Addressing UVA’s Class of 2013, recent college graduate and valedictorian Stephen Colbert encouraged students to keep their cell phones on. “I wouldn’t want any of you to miss a text or a tweet while I’m giving my speech.”
In between reminiscing about his experiences at all-boys Hampden Sydney College (and “marrying a UVA girl”), sharing SAT vocabulary words and sending out a tweet, Colbert doled out some advice:
I don’t know if you’ve seen it — this week’s Time Magazine called you “lazy, entitled narcissists,” who are part of the “Me, Me, Me” generation. So self-obsessed — tweeting your Vines, hashtagging your Spotifys and Snapchatting your YOLOs — your generation needs everything to be about you. And that’s very upsetting to us Baby Boomers because self-absorption is kind of our thing.
But, Colbert explained, while his generation is leaving grads “with fewer job opportunities,” it’s giving them a hard-learned lesson earlier in life: “that you must always make the path for yourself.”
