Posted by Brian Connor
Well, everyone, it's been real.
Four years and seven thousand beers ago, I first set foot on Skidmore Campus, dedicated to the proposition that Creative Thought Matters. And now, graduation approaches. This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
The torch has been passed to a new generation, to a new class of Skiddies proud of our ancient creative heritage. Throughout the next two weeks we'll all be thinking about the bad breaks we might get after college. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest, most privileged man on the face of the Skidmore campus.
Because the long Green and Gold line has never failed us, and we won't fail it. Were we to do so, a million ghosts in Gold and Green and crazy hippie regalia would rise from their Lower East Side apartments crooning those magic words: "Drink more, smoke more, Skidmore."
Our graduating class is the great arsenal of creativity. I shall not fear a crisis of creativity, for I have been to the top of the Tang, and I have looked over and I have seen the hipster promised land of Brooklyn. I may not get there with you, but I know that many of us, as aspiring creative professionals, will get to the hipster promised land.
Hipster — that word should have new meaning for us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences. We will be united in our common interests — we're fighting for our right to live, to be over-privileged douche bags with ironic and esoteric tastes. Today, we celebrate our graduation day!
Beware of the creative-industrial complex. Do not allow your abilities to be stifled and channeled through a soulless pipeline of cultural production that feeds insatiable consumer appetites solely for profit.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Rowdy drunks throwing beer bottles on the shoulder of Perimeter road. I watched joints glitter in the dark near the Northwoods rock garden. All those moments will be lost, like beer turned stale. Time to graduate.