Finishing Well in a World That Doesn’t Want You To
- David Oaks
- Jun 8
- 6 min read
By now, you’ve probably seen the videos.
Commencement speakers, wealthy, powerful, well-meaning, stepping up to podiums at universities across the country, and being booed.
Not politely ignored. Not eye-rolled into oblivion.
Booed.
Molly Jong-Fast wrote about it last week in The New York Times. She describes graduates as “hostages,” sitting through speeches they can’t escape without their diplomas, being told by tech executives and venture capitalists that their futures are being shaped by AI whether they like it or not.
She rehearses how Eric Schmidt spoke at the University of Arizona and the shouting got so intense he had to pause and acknowledge that graduates feared “that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating.” His solution? Essentially: make the best of it. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
Jong-Fast calls it “peak billionaire brain.”
Marc Andreessen, meanwhile, muses on Joe Rogan that a bot “never gets drunk, never gets sick, never gets high” and “never files H.R. complaints.”
The graduates booed because they understood exactly what was being said between the lines:
We have already decided you are replaceable.
Yes Molly, the booing is justified.
Harvard researchers found that hiring for entry-level roles has dropped every quarter since 2023 at companies adopting generative AI.
The anger is earned.
Jong-Fast ends her piece with a challenge: “Don’t just boo — do something.”
What can this new generation do? What does it actually mean to finish well when the world on the other side of that diploma feels so hostile?
Some finishing well thoughts I believe a new generation is dying to hear:
1. Your Integrity Is Worth More Than Your Starting Salary
The speakers who are getting booed aren’t wrong that AI is changing the workforce. They are wrong about what that means for you. They aren’t challenging you to the power of your integrity.
Yes, a bot doesn’t get sick. It doesn’t file HR complaints. But before I tell you what integrity looks like going forward, let me tell you where I first saw it.
I learned it by watching others choose it.
I have had numerous people in my life, not famous, not often wealthy, not the kind of people who get invited to give commencement addresses, who had every reason to cut a corner, to take the easier path, to let a small compromise slide into a larger one.
They didn’t.
I watched them absorb the cost of doing the right thing without complaint and without fanfare. Nobody wrote an article about it. Nobody gave them an award. But I was watching. And what I saw rewired something in me permanently.
That is how integrity actually travels — not through speeches, but through witness. Someone sees you choose it, and they carry it forward into a room you’ll never enter.
In the present, integrity looks ordinary. That’s the point.
It looks like:
Telling a client the truth when a comfortable lie would close the deal faster
Walking away from a job that asks you to become someone you aren’t
Keeping a promise that nobody would have noticed you breaking
Doing the unglamorous work with the same care you’d give the work that gets you noticed
A bot can execute instructions. But, it cannot choose.
That capacity, to choose integrity over a bigger number on a paycheck, over a faster path, over the version of yourself that is easier to be, is not a soft skill.
In 2026, it is a survival skill.
And ten years from now, someone will be watching you.
An intern
Your child
A colleague who seems distracted but is actually paying very close attention
They will be in a moment where the wrong thing is easier, and they will remember what they saw you do.
They won’t remember your salary. They won’t remember your title.
They will remember that moment, and your name will mean something.
Finishing well doesn’t mean finishing financially rich. It means finishing in a way that gives the next person something worth carrying on.
2. The People in Your Life Are Your Real Safety Net
The Harvard working paper Jong-Fast cites confirms what graduates already feel in their bones: the old promises: work hard, get the degree, join the middle class, have been quietly retired without a press release.
Nobody is going to hand you a house. Nobody will guarantee you a career ladder that goes anywhere.
But before you panic about the future, do something countercultural for a moment.
Look back.
Think about the people who got you to this seat.
Not just the ones who wrote the tuition checks, though maybe them too, but the ones who told you the truth when you needed it. The:
Teacher who stayed after class
Friend who talked you out of quitting
Parent, grandparent, mentor, or stranger who saw something in you before you saw it in yourself
Those relationships didn’t happen by accident. They happened because someone chose to show up — and so did you.
This is not nostalgia. This is a blueprint.
Those people proved something that no algorithm can replicate: that a human being, choosing to invest in another human being, across time and inconvenience and cost, is the most durable infrastructure ever built.
Now look forward.
Somewhere in your future — maybe five years from now, maybe twenty — someone younger is going to need exactly what those people gave you. They are going to need someone to stay after class, to talk them off a ledge, to see them before they can see themselves. That person doesn’t exist in your life yet. But they will. And when they arrive, you will be the safety net.
Now look to your left. Look to your right.
Those people — the ones who pulled all-nighters with you, who ate bad dining hall food with you, who texted you at 2am when things got dark, they are your present infrastructure.
Not a 401k; Not a LinkedIn connection; Not a “network.”
Jong-Fast told the Bennington graduates that the messiness of their 20s is the point. She’s right. The people who will help you survive that messiness are not the ones handing out business cards at a career fair.
They are the ones who already know your worst habits and showed up anyway.
This is the full arc of a human life: you were held, you are being held, and one day you will do the holding.
In an economy that is actively trying to replace you with a data center, that three-part truth — past, present, future — is not just a comfort. It is a radical act of resistance.
Don’t just build a career. Build a web of people who will catch you when the career fails — and who you will catch in return.
That is the only safety net that has ever actually worked.
3. Small, Human Victories Are the Only Ones That Last
You’ve been told your entire life to disrupt. To scale. To move fast and break things.
But look at what that philosophy broke:
Entry-level jobs
Local journalism
Small businesses
Trust in institutions
The basic assumption held that a college degree justifies the debt it incurs
The “disruption” economy didn’t finish well. It just finished loudly.
So here is your counter-offer: finish quietly well.
Start by looking back at one small victory you almost forgot.
Somewhere in the last four years, you did something that nobody put on a leaderboard.
Maybe you:
Stayed up late helping a classmate understand a concept you’d barely mastered yourself
Showed up to a club meeting when attendance was three people and a folding table
Had a hard conversation with a roommate instead of letting resentment fester into something ugly
Finished something — a paper, a project, a semester, when quitting would have been completely understandable.
That moment matters. Not because it was impressive, but because it was human. It was you, choosing to show up at human scale, in a world that was already telling you that only “disruption” counts.
Hold onto it. It is evidence of who you actually are.
This week, pursue one more.
Not a career milestone. Not a LinkedIn post. Something smaller.
Call the professor who believed in you before you believed in yourself. Introduce two people in your life who should know each other. Volunteer for the task nobody else wanted. Write the thank-you note that is already three months overdue.
It’s these small human victories that remind you that you are not a data point, not a productivity metric, not a bot-replacement candidate.
You are a person who shows up.
And ten years from now, here is what I hope you witness.
I hope you are sitting across from someone younger, maybe someone you mentored, maybe someone who just wandered into your orbit, and you watch them do something small and right and completely unwitnessed.
You watch them choose the harder, more human path. And you recognize it immediately, because you’ve been practicing it yourself.
This is the victory that compounds.
This is the victory that scales — not through algorithms, but through people watching people and deciding to be better.
In a world optimized for disruption, the human-sized victory is the most countercultural thing you can do.
And it is the only kind that lasts.
David Oaks writes about finishing well — in work, in life, and in the moments nobody’s watching.
Molly’s article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/05/opinion/graduation-speakers-ai-college-commencement.html
Joe Rogan’s podcast with Marc Andreeson:
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