Congratulations class of 2023. You have taken on a massive amount of debt for a piece of paper that may or may not help you get a job. Now you get to sit through a commencement address from a leftist politician or celebrity to tell you how much anyone who disagrees with them on any single issue. There will be a party. You'll be drunk all summer. Then you have to figure out the rest of your life while finding out the hard way that your humanities degree is worthless.

That's why Mike Rowe's commencement address from a few years ago is required viewing every year. A salute to those students who came to the proper conclusion instead of wasting money, they'd like to make money instead.

Yes, this commencement address does serve as a commercial for his controversial work ethic scholarship (assuming you don't know what the word controversial means), but like most of Rowe's videos, he makes important points in a humorous way.

"As you advance in the skilled trades, don't completely dismiss the liberal arts just because the cost of a degree has become scandalous. Fact is, universities are no longer the sole repositories of worthwhile information. If you have a smartphone and a connection to the internet, then you have access to every single thing currently for sale in the classrooms and lecture halls of America's finest universities FOR FREE!"

On behalf of the class of 1998, who is in a career that didn't exist when he went to college and who went to community and state college for a grand total of under $10,000, a four-year university degree isn't everything it's advertised to be. Especially seeing how for most of the people I know IRL who are doing something they love and/or are successful at, it's something they didn't go to school for. What's more important is your work ethic and being able to identify opportunity when it reveals itself to you so that you don't waste it.

But that's just me. If you want a crippling amount of debt for a liberal arts degree that you're going to find out four years later is worthless, that's cool too.

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Brodigan is Grand Poobah of this here website and when he isn't writing words about things enjoys day drinking, pro-wrestling, and country music. You can find him on the Twitter too.

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