It’s commencement season again. Over the next couple of weeks our local colleges will ceremoniously hand out their diplomas, leaving thousands of parents feeling relieved – and the young graduates feeling slightly lost. Suddenly they feel the need for a plan that will guarantee a smooth passage through career and marriage to retirement and the nursing home and that final graduation. If you are in this situation, here’s my post-commencement advice about your life plan. Michael, my best friend at high school, had a detailed life plan by the age of fifteen. He had it all worked out: a degree in economics, a safe government job, a little house, a wife, two children, and early retirement at sixty to a resort on the coast. I’ve lost touch with him, but I hope he made it. If he did he’s been retired twenty years by now, and is almost certainly a grandfather, or even a great grandfather. I never had such a plan, and I never missed it. When I was at school my only plan was to get out of it. So