{"id":2458996,"date":"2020-05-29T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-29T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/?p=326436"},"modified":"2020-05-29T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T21:00:00","slug":"writing-switch-aspens-biggest-valedictorians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/writing-switch-aspens-biggest-valedictorians\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing Switch: Aspen\u2019s biggest valedictorians"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image p402_hide\">\n<div class=\"caption-container\">\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"682\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/05\/switch-atw-052820-1-1024x682.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/05\/switch-atw-052820-1-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/05\/switch-atw-052820-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/05\/switch-atw-052820-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/05\/switch-atw-052820-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/05\/switch-atw-052820-1-2048x1365.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">We didn\u2019t give the commencement speeches at our high school graduations, not only because we don\u2019t care\/aren\u2019t smart enough, but also because we are stutterers. What a cruel term for that condition. This advice isn\u2019t a big \u201crah-rah, go grad!\u201d type of lecture \u2014 calm down, it\u2019s only high school. Just wait until you start college and it isn\u2019t any harder. Sometimes you need to hear the advice of someone older and wiser than yourself who isn\u2019t a parent, even if they\u2019re too indecisive on things, like which meal delivery subscription to get, to be qualified themselves.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">SB: GOOOODDDD MORNING VIETNAM!!! Just a little \u201cOffice\u201d reference of a Robin Williams you probably don\u2019t understand to get things started. So, before I tell you the difference between a salesman and a saleswoman, let me say this to the class of 2020: You\u2019re all f-ed \u2014 and that\u2019s OK.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">From one recession-time graduate to another, you may have high hopes for you future, which is great, but there also may be a point in the journey where the only options are unpaid internships and \u201cthe promise of graduate school.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">My advice to you, if I may evoke another obscure reference, this time from the cult classic \u201cThe Big Lebowski\u201d: \u201cGet a job, sir.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"col\" readability=\"6\">\n<div class=\"row at-donation at-donation-mobile p-0\" readability=\"7\">\n<div class=\"col-xl-4 p-2\">\n<div data-bg=\"url(https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/03\/AT-logo-white.png)\" class=\"p-0 mt-2 mb-2 h-75 text-center rocket-lazyload\">\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.aspentimes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2020\/03\/AT-logo-white.png\" class=\"logo m-0 p-0 invisible\"><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><h3 class=\"d-inline mr-3\">Support Local Journalism<\/h3>\n<p><button class=\"btn d-inline\" type=\"button\" onclick=\"handleDonationButtonClickMidArticle()\">Donate<\/button><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">Don\u2019t wait for your college career to end to start looking or you\u2019ll find yourself on a loading dock, schlepping rich people\u2019s luggage while applying to a grad school you\u2019ll inevitably drop out of. Trust me, I\u2019ve seen it a million times.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">In the time of the corona and economic uncertainty, remember these three words: Always. Be. Employed. Unpaid internships, aka working for free, and most degrees \u2014 save for those required to enter a field \u2014 aren\u2019t as valuable as on-the-job experience.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">I wish I wrote freelance during college because bylines are king. Obviously, no one is going to give you a scalpel and a patient to operate on, a mound of cash to invest or a building to design, but a mailroom clerk or some other low-level work that anyone can get do will give your dream employer a feel for your work ethic and a face to a name on an application when the time comes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">Even if it\u2019s not in the field you\u2019re pursuing, you may find it more fulfilling than that 9-to-5 bullshit \u2014 and there will be bullshit \u2014 you\u2019re chasing. Who knows, maybe you\u2019ll find cooking to be every bit as creative an outlet as pottery but one that comes with a consistent paycheck. One thing you\u2019ll definitely find, though, is a work ethic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">Work ethic is what takes you from an entitled millennial, or whatever generation you are, with a degree to a helpful\/not worthless coworker. You\u2019ll be surprised at how good some people are at doing nothing. Don\u2019t be one of those people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">On top of work ethic, experience and maybe a degree or two, you\u2019ll need luck. You think I became one of the most prolific columnists in the greater Rocky Mountain region on hard work alone?<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">Hell no. Most of the advice I\u2019ve given you thus far comes from \u2014 shocker \u2014 the missteps I took. I sparingly delivered pizzas and sandwiches during college. I went one for two in postgraduate programs. I had multiple unpaid internships that were about as useful as a degree in Sanskrit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">My path to a full-time career at The Aspen Times came from working my way up from part-time proofreader. I was able to do that because of the supplemental income from a second job as a front desk clerk, the work ethic I showed proofreading and the relationships I had built at the paper. The way I got the front desk job was from the \u201chospitality experience\u201d I attained while working on the loading dock at The Little Nell, which is where I learned work ethic and how I was able to move back to Aspen after dropping out of grad school.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">That\u2019s a lot of right place, right time. There was a point where I applied for hospitality jobs in Hawaii because I thought journalism was never going to happen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">Things did not always go my way. Things will not always go your way. Do everything you can to put yourself in a place to succeed and maybe you\u2019ll only be f-ed for a year or two as opposed to five.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">Best of luck.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">BW: Ten years ago I was standing on the same stage you are, except it was a different stage and I was home-schooled so it was really just an altar at church. I\u2019m sure nobody wants a \u201cback in my day\u201d speech from someone who isn\u2019t even out of his late-20s existential crisis yet, but I made it through the social-media transitions from Neopets to VampireFreaks.com so give me some credit. Everyone on the internet in that era was kind of a weirdo, and VampireFreaks was basically a subreddit within that. Just think, there are websites older than you. Uhhhmazin\u2019.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">When I graduated I managed both a Facebook and a Myspace. Can you imagine the stress of ranking your friends one through eight for the world to see? And when Brandy pisses you off, you demote her to passive agressively spite her, since you know she\u2019ll notice? That was truly the Wild West of technology.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">If you\u2019ve gone to school here most or all of your life, and your parents are pressuring you to go to CMC, don\u2019t listen. There is no such thing as \u201csaving money\u201d when it comes to college \u2014 either you\u2019ll be able to pay off your loans someday or you won\u2019t, or maybe the government will forgive them, or maybe when the cicadas break their 17-year nap and pop out of the ground this summer, the apocalypse will happen.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">You\u2019ll be getting some graduation gift money, and if your first thought is \u201chere\u2019s a semester of room and board,\u201d shake it out of your head. Buy a toy, and then dump the rest into Bitcoin. As of this writing it\u2019s at $8,788 and looking to rise. The more we all put into the system, the more we earn together. Boom, millenial finance 101.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">Get outside the valley and see some destitution. Also, don\u2019t waste your college-age years doing it online if universities aren\u2019t allowed to reopen. Take the gap year and you\u2019ll spend more time at the legal drinking age once we\u2019re allowed to have fun again. So far, this should be your prime.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">My prime also is right now, in a funny twist of irony. My whole entire life I have been wanting this exact thing to happen \u2014 where time just freezes and I can spend my days pacing around and working in my cozy clothes and firing off hilarious tweets nobody sees. And in a 1-in-a-billion chance, an unsung prayer went answered. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s made me more productive per se, but not having to worry about how shitty my man bun looks before going out into public has been a burden lifted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">But seriously, just do whatever you want. Hell, I might just run away to Canada and play online poker in the woods and train a falcon. Too lazy to go through the rigamarole of getting a passport at the post office, though.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">A lot of freshmen show up to college expecting to keep their long-distance relationship going. Not worth it. Going to house parties are much more entertaining when you\u2019re not in a Snapchat argument with insecure Isaac from back home. And someday, if you\u2019re lucky, you\u2019ll meet that person who makes you wonder how far you\u2019ll go to change yourself into what they\u2019re looking for. The answer, of course, is all the way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">Don\u2019t say no to things. That doesn\u2019t mean say yes to everything, but you can\u2019t stress about how your decisions now will affect your path forever. Unapologetically be yourself and see where it leads. Slam an MD 20\/20 and smoke some real paranoia-inducing weed, just to peer behind the veil, if you haven\u2019t already.<\/p>\n<p class=\"Special Sections-ATW-ATW_Body_Serif\">As you\u2019ve learned, life can go sideways out of nowhere and rob you of prom night and everything else. Now take that cynicism into the world!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/opinion\/aspens-biggest-valedictorians\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We didn\u2019t give the commencement speeches at our high school graduations, not only because we don\u2019t care\/aren\u2019t smart enough, but also because we are stutterers. What a cruel term for that condition. This advice isn\u2019t a big \u201crah-rah, go grad!\u201d type of lecture \u2014 calm down, it\u2019s only high school. Just wait until you start [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2458996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-17 05:18:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley&#039;s Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2458996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2458996\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2458996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2458996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2458996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}