Farewell Column by Colin Kavanaugh | It’s graduation, Charlie Brown

This is my 88th and final contribution to The Daily Pennsylvanian.

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“Gentlemen,” types Snoopy, in the Peanuts comic strip. “Yesterday, I waited all day for you to come and get my novel and to publish it and make me rich and famous. You did not show up.”

Sometimes, the world seems unfair and daunting. Our expectations will often be unmet.

On the cusp of graduating from one of the most competitive universities in the world, it’s easy to feel like the ever-perplexed, ever-neurotic Charlie Brown. What did I make of my time at Penn? Did I do the best I could with this opportunity? Will my post-grad plans work out? What’s next?

Every graduation brings as much anxiety as excitement. Reading this column or hearing Denzel Washington’s commencement speech won’t answer any of our questions.

Forty-four months ago, we all had dreams of what Penn would bring.

We have each, I am sure, met our expectations differently. We have each experienced triumphs and setbacks. Each of us began our pursuit of perfection only to realize we weren’t the smartest kid in the class. There were dozens of other Quakers who wanted to be president or CEO or chief surgeon. Not everyone got to be, or wanted to be, the Undergraduate Assembly President or the DP Executive Editor or a Rhodes Scholar.

And that’s okay.

Most of the incredible and talented people I attended class with are not listed in the ranks of senior societies. Some of the greatest minds at Penn may have passed by you unnoticed or been unrecognized outside of their departments. College, as focused as we are on it now, is but a chapter in a much longer, unfinished narrative.

For some, Penn changed the course of their lives. For others, it is merely a precursor to something much greater. Here’s my best example: former presidential candidate and Sen. John McCain graduated fifth from last at the United States Naval Academy. He was a rowdy young man who grew up to become a war hero. As a transfer student, President Barack Obama was known by only a handful of his Columbia peers when he graduated in 1983. He wasn’t the class president or the newspaper editor; his days of distinction lay ahead — as a community organizer and a Harvard Law student. Both of their lives were shaped by profound events years after their undergraduate experiences concluded.

We all take different paths through Penn. The irony of being the most diverse graduating class in the University’s history is that we have nothing uniformly in common except Penn itself. We are on our way to being artists and astronomers, bankers and bureaucrats, engineers and educators. Not only are we not going to be on the same chapter of our lives at the same time, we won’t even be writing the same book.

As we enter this next phase, we will again be confronted with new challenges. Just when we figured out what to make of college, we are moving on to newer, more complicated issues: work, family, money.

We will face new problems in the world, too. American strength in our lifetimes will change; new challenges to our domestic and international security will arise. We will still be combating joblessness and poverty and public health at our 50th reunion.

And yet, spun into the tapestry of our generation are the tools to confront these challenges. Our capacity to solve the true obstacles of our time might well be limitless.

In the meantime, sit back and enjoy graduation. Each of us is on a different journey. We will have moments like Snoopy and wonder why we haven’t yet published that book or made partner or been elected. But to think we have failed would be a mistake. Sometimes we just have to show patience. We can never give up.

“In the book of life,” as Charlie Brown says, “the answers aren’t found in the back.”

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None of this would have been possible without the enduring support and love from my family and friends. Love you, Mom, Dad, Kenzie and Maddie. Colin Kavanaugh, a former columnist and staff writer, is a College senior from Tulsa, Okla. After graduation, he will work for Sen. Bob Casey’s campaign until the end of the summer.

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