http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/05/25/what_to_tell_my_journalism_grads/

IT'S ALWAYS HARD to see my students in the journalism program at UMass-Amherst scatter at graduation, but this year is even worse. The uncertainty in the economy has the class of 2009 trembling.

"Should I apply to be an assistant manager at Wendy's?" asks a student whose dream it was to work for a small-town paper, her voice shrill with disappointment.

This spring, I was tempted to give an un-graduation speech and to suggest that the newly minted grads lower their expectations, that they rein in their rambunctious natures, and recognize a painful truth:

Even in the best of times, your 20s can be rough.

You're going to run up against bosses who have it in for you. The fault lines in your family will become clear in a way they may not have been earlier in your life. Friendships you thought would last forever get redefined and sometimes erode altogether. Your very youthfulness will inspire as much envy as it does admiration.

And these are not the best of times.

And then I thought twice. Young people setting forth in the tradition of James Joyce to forge in the smithy of their souls the uncreated consciousness of their race need pipe dreams, not lectures, now as much as ever.

When classes ended a few weeks ago, I looked out on the last day, traditionally reserved for pizza and a reading list, and I saw myself at that age: juiced with energy, low on wisdom, and champing at the bit to find my place in the world.

So instead of haranguing them with cynical musings and stuffy admonitions, I softened my pitch, and I passed along advice from a friend and fellow writer who possesses a kind of sententious, La Rochefoucauld mindset. Ann Banks is always spouting truisms, such as "black goes with black," "never eat anything you don't find delicious, especially on a diet," and my all-time favorite:

"The key to finding a parking spot is to drive to exactly where you want to be and only then to start looking for a place to park. Your passengers will probably try to undermine your confidence in this plan by urging you to take the first place you come across - claiming that 'we aren't going to do better than that.' Ignore them. You need to demonstrate to the Parking Gods that you expect to be lucky. In parking, as in life, start by going after exactly what you want. Because you never know."

The students arrive on campus as supplicants. They often begin their academic careers in a fog, writing sentences such as "drugs ran ramped in his neighborhood" or "even on death row, Perry Smith was wanton to improve himself," but by the time they leave, some have produced 100-page honors theses with titles like "Celebration Riots at UMass" about the collision of sports, alcohol, and high spirits after big games, and "A Longitudinal Study of the Effects of the Guest Editor Program at Mademoiselle on the Careers of Women who Participated in the 1960s," and "Nationalism in the Japanese Press."

By the end of their senior year, these young people, if we older ones have done our job right, have accomplished what once seemed impossible: they have been transformed into peers, into colleagues.

With luck, they stay in touch. They e-mail with their book ideas, they send the article they wrote for Sports Northwest about a Major League baseball player named Allie Moulton who crossed the color barrier when no one else did, and they ask your advice over an emergency cup of tea whether to continue with Teach for America in Bridgeport, Conn. (That was easy: yes.)

My revised speech:

Despite the realities facing you, I urge you to believe in the Parking Gods. Even if you have to live at home and work at Planet Fitness to create cash flow, you can volunteer to do a newsletter for an organization you admire, coach in a sport you might want to write about, create programs or videos for a charity event you support - something, anything, to stay in the game.

Why?

Because you really do never know.

Madeleine Blais, a guest columnist, is a professor at UMass-Amherst and author of "Uphill Walkers," a family memoir.

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