More seriously, Cosby, raised in a Philadelphia housing project, has long preached--and practiced--the values of education. Even after his stand-up career took off in the early 1960s, he returned to Philadelphia's Temple University to finish a bachelor's degree in communications. In 1977 he received a doctorate in education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and he has accumulated dozens of honorary degrees. These days, Cosby's schedule is as full as his curriculum vitae. Not only does he star in the CBS sitcom Cosby, now in its third season, but he is also the host of Kids Say the Darndest Things, an interview show on the CBS network, currently in its second season. Off set, Cosby and his wife, Camille, 55--who have four daughters--Erika, 34, Erinn, 32, Ensa, 26, and Evin, 22--remain committed to literacy causes and achievement through higher education. (Their son Ennis's killer was sentenced to life without parole in Los Angeles last August.) In the excerpt that follows from his new book, Cosby imparts a few words of wisdom to this spring's crop of young professionals-to-be:
Congratulations! You have just finished four years of college and I wonder if you know what that means: It means you have lost four years in starting a real life, if you happen to be planning on one. Of course, if you had been in a Turkish prison, you might have lost a lot more, but you wouldn't have had to take gym.
I must point out that your father lied when he said, "This will always be your home," because he is deep into a chapter that you never read in school: Chapter Eleven. Your senior year cost nearly $30,000 because you selfishly insisted on having meals--and this figure doesn't include the 900 calls that you charged to him and the ten days you took in Fort Lauderdale because you needed a change of pace.
For both your parents, no matter how destitute you've made them, you are an investment. You are bread on the water or water over the dam or some other metaphor that you should have learned at college when you were otherwise occupied with cybersex.
All right, now let's get specific about your future. You will need a resume. Because almost everything you put in your resume will be either trivial, irrelevant or untrue (a good resume blends all three), the challenge to you is a big one: You have to find a mixture of lyrical lying and fanciful fraud that will impress an interviewer.
You can certainly list a few fictitious people you've worked for, but be subtle about it. Don't say you spent a summer as a deckhand with Admiral Byrd. Also, don't put on your resume that you are pretender to the throne of Bulgaria or that you know how to make penicillin. Yes, your college room was full of mold, but it is wisest to stick to the lies that make a little sense.
As you approach the job market, let us review your skills. It won't take long. For example, you know a little English. Like, hopefully. At a Midwestern campus one day, I happened to overhear the development of the language you will be using.
"Like, do you love her?" said one student to another.
And the other replied, "Well, not love. It's like I like her."
I was in awe: In "Like I like her," 50 percent of the sentence is like, topping "I like Ike," which was only 33 percent. This sentence made The Philosophy of Fat Albert sound like Sophocles. "Hey, hey, hey" is Shakespearean today.
Perhaps the most typical postgraduate conversation in America today is one like this:
PARENT: What were you saying about getting a job in pottery?
GRADUATE: No, I said I'm planning on winning the lottery.
PARENT: And that's your career plan?
GRADUATE: Do you realize how much money that is? I might be able to move out of the house.
PARENT: That's a moving thought.
GRADUATE: Frankly, I've been living here just to spare you the heartbreak of an empty nest.
PARENT: Well, that's a stress test I'd be happy to take. But tell me: While you're waiting to win the lottery, is there any other job you might like to try?
GRADUATE: Well, the best jobs in America are all at computer companies. For computer support specialists, software development managers, database managers, wireless engineers, computer system analysts, and architects.
PARENT: You studied some of that?
GRADUATE: No, I just memorized the list. But in my own way, I have gone deeply into computers.
PARENT: You mean you've spent the last ten years playing Minesweeper?
GRADUATE: Of course not. I also played Tenchu, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Metal Gear Solid, and Solitaire--sometimes half the night. Listen, do you think all that was fun?
PARENT: Well, is there anything else that you might like to do with computers?
GRADUATE: Yes, I'd like to be a part-time air traffic controller.
PARENT: But what about your concentration span?
GRADUATE: My what?
PARENT: Your concentration span.
GRADUATE: I forgot the question.
PARENT: Your concentration span.
GRADUATE: Well, what about it?
PARENT: You don't have one.
GRADUATE: I'll handle just the short flights.
Now let us see how college prepared you to succeed in this economy. First, you learned calculus, which is very valuable if you want to be a calculus teacher. It is, however, of absolutely no use in the other six thousand professions. Luckily, you got a D-plus, so you didn't make too great an emotional investment.
Next, you learned how to have your parents send you extra money to buy the books the professors assigned that they just happened to write. Textbooks by professors always cost $83 and are carefully written to go out of date every year.
And third, although college didn't teach you how to balance a checkbook or to understand the wondrous ways in which a bank will be fleecing you, you did prepare to join the economy by learning how to duck calls from Visa, Discover and MasterCard.
In any case, stay with your dream and don't be concerned when your mother asks, a few times a day, "What now?" and "Have you thought about the merchant marines?" You have got to leave yourself open for all the possibilities that have nothing to do with making enough money to stay alive. In a dog-eat-dog world, there is certainly room for a turtle like you, creeping along and occasionally retracting your head.
But no matter how long you may be wandering in the wilderness of real life, no matter how sincerely you may be looking for a place to lie down, you did go to college. And if a job with a four-day work week, a three-hour lunch, and a holiday for Count Basie's birthday never turns up, you might still be able to make a few dollars on Jeopardy! Just remember Billy Strayhorn wrote "Take the 'A' Train," that footballs aren't made of pigskin, and that it was Fat Albert and not Plato who said, "Just because you're grown up don't mean you have to be an adult."
Get up-to-the-minute celebrity news and photos on your cellphone, iPhone or Blackberry at www.people.com!
