Hi kids.  I am sure each of you are familiar with the two individuals in the title, known collectively as “World’s Finest.”  Last week I was sitting in my mother’s basement connecting different wires in an attempt to…let’s say maximize the number of channels that make up basic cable, I stumbled upon some old cartoons featuring none other than the DC Comic flagships.  Four hours later I had a new analogy to describe the unique dilemma of the student debtor.  We thought our fancy degrees would make us Superman, but they made us Batman instead.

The whole reason we maximized our education was in order to command super salaries and be immune to things like downsizing, layoffs, unemployment and in certain cases even be free from the need to send out resumes, interview, network…after all I went to [ ] and graduated with a [].  I should be entertaining recruiters not begging for an audience.  This degree wasn’t supposed to simply open doors, they were supposed to empower us to kick those doors in permanently and with the greatest of ease.   If we’re talking about prospective employment I should be the one promising to call, looking bored, etc.  Similar to Superman, the only thing motivating me to do a good job, or indeed a job at all, is out of the philanthropic goodness of my own heart.  Sure, there’s kryptonite in the form of student loans but hey nobody is perfect. 

But instead the degrees were preparing us to be more like Batman.  We lived in a perfect world.  We did what was expected of us.  Then suddenly it all disappeared and we were left asking why?  We experienced a tragedy that the system was supposed to protect us against and we were left feeling hateful and bitter.  Before I get to far into this, I am in no way suggesting that what happened to us rises to the level of having your parents murdered in front of you…but part of the reason Batman does what he does is because he has a sense that his parents would be proud of him, and as a response to the helplessness he felt as an eight year-old.  Now, when you get tossed out in the street after earning an elite education you know your parents aren’t proud of you (or at least of that particular aspect of your life) and you also feel quite helpless.

So that is where we find ourselves.  And this is where it is up to us.

Superman’s powers came to him more or less instantaneously.  He sort of fell into the super hero gig.  The Batman did not become Batman overnight.  He took his rage, bitterness and sense of helplessness and turned it into something.  That’s why Batman is more compelling than Superman and ultimately Batman is the better super hero.  Superman has only one weakness, kryptonite, and he has never overcome it in issue after issue, movie after movie.

So that’s it kids.  We’re not Superman and we can never be Superman.  The degrees (Ivy League and fringe Ivy) we earned were advertised under false pretense.  However, with a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, we can be Batman…well nobody can be Batman (after all he is the Dark Knight) but we can follow in his example in our own little way.