--- Mr. Hallbright May 19, 2018 --- Class of 2018, You managed to squeak through your four to six years at MLK. As millennials, or Gen Z’ers which I think is a silly name considering it implies you will be the last generation of humanity, allegedly you have almost no ability to do much of anything, so we’ll count this as a win. Most if not all of you will be pursuing one of the single best investments in long-term financial planning and life satisfaction: higher education. College graduates aged 25 to 32 who are working full time earn about $17,500 more annually than their peers who have only a high school diploma, according to the Pew Research Centre, but not all degrees are created equal. Take the lesson learned from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade: “Choose wisely” As a fellow (significantly older) millennial I’ve compiled a few solid pieces of general guidelines to success and happiness. But since I know we older millennials were maligned with an alleged general identity of attention failures I’ve compiled in a format more familiar to our avocado-toast loving stereotype: A buzzfeed style list-icle. Many of you will recognize some of these rantings from AP Psychology and they are in no particular order beyond whatever popped into my head so let’s see where we go. 1. Forget motivation. We spend billions of dollars year after year seeking to figure out how to motivate students, employees, voters, consumers, everyone. Motivation is fleeting and capricious. Focus on discipline. Discipline and grit are what separate the wheat from the chaff. Discipline, like the muscles in your body, grows stronger with use. If you start by deciding “I’m going to study more” and stick to that for a month consistently not only will your grades go up (Crazy right?!) but you will find it easier and easier as it becomes habit. Not only that you will find it easier to exert discipline elsewhere in life! It enables you to take better control of your sleep schedule! Eating habits! Working out! Starting in one discipline enables you to expand that much more easily in others. Regardless of whether you are starting at a community college or an ivy the difference between yourself and your peers will most likely determined primarily by your grit and determination. “With self-discipline almost anything is possible” according to the man who overcame childhoods asthma, became police commissioner, governor, de-facto leader of the navy, led a cavalry regiment, was a failed cowboy, vice president and then president, Teddy Roosevelt. Many of you have been handed a great advantage or have extreme ambition without excessive amounts of talent to carry you forward. Others started out with a disadvantage, for both discipline is your solution. 2. Communicate. This is in every advice selection ever, but never seems to get across. In order for you to maintain and grow any of your interpersonal relationships open and HONEST communication are necessary. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking to a friend, a co-worker, or your future spouse. We operate on information, we make our decisions on the best available info at the time including our emotional inputs. Without clear and honest speech those lines are crashed, bad decisions are made, relationships fall apart and goals fail to be met. Additionally you must communicate freely with those you disagree with. In an era of increasing group polarization and self-contained opinion bubbles that dominate political debate, we have an increasing tendency to seek out anything that confirms our previous beliefs. At YIG this year I stood witness to a group of students, many younger than yourselves, who managed to do more in four days than the Tennessee General Assembly could accomplish in an entire session. Some of that thanks to not needing to seek re-election, but impressive nonetheless. You must seek out several a variety of viewpoints. You can spend an hour a week listening to KCRW’s “Left, Right, and Center” from whom I lifted that “self-contained opinion bubbles…” line and get enough information to understand the understated hilarity of a good, solid, political cartoon. A little bit of knowledge and engagement with the other side goes a long way to avoiding the tribalism and stewing of resentment. The best way to defeat things like hate-speech is more speech, not outright dismissal or unintelligible screaming. Fight the ideas, not the people. 3. Stay involved! Specifically, in your government and politics. There are three things you are not supposed to speak about in “polite company.” Money, religion, and politics. I’m going to hit two out of three in this speech but I’ve never been known as a master of etiquette. America as a whole is clearly in a political crisis. “Complaining about a problem without proposing a solution is called whining” said the greatest president of all time. Hayden and Olivia deserve more recognition for their work to bring March For Our Lives to fruition. I’m guilty myself of not adequately going through the details of how protests are orchestrated. They involve a terrible amount of paperwork for the government of all things! Throughout history there have been many such crises, this one is unique primarily because so few are involved. Too often both sides rely on identity politics and memes as the basis of arguments. Without the research to back up your opinion you are simply whining. In many elections for county level seats less than a thousand people may vote. In my own county, the highest number of votes a single school board member garnered was just over 600. While local elections may not feel as important, they control more about your lives than the federal government likely ever will. They are also the foot in the door for politics in genera and are the training ground for the next generation of state and federal leaders. As Edmund Burke once said “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” So I’m going to need you all to channel your inner Leslie Knope’s and protest, vote, and converse. Take John Lewis’s advice and get into the occasional “Good trouble.” 4. Save your money. Take 1,000 dollars as soon as you have it, find a low cost Roth IRA and invest in low cost index funds. Put money in (maxing out at 4,500/year) and don’t touch it until you retire. Find a credit card with no annual fee and treat it like your debit card; immediately paying off what you owe: particularly if you’ve managed to dodge student loans. Good credit can save you money down the line when you make larger purchases. Now, I’m obviously not a monetary professional, but I am the only one among my doctor, lawyer, statistician, and engineer friends who owns their house. So take that as you will. 5. Enjoy your humor and your hobbies. You might play D&D, you might play League. Maybe you love to run, lift, or read. Cosplay, write screen plays, take up metal working, edit video or play an instrument: whatever is your (NON HARMFUL) choice. Hobbies are of incredible importance for maintenance of your mental health and often serve as negative reinforcers against your stress. On top of all that when you find someone else who shares your obsession of an otherwise niche hobby you’ll be that much closer to finding a life-long friend. Geek culture has become increasingly mainstream. Not to mention if there’s anything the internet has taught us it’s the value of becoming outrageously good at some exceedingly niche skill. There’s no better way to start a YouTube channel or become a Twitch partner and heaven knows you can use any revenue stream you can get due to exponential escalation of education costs. 6. Be a lifelong learner. Read a book, watch a documentary, read some journals or articles. The greatest power still resides with those who know enough about the system we call civilization to optimize their decisions. Not to mention if your interest is learning those grades you need to keep that scholarship are soon to follow. Our exceedingly advanced brains are the only things that separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Without regular workouts and activity or with the use of various psycho-actives particularly depressants like alcohol the synaptic connections we use decay and cease to function. Just like your muscles if you don’t work out they will atrophy into nothing making you more likely to develop dementia and other problems later in life. During your college years your brain will finally finish developing. Don’t squander it at the buzzer. Use it or lose it. 7. Question everything. Find your own independent research. Yes, it’s more work. No, you don’t get an award. This is not to say fall down an info-wars style Alex Jones-esque deep dive into blogspot and wordpress blogs. Independent sources does not guarantee veracity of that source. This means you may have to read or listen to several articles on an event, particularly political events, to get a complete picture. All content is designed to affect your opinion/perception. Ask what it’s attempting to manipulate you into thinking, feeling, or doing. Examine who stands to profit from each sides perspective. Look for inconsistencies; look for multiple levels of confirmations from the variety. Propaganda is everywhere in an era of yellow journalism and the more in vogue term “fake news”, and perception varies from person to person. It takes some work to really know what’s going on. Follow Josh Barro, Bill Kristol, Robert Reich, and Rich Lowry on twitter. Play aggressive with your attempts to get an even-handed and accurate analysis of an increasingly complex world. Chances are if you do your proverbial homework your opinion on things will likely change and continue to evolve as you expand your universe to include new information. Oh and stay off 4chan. 8. Go outside and do something moderately active. Walk, jog, hike, play a sport. There are few things we have determined to have health benefits unanimously as a scientific community. The one thing it seems everyone agrees on is exercise. In my lifetime alone not even spanning a measly three decades I’ve been encouraged with a variety of diets go fat-free, eat more eggs, eat less eggs, cut down on the salt, need more salt, coffee gives you cancer, coffee prevents heart disease, chocolate is a magic panacea among others. This point also re-emphasizes point 6, as that chocolate study was based on falsified data that they paid to have in a peer-reviewed journal as a social experiment and commentary on the failing peer-reviews system, but I digress. Mild to moderate cardio exercise has been found to be universally beneficial for everyone both physically and mentally even staving off the effects of dementia and thus, chances are you could use some more. 9. Find your people. I don’t mean your race, or national origin, or heaven forbid religion. Pun entirely intended of course. Seek out people who make you better. Life is nothing if not a constant striving for improvement. Your potential selves can always be better. “It’s called a garbage can, not a garbage cannot” Find those people you perceive as smarter, kinder, and better than yourself. Choosing your peers is of tremendous importance as you go into college and life thereafter. That being said not everyone has to make the team. Make cuts when someone is an unhealthy or negative influence on your life. It is not your duty to be friends with everyone, keep it at polite and move on when it becomes clear that neither of you are benefitting from your relationship. This includes organizations you thought you needed or wanted to be a part of but have since revealed themselves less than worthwhile. College is where you many find their life-long friends and those of you in my psych class recall that shortly after you joined the rank of tweens/teens you put less and less stock in the opinions of your parents and teachers so choosing positive peers becomes increasingly important. This obviously raises the question of why I’m bothering to lecture all of you on any of this, leading to my final point. 10. Be an idealist. Idealists are the main way the world makes progress. The greatest president of all time Teddy Roosevelt said “Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” Dream big, and work hard enough to fill the holes that will inevitably be punched through that dream. Idealism is the fuel that solves the world’s largest and most obstinate problems. Throughout all of our most influential narratives the idealist is always the hero, Potter, Skywalker, Eleanor, RBG, Teddy Roosevelt, Jane Addams, Ghandi, MLK. You and I must become the names future generations will add to that list. Find your cause, whether its education, global warming, constitutional law, medicine or some tiny issue the world does not seem to notice. Often through life, motivation will have left you crushed out by a cynical world, your discipline muscle may be exhausted, but reigniting that idealism will push you that much closer to success. I in no way guarantee your results with this advice, but it’s worked for me so far. Good luck slackers and nerds. May you all be more like the Knopes, Potters, or best of all, Teddy Roosevelts of the world. Be Good.