60th commencement of Cape Cod Community College sees 440 graduate

Bad career advice was offered this week to the 440 graduates of Cape Cod Community College — by the co-founder of Netflix Marc Randolph.

“Follow your dreams. That’s right, it is bad advice,” Randolph said at what was the school's 60th commencement, held Wednesday at the Melody Tent in Hyannis.

Graduation was conducted online in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions, and those graduates were invited to participate in this year's commencement.

Randolph had been scheduled to speak in 2020 and again in 2021, and he said he was happy to finally do so at Wednesday's in-person ceremony.

What he called "bad advice" was amended during his talk with the graduates.

Following your dreams is not necessarily bad, but the problem is nobody tells you how to do it, Randolph said. He offered a five-step process toward achieving success, emphasizing the need to fail and fail often in a long and winding journey to achieve goals.

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What is Mark Randolph's advice to graduates?

“Lesson 1: There is no such thing as a good idea,” he said. Instead, it is important to try to come up with a lot of bad ideas, but to keep working to develop them, test them out, fail, test and fail again and work continuously to improve the ideas that may eventually become good ones, Randolph said.

Lesson 2 was to “think less and do more.”

Lesson 3: “Embrace imperfection.”

Lesson 4: “Be bold rather than be perfect.”

Finally, Lesson 5: “Chill. Relax.”

“Whatever it is you want, you’ve got time,” said Randolph.

Christina Silva, the student commencement speaker, also encouraged the graduates to believe in themselves.

“Lord knows it wasn’t easy for this 30-something-year-old single mom to start fresh after 17 years outside the classroom," Silva said. "But I had to believe I could do it.”

Cape Cod Community College Class of 2022 inspiring students

Several graduates were living examples of overcoming adversity, taking on challenges and embarking on the long journey to fulfill their dreams, in interviews before the ceremony.

Max Kennedy, a 2020 graduate of Barnstable High School, took a number of seven-week classes twice a semester to be able to earn an associate's degree in communications in two years. Kennedy plans to take courses at the Cape Media Center before attending a four-year college in the fall.

Viveca Stucke took college classes while also attending high school. On Wednesday, Stucke received an associate in arts degree and will graduate from Bourne High School on June 4. In the fall, she will attend Holy Cross, where she will study political science and Chinese studies, she said.

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Michael Shea completed a six-year journey at the college, starting in the school’s Project Forward program, which serves students with intellectual disabilities. Shea’s father, Rick Shea, said his son, a 2016 graduate of Plymouth South High School, completed the mainstream program to earn his certificate and is keeping his options open, to include the possibility of getting a job or maybe continuing his education.

Sharees Simone Owens, 45, graduated from the college's funeral services program. Owens originally enrolled in another college program but that school went out of business seven years ago.

He classmate, Julie Sudol, 45, also studied funeral services. Sudol graduated from Tulane University in 1999 then worked for 13 years as a flight attendant for American Airlines, she said. She then spent 10 years at home raising her two children.

Sudol became interested in funeral services because she thought it was a good combination of her earlier interests and experience in science and customer service.

The message on her mortarboard summed up her long and winding journey: “From 30,000 feet up to 6 feet under.”

This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: 60th graduation of Cape Cod Community College; 440 in Class of 22