What up, flipstronauts? Graduation is upon us. As all y’all seniors finally breach the bubble and start getting paid to do things you wouldn’t otherwise spend your time doing, the Flipside has one request: please laugh at yourselves.
For the last four years, grownups have told you that you’re the future doctors, CEOs, activists, and politicians of our society. We’re not so sure — we’ve seen you drunk, after all.
We’ve also seen you looking super awkward at those first parties of freshman year, trying to dance, lanyard around your neck. You looked like a goofball.
No offense. We’re not trying to take some moral high ground here. There’s nothing wrong with looking like a goofball. We just aren’t convinced you’re ready to be an authority figure. And if you are, then you might want to take a look in the mirror and ask yourself if that ray-bans wearing semicolon user with an elite college degree is really any different, at heart, from that giddy profro who showed up at admit weekend and talked about their SAT scores.
Laughing at yourself is an integral part of not being an asshole. Maybe not sufficient, but definitely necessary. There are other things involved in not being an asshole: paying people back when they lend you money, calling your grandparents, not squishing spiders when you could put them outside — but trying to maintain an untarnished image in the face abundant evidence to the contrary is pretty much a Cardinal offense.
So don’t try to fake it. You aren’t actually important yet, and you’re going to look pretty silly if you take yourself too seriously. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our years at the Flipside, it’s that if you dig deep enough, there’s a joke to be had at anybody’s expense.
Especially yours. And if you don’t see the joke, then the joke’s probably on you. And that’s okay. Otherwise we wouldn’t have any material.
Cool. Keep it real. We love you all, The Flipside Senior Class