THE LAST WORD:Alternative advice for graduates

No doubt the hundreds of Newport-Mesa students who tossed their caps in the air in graduation ceremonies Thursday have received more advice over the last few days than they really wanted to hear.

But that’s not going to stop us from giving them a little more.

After all, we were grads once too. Yeah, yeah, that was a long time ago, but that doesn’t mean the lessons we learned can’t be applied today.

So here goes. The lesson we learned is don’t listen to all those people giving you advice.

That’s right. Listen to your heart.

That doesn’t mean that mom or dad or grandma and grandpa don’t have any pearls of wisdom to share. They do.

But your future needs to be dictated by you. You need to find a career that fulfills your needs and stirs your soul.

We leave you with the words of writer Joseph Campbell, who quite simply said, follow your bliss.

“If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are — if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.”