Jeff Millman: *Quo vadimus?

Finally, the meaning of graduation is no longer Greek to us, unless you're of Phi Beta Kappa. It's pure Latin for everyone else (false distinction is Summa Cum Laude). Here it goes: after climbing the Gradus ad Parnassum, we're awarded a Scientiae or Artium Baccalaureus by the praeses, decanus and sigilli custos of the universitas, as stated on our diploma. Robed in regalia, we join the Locust Walk procession of Penn alumni rapt to revive a relic language.

*Where are we going? It's impossible to know, but fun to think about.

What our e-mail buddy and Career Services Associate Director Peggy Curchack called "the most difficult economy I have experienced" in her 20 years at Penn imposes some immediate trends. The Class of 2003 is increasingly entering graduate schools; among these, law school has surged past medical school as most popular. For those that test the economy, jobs in financial services, consulting and technology have given way to opportunities with nonprofits and the government. More than before, Penn grads are nobly responding to fill the critical shortage in teaching and nursing jobs.

If the trends reported in the latest Career Services surveys bear out, 10 years from now, the vast majority of us will have a graduate degree, a quarter of us will take time off from work and on average, we will be on our third job. Many more will still be paying off our college loans, an uncommon experience for our parents. More of us than you think will become college professors.

A surprisingly high percentage of women graduates will entirely exit lucrative and leading careers to raise their children full-time. Almost no dads will take paternity leave. Alumni Relations estimates that 7 percent of us will marry each other. If given the opportunity, we will probably retire earlier, despite a likely rise in the Social Security retirement age.

And we'll certainly disprove many of these broad projections. But we'd be remiss not to seize some of the stories about those graduates who were open to interesting opportunities. They illuminate a fulfilling release from the formal professional trajectory that permeates our campus culture.

Curchack doesn't know of any Penn graduate plumbers. But she once heard from an alum farmer, a guy who lives in Oregon and eats only what he grows.

Remember the flash junior high school fad, a fantasy card game called Magic: The Gathering? According to The Pennsylvania Gazette, that was the brainchild of 1985 College grad Richard Garfield, who eschewed the usual jobs of math majors to pursue his dream to make board games an entertainment experience on par with movies and professional sports.

Flipping further through the pages of the Gazette, there's Gladys Tantaquidgeon, from the Class of 1929, a Mohegan woman who received an undergraduate teaching degree when it was still available. But some classes she took in anthropology proved to be most useful. Wanting to preserve her heritage, she catalogued the artifacts of Connecticut's native tribes and successfully lobbied for their tribal status. Her efforts delivered government permission to build the large Mohegan Sun casino, which rewards her community with 60 percent of its gaming receipts.

Myles Berkowitz, a 1981 College and 1982 Wharton grad, always wanted to be an astronaut. But his poor eyesight disqualified him for NASA, so he thought he'd settle for a nice marriage and a career as a feature film writer and director. Instead, he was a broke, divorced waiter. It turned out his vision was excellent: he filmed his comical "20 Dates," finding both marriage and his break in Hollywood. Berkowitz brought glory to his alma mater: he borrows his friend's cute toddler and teaches him to holler down bikini-clad women at the beach, all while sporting a bright red block PENN sweatshirt.

Curchack reminisces about one recent alum with an illustrious academic record who was about to join a standard corporate sweatshop until he suddenly realized that he had never really seen his country. He drove everywhere, taking temp jobs and staying in dorms and hostels, building a rich understanding of America and a vast, eclectic network of new friends. With both, he became a celebrated consultant for McKinsey & Company.

As of this graduation, our lives have been structured, our choices have been typically programmed. But there are those who will also graduate from this very linear path of career development, and they often end up in the best places.

Another famous phrase: "Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur." It means, whatever is said in Latin sounds profound. Undoubtedly, they'll write about our careers in English.

Jeff Millman is a 2003 College graduate from Los Angeles, Calif.

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