During my last year at university, I panicked. I realised that I was about to be sent into the world almost entirely ignorant. (Commenters, please fill in own joke here.) I had half-absorbed a few tiny bits of western history, and I’d read and then mostly forgotten some German novels and poems. I knew nothing about science. I hadn’t the faintest idea how the world worked. I wasn’t even entirely sure what interest rates were.
Shortly before graduating, I confessed my anxieties to a high-powered thirtysomething at a dinner in London. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I knew nothing when I graduated either, so I’ve just kept learning. Now my employer is paying for me to study Arabic.” That same evening, I resolved to pursue a project of life-long learning. Twenty-five years on, I’m still ignorant, but still at it.
Because I graduated in Britain, I missed out on the traditional American commencement ceremony at which a middle-aged bore intones, “You can be whatever you want to be.” Instead, a middle-aged bore droned on at us in Latin for an hour. But if any American university is still looking for a middle-aged-bore speaker this commencement season, here’s what I’d tell the graduates: