Grads: Do you want to be effective, or seen as correct?

For many, graduation feels like an “arrival” into adulthood. In one sense, it is: walking across the stage and flipping your tassel is, for most, the end of formal education. However, as far as your life—and especially your development—is concerned, graduation isn’t the end. In fact, to paraphrase Churchill (as at my own graduation in 2015), graduation is not even the beginning of the end; it is simply “the end of the beginning.”

After graduation, life becomes less about what you know and more about what you can accomplish with your knowledge. The questions you face become less about who you are and more about who you wish to become and what you want to achieve. Put simply: Do you want to be effective, or do you want to be seen as “correct”?

The class of 2026 faces a world that seems uniquely determined to stop them from answering that question—as do the rest of us, regardless of our graduation year. Our culture doesn’t reward effectiveness or intellectual humility, let alone the lifelong process of human development and the discomfort, mistakes, and overall messiness that process entails.

Instead, much of our current social discourse has become a series of endless purity tests, of saying the right things and being seen around the right people. Furthermore, failing these purity tests comes with harsh consequences—including loss of friends and even family. They are not simple social media fads, they are meaningful threats to our social connection. As a result, too many people stop asking “How can I best help?” in favor of “How do I avoid being judged?”

However, the costs of living according to such purity tests are even higher, because they prioritize perceived “correctness” over meaningful accomplishment. We are social creatures, meaning we work best in cooperation with others, including so-called “imperfect” people. 

Effectively building a career, family, community, or a movement requires us to fail such purity tests. Being effective means affiliating with people who hold beliefs we disagree with—perhaps even strongly disagree with—and having the courage and vulnerability to accept that when other people choose to work alongside us, they’re doing the exact same thing. 

I’m not saying that any and all principles should be abandoned in favor of accomplishment. Values, principles, and beliefs do matter. However, purity tests are not the same as virtue; they simply slap moral labels on the same ingroup/outgroup dynamics that have held humanity back for centuries. Compromise is not always corruption. Working alongside imperfect people to accomplish something meaningful is not abandoning your principles; it’s choosing to be effective rather than just appearing pure.

So, class of 2026, as you move past the “end of the beginning,” remember that the world has no shortage of critics, purity tests, or people desperate to prove themselves correct at all costs. What the world needs is people willing to build, listen, persuade, cooperate, and work alongside imperfect others in the pursuit of something greater. The question you must answer isn’t just what you believe; it’s what you are willing to build—and whether you have the courage to become effective enough to build it.

– Dr. Aaron Pomerantz, Doerr Institute for New Leaders