Dear Class of 2012:

Allow me to be the first one not to congratulate you. Through exertions that—let’s be honest—were probably less than heroic, most of you have spent the last few years getting inflated grades in useless subjects in order to obtain a debased degree. Now you’re entering a lousy economy, courtesy of the very president whom you, as freshmen, voted for with such enthusiasm. Please spare us the self-pity about how tough it is to look for a job while living with your parents. They’re the ones who spent a fortune on your education only to get you back— return-to-sender, forwarding address unknown.

No doubt some of you have overcome real hardships or taken real degrees. A couple of years ago I hired a summer intern from West Point. She came to the office directly from weeks of field exercises in which she kept a bulletproof vest on at all times, even while sleeping. She writes brilliantly and is as self-effacing as she is accomplished. Now she’s in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban.

If you’re like that intern, please feel free to feel sorry for yourself. Just remember she doesn’t.

Unfortunately, dear graduates, chances are you’re nothing like her. And since you’re no longer children, at least officially, it’s time someone tells you the facts of life. The other facts.

Fact One is that, in our “knowledge-based” economy, knowledge counts. Yet here you are, probably the least knowledgeable graduating class in history.

A few months ago, I interviewed a young man with an astonishingly high GPA from an Ivy League university and aspirations to write about Middle East politics. We got on the subject of the Suez Crisis of 1956. He was vaguely familiar with it. But he didn’t know who was president of the United States in 1956. And he didn’t know who succeeded that president.

Pop quiz, Class of ‘12: Do you?

Many of you have been reared on the cliché that the purpose of education isn’t to stuff your head with facts but to teach you how to think. Wrong. I routinely interview college students, mostly from top schools, and I notice that their brains are like old maps, with lots of blank spaces for the uncharted terrain. It’s not that they lack for motivation or IQ. It’s that they can’t connect the dots when they don’t know where the dots are in the first place.

Now to Fact Two: Your competition is global. Shape up. Don’t end your days like a man I met a few weeks ago in Florida, complaining that Richard Nixon had caused his New York City business to fail by opening up China.

In places like Ireland, France, India and Spain, your most talented and ambitious peers are graduating into economies even more depressed than America’s. Unlike you, they probably speak several languages. They may also have a degree in a hard science or engineering—skills that transfer easily to the more remunerative jobs in investment banks or global consultancies.

I know a lot of people like this from my neighborhood in New York City, and it’s a good thing they’re so well-mannered because otherwise they’d be eating our lunch. But if things continue as they are, they might soon be eating yours.

Which reminds me of Fact Three: Your prospective employers can smell BS from miles away. And most of you don’t even know how badly you stink.

When did puffery become the American way? Probably around the time Norman Mailer came out with “Advertisements for Myself.” But at least that was in the service of provoking an establishment that liked to cultivate an ideal of emotional restraint and public reserve.

To read through your CVs, dear graduates, is to be assaulted by endless Advertisements for Myself. Here you are, 21 or 22 years old, claiming to have accomplished feats in past summer internships or at your school newspaper that would be hard to credit in a biography of Walter Lippmann or Ernie Pyle.

If you’re not too bright, you may think this kind of nonsense goes undetected; if you’re a little brighter, you probably figure everyone does it so you must as well.

But the best of you don’t do this kind of thing at all. You have an innate sense of modesty. You’re confident that your résumé needs no embellishment. You understand that less is more.

In other words, you’re probably capable of thinking for yourself. And here’s Fact Four: There will always be a market for people who can do that.

In every generation there’s a strong tendency for everyone to think like everyone else. But your generation has an especially bad case, because your mass conformism is masked by the appearance of mass nonconformism. It’s a point I learned from my West Point intern, when I asked her what it was like to lead such a uniformed existence.

Her answer stayed with me. Wearing a uniform, she said, helped her figure out what it was that really distinguished her as an individual.

Now she’s a second lieutenant, leading a life of meaning and honor, figuring out how to Think Different for the sake of a cause that counts. Not many of you will be able to follow in her precise footsteps, nor do you need to do so. But if you can just manage to tone down your egos, shape up your minds, and think unfashionable thoughts, you just might be able to do something worthy with your lives. And even get a job. Good luck!

致2012年毕业的你：

请允许我成为第一个不对你说“恭喜”的人。在过去几年中，你们中的大多数努力地在各种并不实用的课程中为了一个看得过去的成绩而徘徊奋斗。这并不是什么值得夸耀的事情，这是你懂的。现在，在这你们大一时投票选出的总统所赐的经济环境下，你们要离开学校了。重新回到父母的家住下，并同时开始寻找并不友好的工作不是一件容易的事儿。毕竟你的父母是曾经在你身上给予厚望，而他们现在更像是拿着没能寄出的快递的发件人，而且无法知道这个快递接下来该往哪里发去。

你们中的某些当然还是经历了严峻的考验才获得真才实学的。几年前我曾经招了一个来自西点军校的实习生。她开始工作前刚完成了一个长达数周的训练项目，在这个项目里她甚至连睡觉的时候都得穿着防弹背心。她的文笔十分的好，而且格外谦虚。现在的她正在阿富汗对抗恐怖分子。

如果你也像那个实习生一样，你有权利对你的生活觉得不满。但请记住，她从来没有那么想过。

但是亲爱的毕业生们，也许你们远没有达到她的成就。你们已然不是小孩儿了，至少现在有人该告诉你一些关于人生的实情了：

首先要说的是，在这个知识决定命运的经济环境中，知识依然是很受重视的。但可惜你们也许是这么多年来最缺乏知识的一届毕业生。

几个月前，我面试了一个从常春藤毕业，GPA高得令人发指的男生。他想写作关于中东政治方面的文章，于是我们开始谈论1956年的苏伊士运河危机（第二次中东战争）。他们只是大概知道这桩历史事件，但完全不了解谁是当时的美国总统（美国与苏联的介入是战争最终结束的主因），以及他的继任者是谁。

毕业生们，你们知道吗？

人们一直说教育的目的不是灌输式的记忆，而是学习如何思考。不管你信不信，反正我是不信的。在我长期，面试在校生的印象中，我发觉许多面试者的思维就像古旧的地图一般，有许多的区域是因为没有认知而空白着的。很多情况下我觉得他们并不是缺乏智商，而是在于他们根本不知道知识从何而来的时候，无法建立知识与知识间的联系。

现在让我们来谈谈第二桩事实——你们所面对的竞争是国际化的。努力吧，别像我前两天在佛罗里达州所遇到的那个商人一样，在你的余生中抱怨是尼克松总统对中国开放的政策毁了他曾经在纽约的业务。

在像爱尔兰、法国、印度和西班牙这样的地方，你们不乏天赋与目标的同龄人正在一个更糟糕的经济环境中毕业。与你们不同的是，他们也会说许多种语言，并拥有一个科学或工程方面的学位。他们的能力或许更容易帮助他们找到一份薪酬丰厚的类似于投行或咨询业的工作。

在我在纽约工作的地方附近，有许多这样的人。万幸他们仍然保持着应有的礼节从而我们并没有感受到来自他们的压力。然而如果经济环境继续这么发展下去，也许他们马上就会开始抢你们的饭碗了。

这让我联想起了我想说的第三桩事情：你潜在的雇主对于夸夸其谈的想法早有察觉，并能笑而不语，而你们中的许多甚至不知道你们的想法有多不切实际。

从什么时候起连美国人也开始靠吹牛而活了？也许是始于诺曼梅勒的《给自己的广告》（1959年发行的一本文集）。但至少那本书是为了动员人们培养个人节操以及参与社会公益活动。

毕业生们，当我阅读你们简历的时候，我所看见的只是无穷无尽的“给自己的广告”。你们在21、22岁时所完成的一切，不管来自你上个夏天的实习或者是在学校的校报工作，甚至以及超出沃尔特李普曼和厄尼派尔（均为非常有名的作家，普利策奖得主）在他们自传中对他们自己的描述了。

也许你愚蠢地认为这种吹嘘并不会为人们所发觉，或者你自作聪明地认为既然大家都这么做你也必须从众一下。

但是你真实的自我绝不会做这样的事情的。每个人的内在都曾经是谦逊的。当你了解什么叫做“更少才是更多”的时候，你就会有不过分在简历中标榜的自信了。

从另一个角度说，你也许有自我思考的能力。这是我想说的第四件事情：对于能自我思考的人而言，市场的需求永远存在。

对于每一代人而言，人云亦云的问题是很普遍的。但对于你们这代人来说，这个问题尤其严重，因为你们大量的从众行为大多带上了不走寻常路的伪装。这是我与西点军校的实习生聊到她带领规定练习的经验时所学到的。

她的回答让我印象深刻。她当初对我说“穿着统一的制服，反而让她理解到什么才是真正区别她自己与别人的本质。”

现在她已经是一个有着对生活的理想和荣誉的少尉了，而且她有对自己生活意义的独到见解。你们中也许没有几个能完全像她一样这么一步一步走过去。当然你们完全没有必要跟随别人的足迹，但是如果你们能够放下自我中心的想法，多独立思考，也许在你的生命中你能够做出些不枉此生的事情。也许甚至找到一份工作。加油！

注：作者 Bret Stephens（布雷特 斯蒂芬斯）系华尔街日报专栏作家。

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