: The Comic’s Last Laugh
- Finneran: Feeling Old
- Finneran: The World Gapes
- Finneran: Nonnie’s Lament
- Finneran: A Good War & a Foul Deed
- Finneran: Cue the Parade
- Finneran: Sports Shorts
- Finneran: Wary? Weary? Both!
- Finneran: Truisms
- Finneran: In Appreciation
- Finneran: Memorial Day, 2019
- Finneran: Charlie on the MTA
- Finneran: Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death
- Finneran: Three Bells at MGH
- Finneran: Viva La Revolucion
- Finneran: Borscht Baby, Borscht
- Finneran: Certifiably Nuts
Follow us on Pinterest Google + Facebook Twitter See It Read It