End of an Era by Muhammad Amir

The death of a frat boy: the deleted valediction

Muhammad Amir

It is with the fathomless remorse of the stale rut into which our convocation ceremonies and valedictorian addresses have degenerated, that I humbly accept this page of The Peak to bid Simon Fraser University farewell on behalf of the 2007 graduating class.

Ahem . . .

My most excellent moment during what can only be described as my four-year lucubration at Simon Fraser University was staggering into my global marketing management class at Harbour Centre, in full feather — as if I had been plucked from Wall Street itself — pie-eyed and on a bun. I had a business presentation to stage, after all: the only way to do it is soused, and the only way to be soused is dressed to kill. I got an A+ in the course.

And that is my quintessential moment in compassing my Bachelor of Business Administration (Honours) degree, despite the fact that I was privileged with a celebrated column series, “Suburbia cocktails,” in this very publication, I participated in the Brazil Field School 2006, and I was even chosen to represent the university (that’s you, champ) on the world stage at the 2006 Royal Roads International Case Competition.

I was lionised. Or at least, it felt like I was. I could walk into the Highland Pub or the Mountain Shadow and strangers knew me. I’m getting recognised left, right, and centre, whether it be at the Cambie, Joey Tomatoes, or in the many modest corridors around campus. I was threatened with a lawsuit. This semester I sparked what Monica Rudd referred to as the “Muhammad Amir debates”: arguments about me, as a person. CBC even offered me an appearance on an episode of Marketplace. And for what? For being an opulently lexical (if not sexual) potty-mouth and an aristarch of taking one’s self too seriously.

As an infamous luminary, I parted ways with the milquetoasts and lickspittles, and got everything coming to me with merit — as most of you have and will. But, since a lot of you think that you’re smarter than me, I’m not going to waste my word count with some pretentious caveats, nor am I going to tell you what do with your life. And no one else should do that, either. You’re adults: autonomous and self-determined. And hopefully your pursuits at this school were sewed up as such. If not, you have the rest of your life ahead of you.

However, it would be reckless of me to bid you adieu without remarking on the greatest single crisis of our history and our future: we live in a world strife with suffering and perturbed with the mass consumption of ourselves. This may very well be the story of the human condition, but it doesn’t have to be.

I’m not telling you to save the manatees or to buy a hybrid. I’m not talking about activism. I’m talking about awareness.

I’m suggesting that you should, at the very least, adumbrate your own footprint in a society that is exponentially swelling in its interconnectedness, as an outcome of rapidly developing communication, transportation, and trade. Think about how your labour, your dollars, and your conscience rapes, kills, and destroys. Or alternatively, how it builds, protects, and saves. And if you’ve got your circumstantial schadenfreude — realising that in the end, it’s all randomly absurd anyway — then you and I might have something in common. The nihilist morality has served me satisfaction.

However, to live in a bubble of ignorance is the most arrant squander into which we can invest our education. We may be of different academic backgrounds and different philosophies, but if there is one thing we all share, it is a developed sense of critical thinking and an ambitious thirst for knowledge. Otherwise, we would not have reached this point together. As a result, on broaching the only cliché you will ever see me author, I must confess: education is not an achievable goal, it is a relentless journey.

So as much as graduation is a junket of the caffeinated nights, episodes of higher learning interspersed with those of decadence, and probably a few whispers here and there of simple regurgitation (if not blatant plagiarism), on the more sublime level of consequence, it is an awakening of all that is left burdened to us.

What lies fraught is an obligation to continue learning. This obligation, whether we choose to undertake it or not, is derived from an insurmountable debt we owe to those around us.

This meridian of our undergraduate career is a long time coming. But I must acknowledge that we owe a lot of people a lot of things for making it this far. Our success is nothing but an aggregate of the love, care, and perspective that we absorbed when our family, friends, and yes, even professors, tarried in our lives. We are nothing without them and are forever trussed to them, just as others are trussed to us. They made us what we are, students, for the better. But class isn’t out, yet. And we should know this.

So, congratu-fucking-lations. You did it, kid. Now, give your mother a hug and tell her you love her.