In honor of all of the students who will become graduates on Saturday from Bowdoin College, here is the commencement address that you will most likely not be getting:

Friends, graduates, countrymen, you have spent four years sheltered from most of life’s ills while attending one of Maine’s most “prestigious” colleges. You have your entire life ahead of you but in many ways your life will forever be different than what it has been. While you spent the days pondering someone’s headwear and whether someone could be placed on social probation because of it, the world went on. It will be important for you to catch up.

You are now a college graduate but you are far from unique. Snowflakes are unique. Fingerprints are unique. The only thing that will make you special going forward is what you do with the rest of your life. Creating jobs, being a great spouse, parent, employee or boss. These things will make you special. These things will come to define who you are.

In five or ten years you may return to the college to celebrate a reunion. By that point, your life will have been made up of choices and these choices will have lasting consequences. You may even run into a former classmate working a menial job in the area. It is a good bet that they chose their course of study poorly while at Bowdoin.

Your major, your jobs, your life, your choices. You are never too young to start making good choices.

In less than five years your professional success will be based less on your college’s name than it is on the demeanor in which you conduct yourself and your drive to get things done. Your own hard work will open more doors for you than anything written on paper. The bigger your drive, the farther you will go.

You want “social justice?” Live to be the best person that you can be and give of yourself. Give to your family, your friends and your country. Be a good person. If you do that, then you can change the world.

Prepare to have your feelings bucket always emptied. No one is going to worry about pumping up your emotional tires. There will be no time outs for you when you are feeling down or aggrieved. Tough times will ultimately make you a stronger person. If by chance you fail at something, your success will be greater once you overcome that failure by your own accord. By your own hard work. Your own success will fill your feelings bucket.

Safe spaces with puppies and kittens exist only on college campus. The world is a tough and unforgiving place. Better plan accordingly.

Do something novel. Create the robot that McDonald’s and Walmart will use to replace most of their workers once a $15 an hour minimum wage is passed. You might as well benefit from the increase because so many others will not. A fellow Bowdoin alum, Reed Hastings, who co-founded Netflix, helped put every mom and pop video store chain out of business. You could have a role in putting all of those pimply faced teens out of work so that they clutter up their parent’s couches once their summer jobs go away.

Find the right spouse. Matrimony may be an old fashioned endeavor and is quite possibly the last thing you want to think about while sitting amongst your friends as the ceremony goes on and on. However, while you were fond of, “feeling the Bern” in this year’s election cycle, choosing a spouse who is not the right one can lead to feeling the burn all over again. And the next time it will require an antibiotic and a divorce attorney.

In closing, always look both ways before you cross the street. It is a rare person who pays attention to the flashing lights at the crosswalk.

And as I heard a sage, erudite gentleman tell the graduates of the Pemigewasset Normal School during my own graduation, many years ago, always look out for number one, but never, ever step in number two.

That’s my two cents…

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Jonathan Crimmins lives in Brunswick and can be reached at j_ crimmins@hotmail.com.