You can learn from one man's regrets

In my world, it's called a "post mortem."

No, it's not wordplay on fouling Los Angeles Lakers center Shaquille O'Neal to death.

Rather, it's a discovery process in which participants in a just- completed project analyze the successes and failures of the project.

It's about building on your achievements and learning from your mistakes in hopes of improving on the quality of the next project.

There's a pretty large group here in the Valley now completing an arduous project that was four years in the making. I'm talking about the students graduating from the Valley's high school.

I urge the members of the Valley's class of 2003 to try this post- mortem technique. Take a few moments to analyze the past four years of your lives - but I'd like you to give it a unique spin.

I'm asking you to do your high school post mortem based on my regrets, 35 years after my own graduation.

Know that your classmates' names and faces will remain (to at least some degree) in your consciousness, miraculously unchanged, as you think of them decades later. Chemical formulas, a dissected frog, and Shakespeare may fade, but box scores, your first crush, and prom night will stay as fresh as that evening's corsage.

Know that all of that just makes you wonderfully human.

Humans make mistakes and I made mine. This isn't a weepy tome to past glory days, but rather a tribute to today's graduates.

Your class is smarter than my class of 1968. You run faster, jump higher and use tools we never dreamed of. With our black plastic- rimmed glasses, I'm sure your class is far prettier than mine - and not just in superficial ways but in ways that really count, like racial tolerance, world awareness and faith.

That's your greatest achievement.

You can lose the rap music and car speakers that drown out airplanes and bring about the end of reality TV if you want to add to your already impressive accomplishments.

But before you do, just listen to my regrets - and then try doing that post mortem.

See your senior class counselor before you clean out that locker.

Think you can't afford college? Yes you can. So many programs and grants exist that anyone who wants to go to college can. I came from a poor family and thought college was out of reach.

Nothing - I repeat, nothing - is out of reach for you.

Did you study finance in school? I didn't.

In the adult world, you are the captain of your financial ship and you decide if it's going to be a yacht or a dinghy.

How do you do that? You check out the power of compounding interest and one of your greatest commodities - time.

At present, you are facing the most trying financial times any graduates have faced since the Great Depression, and only proper planning can build that yacht.

But the plans for it are simple: Save 5 to 10 percent of every check from Day One after high school. You write the script for your family by your planning.

Whatever path you choose, go down that road with enthusiasm. Don't let life just come to your door like the mail, handed to you. Go out and put a saddle on it, and then ride it.

Your happiness isn't from your status on a job, or your neighborhood. It comes from within you.

If you choose to live a life of enthusiasm, you'll see beauty everywhere, in things both great and small.

A lot of folks my age missed that lesson until we started to age.

Lastly, remember that there is a sense of timing to saying thanks.

You know to share your joy with your family and your teachers, but there may be somebody you've overlooked or hesitated to talk to.

That girl who shared her lunch table, that guy who showed you the post move after practice, or that kid who smiled at you one day when you really needed a smile.

Go tell these people they mattered to you. Don't leave it unsaid.

All four years of high school, I thrilled to the presence of my lab partner, the first girl I ever noticed. Yet I never told her.

I "silently" graduated and moved on - only to find out years later that she had felt the same way. Wherever you are, Meri Jakab, you were the light of high school for me.

Because I didn't tell her when I should have, I didn't get to see that smile she would have had.

Even if it comes out in gurgles and gaks, say it now.

You'll be glad you did.

I may be slide rules, and you may be lightning fast PCs, but some things never change.

Copyright 2003 Cowles Publishing Company
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.