REMARKS ON CLASS DAY '95
For the Princeton Class of 1995
Uwe E. Reinhardt
James Madison Professor of Political Economy
Princeton University
May 29, 1995
Let me start by thanking the gracious Class of '95 for bestowing this great honor upon me. Like most professors, I have always considered it a great privilege to be able to teach at Princeton. To get one more shot at you would be any professor's dream.
Before launching into the remarks addressed to you, the Class of '95, allow me to pay tribute to two other groups assembled here worthy of our praise and gratitude: your 'rents, otherwise known as your parents, and your grandparents.
As a parent of three youngsters of college age, I am only too aware of the extraordinary contributions parents and grandparents have made to the success stories we celebrate here today. I know of the planning, the saving, the cajoling, the driving and of the many hours of anxious hope and prayers that have accompanied every single step of your illustrious careers. Along with you, our students, we the faculty of Princeton University owe a great debt of gratitude to your parents, and to your grandparents as well. What they have done for you has made our job at Princeton so very much easier.
When your class mate, Alexis Theofilactidis, called me a few weeks ago to invite me to this great honor, I was thrilled, but I was also worried. My problem is this: after all the time we have spent together, what could I possibly tell you that I had not already told you. Vis a vis you, the Class of '95, my brain has been more or less fully depleted.
I asked Alexis that question, and she recklessly responded: "Anything you want. Anything at all."
"Oh, goody!" I exclaimed. "I'll go over the answer key to my final exam in financial accounting, particularly the question on inventory." You see, I had asked a question on an "optimal inventory policy" and expected students to pick either the first-in-first-out (FIFO) method (which means that merchandise that came in first is sold first) or the last-in-last-out (LIFO) method (which means the merchandise that came in last is sold first). Curiously, one student answered FISH by which, apparently, he meant first-in-still-here. Your class member, Michael Weiksner, the head T.A. this year, had given this student full credit for this answer. So I'm like: "But how could you, Mike? That answer is totally dumb!" And he's like: "It totally is not dumb! Under FIFO and LIFO the merchandise is gone; you've lost it. Under FISH you've still got it. I think still got it is better than lost it, don't you agree?" Now I am really just a little country professor at a small rural college in New Jersey who never once met a payroll in his life. Therefore, Mike's reasoning did seem plausible to me. And thus we did give that fellow full credit for his weird answer, and thus he did pass the accounting course, and thus he is here with us today, rather than doing the make-up test, which is always given on Class Day.
As you can imagine, when Alexis heard that I was going to review my accounting exam with you, her heart sank and she observed delicately: "I'm sure the Class of '95 would find one more accounting lecture a real thrill; but might it not bore the parents and other guests?" I agreed, and therefore fished around for another topic.
My own three children, living experts on this sort of thing, came to the rescue. One of them suggested "Why don't you just talk a little bit about, like, entering the real world and stuff?" That struck me as a brilliant idea. And thus the formal title of my address this morning is:
LIKE, ENTERING THE REAL WORLD 'N STUFF, with particular emphasis on 'N Stuff.
The first question to be addressed in this address, of course, will be why we call the territory beyond university the "real world." Does this mean, by implication, that Princeton University is an "unreal world."
The answer, surprisingly, is "Yes." Think about what a wondrous industry higher education really is, and ask yourself if anything like it can be real. Let me count the ways:
First, we are an industry that cannot define the quantity or the value of its own output. Therefore we define our output strictly by inputs--the students' and ours. To that end we use a complex two-equation model originally developed by President Harold Shapiro, whom you heard earlier. The model has an output and a price equation. It looks like this:
[1] 30 courses + 2 Junior Papers + 1 Senior Thesis = 1 Education
[2] 1 Education = $ 100,000.
Isn't this wondrous? With output defined and priced like that, how can we ever miss?
Second, along with dentistry and gastroenterology, we are one of those few blessed industries in which the less you do for your customers, the more they love you. For example:
a. Students cheer if professors cut a 3 hour exam to 2 hours or eliminate the exam entirely or eliminate a homework assign-ment.
b. Students cheer if a professor gets stuck in a snow bank and the class is therefore canceled.
c. Princeton students love us especially because we have the shortest teaching semester in the Ivy League. And because they love us so, we can charge the highest tuition in the Ivy League. In the higher ed biz, the Law of Demand seems to be: The less you deliver, the more you can charge.
In fact, Professor Harvey Rosen of the Department of Economics has just developed an econometric model according to which, if Princeton simply canceled all classes all year, we would be so immensely popular among students that we could charge as much as $ 100,000 tuition per year. The faculty is now considering that proposal.
Finally, the higher-ed biz is one of those few wondrous industries in which the customers don't pay and those who do pay--in this case, your 'rents--haven't the foggiest idea of what is going on. They just pay and--to add insult to injury--they cannot even tax-deduct it.
[By the way, why you cannot tax-deduct college tuition is not clear to me. Perhaps one of your 'rents, a tax lawyer, can explain it to me. Consider this: if you spent $ 100,000 training a monkey to do wondrous things in a circus, you surely could amortize the cost of that training under IRS rules. If that is so, then why cannot parents who spend $ 100,000 to train a teenager to speak SAT words, to boot up a computer, and to have a thesis ready and bound on time deduct those $ 100,000 from taxable income, especially when, as every parent knows, from a strictly evolutionary perspective the distance between a monkey and a normal modern teenager is not at all that great?]
To sum up at this point: All things considered, we must conclude that higher education really is an unreal business. You should be so lucky to work in it. If you can't, you'll have to brave the real world, like high button boots or automobiles or I-banking, or stuff like that. I, for one, would find that scary.
Now, the Dean of the College may judge me a bit uncouth when I belittle in this way Princeton's stunning contribution to your personal evolution. But surely you, the brilliant Class of '95, fully realize that I was merely jesting.
In fact, the Dean's office can and regularly does document very carefully the magnificent contribution Princeton makes to its students' personal growth. At the risk of leaking confidential data, I have xeroxed and distributed to you today the highly sensitive and confidential material the Dean presented on you at our faculty meetings. Why, these charts are so sensitive that you may not even show them to your 'rents. The Dean's office will, of course, deny that it ever produced them.
I have highly visibly labelled the first page of this handout Page 1, on the plausible hypothesis that, after Alumni Weekend and especially last night's festivities, many of you will not be able any more to distinguish the front page of a handout from its back page. Indeed, I recall that you had trouble with it even when you were (or seemed) perfectly sober.
On Page 1, then, is reproduced the Dean's report about you in September 1991, when you had just arrived on our campus. As you can see, you were then described by her as a completely Homogenius Mush of Ignorant Fresh People. The word "homo-genius," as many of you may recall, is an archaic Latin SAT word. Loosely translated into politically correct modern diction, it means "A Mensch who is a Genius," where "Mensch" is Chinese for "person."
Now you may ask me: "You mean, like, in your eyes we were just a bunch of smart ignoramuses when we got here?" The answer, I'm afraid, is: "Yes!" You certainly were a bunch of smart ignoramuses, because we carefully picked you that way, for two major reasons.
First, we wanted you ignorant, so that there was some room left for us to teach you something that you did not already know.
Second, we wanted you bright, so that you might progress intellectually in spite of our lectures.
And that you did, quite splendidly.
Turn now to Page 2 of your handout and observe what we, the faculty, have made of you, this erstwhile bunch of indistinguishably homogenius ignoramuses. You will observe that four years at Princeton have miraculously metamorphosed you into a rich tapestry of highly diverse, fully educated people, to wit:
Fully educated Geeks: 11.1%
Fully educated Policy Wonks: 12.5%
Fully educated Tigers: 61.1%
Fully educated Party Animals: 15.3%
Let us look closer at the four categories among you. Because this is Princeton, we shall start with Mount Olympus, on which reside the geeks.
Geeks are people who think deeply about everything and who invent stuff. Professors love geeks, because geeks are the professors' mirror image. In fact, you cannot teach at Princeton unless you are a geek.
When I came to Princeton, for example, the first question I was asked by the Dean of the Faculty was this: "Are you a practical person?" I knew better than to say yes; it would have been the end of me. The Dean of the Faculty then confided in me saying:
"We were watching you parallel-parking your car and you were doing so well that we were, quite frankly, worried about your prospects here until quite absent-mindedly you busted your tail light on that fire hydrant. Then we knew, right away, that you are one of us."
By their very nature, geeks cannot help but think deeply about everything. Not long ago, for example, my family and I were riding in a rental car along Interstate H1 on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. Everyone but I in the family had a splendid time. Eventually my children shouted in unison: "Earth to Daddy! Earth to Daddy! What, pray tell, is your problem?" My problem was this: I could not understand what Hawaii is doing with an Interstate Highway? To what other state does it lead?
By the way, I have the same problem with thermos flasks. I put in iced tea, because I want it kept cool, and the flask keeps it cool. I put in hot coffee to keep it hot, and the flask keeps it hot. Most ordinary people simply take that for granted and think thermos flasks are neat. Not a geek. A geek instinctively is driven to query: How does that flask know what I want?
Eight thousand or so years ago some pre-historic geek started wondering whether, for any positive integer N, one could always find real numbers a, b and c such that the equation aN = bN + cN held. Thousands of years later, in the 6th century B.C., a Greek geek named Pythagoras figured out that it does work for N = 2. He discovered the Pythagorean Theorem. And wouldn't you know it, ever since that time geeks all over the world have tried to figure out whether it also works for 3, 4, and so on up. Geeks find this a real turn-on. A few hundred years ago a French geek by the name of Fermat wrote in the margin of a paper that he had figured it all out, but he would not tell how. That really got the geeks going. Finally, a year ago Professor Wiles of Princeton's Department of Mathematics proved what had eluded other geeks through the millennia: that it does not work for any integer greater than 2. Therefore, mark this in your Class's history book: This (for geeks) earth-shaking event took place while you were here! You were part of it.
Now, we tend to make sport of geeks, because they seem so other-world oriented. In fact however, they really are really quite practical, only at a higher level. Many of the good things in life that we enjoy today came from the playful inquiries of some geek, like that Greek geek Pythagoras and his wondrous theorem, without which you could not win points on the SAT tests today, or like Faraday who unleashed wondrous things rubbing amber against wool, or like the geniuses who invented the transistor and the computer.
Therefore, you should salute the geeks among you. You should see to it that this nation always supports them well with research funds. You should pay them well for their deep thoughts, so that their children may go to Princeton as well. And, above all, you should respect them, always. Geeks spell human progress!
As Page 2 of the handout shows, about 138 of you are policy wonks. Formally, the dictionary defines a wonk as "a geek who can get dates." Mention the word "date" to a geek and he or she thinks of something that is growing on trees and is in need of further study. Mention the word "date" to a wonk and he or she knows that it's something you do.
At Princeton, most policy wonks tend to gravitate toward the Woodrow Wilson School, where they become the famous (some would say infamous) Woody Woos. You can find them there late at night, segregated into couplets, poring intently over computer simulations of optimal effluent-taxes and stuff like that. Every so often they will stop to take a sip of the wine they have mooched earlier off one of those highly liquid faculty gatherings. At such moments the little wonks look deeply into each others eyes and sigh contentedly:
"Oh, how totally romantic! Here we are, just you and me, partaking of Jove's Nectar, and controlling the nation's toxic waste!"
Wonks call that a "date."
Half the policy wonks at Princeton are Liberals. Liberals, as you know, are people who get their kicks from redistributing other peoples' income. All of them want to grow up to be like Hillary and Bill Clinton, sitting in the White House and trying to be policy relevant.
The other fifty percent of Princeton Policy wonks are Conservatives. They get their kicks out of cutting other peoples federal subsidies except, of course, their own. Conservative policy wonks all want to be like Newt Gingrich, that is, they want to be omnipotent. Some of them even want to be like Senator Jesse Helms who, for very personal reasons, just introduced legislation to make Pakistan and India one country. He'd find it less confusing, says he, and right he is!
Like the geeks, the policy wonks among you deserve our love and our respect. You can make sport of the wonks now, but you will need them in your time! At the moment, America is in one of its many adolescent wonk-hating phases. If you come to think of it, however, you'd hate to live in a world without some wonks trying to take a view beyond the proverbial bottom line, on the belief that a civilized society is more than the mere sum of its profit-maximizing parts.
Indeed, if you love the free market, you had better know that a freely competitive market will stay so only if some well educated civil servants, i.e., wonks, watch over it all the time and act as conscientious referees to keep the market game fair and civilized. I hope that we have taught you that much.
Back now to the chart on Page 2 of the handout. You will notice there that close to 700 of you are Tigers. Ask a Tiger why she or he chose to come to Princeton, and they'll answer: "Because this is Princeton! Thomas Jefferson went here." Tell them that Jefferson did not go to Princeton and they'll huff: "Well, he, like, should have!"
Tigers always come to class, boring or not, and they always attend every precept, boring or not, because that is the Princeton thing to do. Tigers always hand in their senior thesis on time, and they proudly emboss it with the words "Deus Sub Numine Viget." They look askance at anyone who does not know what that means which, I am afraid, includes me and many other professors educated at lesser institutions. Tigers think such people should have gone to Yale or stuff.
Unlike policy wonks, Tigers rarely gravitate toward the Woodrow Wilson School or toward government. They do so only under duress--as did Princeton's George Shultz--to clean up some perceived mess they believe the wonks have made. More typically, Tigers go directly to the private sector, where they quickly prosper and then hire lobbyists to manipulate the government from the outside. In the process, Tigers make tons of money which, fortunately for us, they share generously with their alma mater, but on the condition that none of the money be used to change Princeton from the way it was. Money should earn dividends and interest, they believe; it should not be used to destroy the status quo.
You can always tell a Tiger from the rest of humankind, for they always sport an upbeat smile. The only time Tigers are not smiling occurs when someone does change something at Princeton, or when they write impassioned letters to the Princeton Alumni Weekly over wayward professors with improper thoughts.
As far as Princeton is concerned, Tigers make the world go round. All of Princeton lives for, and off, its Tigers. Princeton loves them and they love Princeton. Just think about it: without Tigers, we could not even have a P-rade, because
1. the geeks just can't ever find the place where the P-rade is being held
2. the policy wonks find the P-rade policy-irrelevant and therefore avoid it, and
3. the party animals love the P-rade but regularly miss it, because for them the P-rade starts in the middle of what they call night.
Which brings me to that most peculiar of species: the world-famous Princeton Party Animal. Turn again to Page 2 of your handout, and behold their numbers!
On weird commands permanently programmed into their DNA, Princeton Party Animals operate on what one may call a Sino-Synchronous sleep cycle, which means:
they are wide awake when the people of China are awake and America sleeps; they are asleep when the people of China sleep and when America is awake.
Biological theory has it that, if we shipped the Party Animals to China, they would fit right in and be fully functional.
Party animals usually do not come to class or, if they do, they apologize profusely on the instinctive thought that they must have stumbled inadvertently upon a Quaker meeting. After all, since President Shapiro's infamous keg-ban, all of Princeton's class rooms are now totally dry. Party Animals are spooked by kegless rooms.
Towards the end of the semester, Party Animals sometimes visit their professors, to impress upon them their newfound interest in scholarship. Often they arrive one week before final exams, to complain that the U Store is, "like, out of textbooks." Evidently, they are seeking to get a head start in the course.
But although Party Animals strike geek professors as totally weird, we nevertheless love them and even admire them.
First, let's be honest about it. They marvelously entertain the rest of us in this utterly tranquil and dreary town, in which the recovery of a stray dog makes headlines in Town Topics. Often I myself sneak into the Tiger Inn on Saturday nights there to get some free entertainment. How do I, the ancient one (as my children call me) slip by the door, you may query. Simple. For starters, I won't shave all week. Next, I sport a white baseball cap that has been repeatedly rubbed through the mud. I put it on backwards. Third, I put on one of those Buttface and Beaver T-shirts with a slogan such as Knowledge is Stupid on it. Finally, wearing my son's ancient sneakers--retired now because they violate New Jersey's Clean Air Act--and sporting a Rolling Rock beer in each hand, I look every inch the perfect Tiger Inmate. The door guards take one look at me and nod: "He's one of us. Let him in." (By the way, that's the best way to bicker at TI.) Thus I enter, and behold the spectacle before me: Princeton's own internal zoo.
Second, however, we must admire the Party Animals, because somehow through all their mysterious antics they did manage to get educated here at Princeton, by a process that is as yet ill understood, even by anthropologists who specialize in exotic tribes. Like the rest of you, the Party Animals did do their 30 courses, their 2 Junior Papers and their Senior Thesis which, according to equation [1] above, does equal 1 Princeton Education. We must admire them for that feat, won't you agree, especially because many people would have great trouble doing it even if they were always sober.
Frankly, I can hardly wait for the Party Animals to come back for reunions.
So there you have it, parents, grandparents and other distinguished guests at these proceedings: I present to you one more of Princeton's contributions to the world: our 1995 crop of geeks, wonks, Tigers and Party Animals, all of them certified now as properly "educated."
Which, all kidding and roasting aside, they truly are, after having navigated this university's quite rigorous courses and distribution requirements. In fact, we the faculty and the administration are fully aware that with our work we were merely trying to shape our own social security, so to speak. We have been investing in our own future, for you, the Class of '95, will now go forth to steel yourself some more at work and in further education, so that eventually you may lead this great country or some other country in the quite uncertain journey that lies ahead of us. And as things now look, it is not likely to be an easy journey. We, your parents, had a much easier ride--perhaps too easy a ride.
Those among the Class of '95 who had joined me in this or that course I taught know that I tend to divide the world of contemporaries into three generations: The Iwo Jima Generation (roughly, your grandparents), the Pepsi Generation (roughly, my own and your parents' generation, otherwise known as the "Babyboomers") and the X Generation (roughly, your generation, where X denotes that we do not yet know how to stereotype you).
You also know from my lectures that I consider the Iwo Jima Generation of Americans "totally, totally awesome!" They grew up in the Great Depression, won a glorious and gracious victory in World War II, used their vision and their wealth to make much of the world safe for democracy and economic prosperity, begot the Babyboom (your parents) and housed, fed and educated their offspring better than had ever been done before in history. Furthermore, I have the impression that they tended to appreciate more than does my own generation that Honor and Shame are useful social regulators in a civilized society.
We of the Pepsi Generation, the Babyboomers, were not made of inherently inferior human fiber. We are what the Chinese call "mah, mah--hoo, hoo" (horse, horse--tiger, tiger), which means that, as generations go, we are ok, but not particularly distinguished. It is precisely because the Iwo Jima Generation spoiled us so that we were not much challenged in major ways (except those of our generation who fought in Vietnam or elsewhere). Thus spoiled and coddled, we the Pepsi Generation grew up to be a bit complacent, a bit petulant and, frankly, more than a little bit selfish. We are the people who somehow cannot balance the federal budget, because we constantly implore government to direct more and more public funds our way, all the while insisting that taxes be cut. For fifteen years now we have boldly promised to balance the federal budget--"five years from now"--only to pile billions upon billions a year upon the public debt. Indeed, so garrulous and querulous are we that we cannot even agree how to define the budget that we promise to balance--"5 to 7 years from now." Fiscal probity in public affairs just isn't our thing.
Nor does saving seem to be our thing. Look up the United States Statistical Abstract. You will find that our national savings ratio--the percent of gross national product (GNP) set aside for the replacement of capital and new capital--now stands at a historical low, certainly within this century, and that it is also the lowest in the industrialized world. The percentage of the GNP we save is simply not enough to cover (a) the total amount of private investment in business and housing we want to make plus (b) the huge government deficits we prefer to run year after year. And where does the balance come from? We borrow it from abroad, year after year, to the tune of hundreds of billions a year. Your generation will be left to service that accumulating external debt.
Worst of all, we of the Pepsi Generation seem to have lost some of our earlier capacity for moral indignation. Our moral senses seem to have atrophied since the 1960s and 1970s. For example, when our politicians (including U.S. presidents), or our business leaders and other leaders blatantly lie to our faces, we tend to shrug it off as "politics" or "business" or something like that. As we had noted in class, we do not mind it when General Motors presents to its shareholders annual reports it knows to be totally at variance with the truth. We honor politicians who win by smearing honorable opponents. The statement "I did nothing wrong" no longer seems to have anything to do with right or wrong, but only with how clever a lawyer we can afford.
I hope that you, the graduating Class of '95, who now embark on the path toward future leadership, can rediscover a proper sense of civilized, moral outrage. I hope that your generation will not tolerate lying politicians or business leaders, and that these leaders will resign once again over matters of honor and shame, as they now need not do because we, the Pepsi Generation, do not hold them to any such standard.
I also hope that your generation will try to observe better fiscal prudence in managing your own family's and your nation's resources. Save more and borrow less abroad or, if you do borrow abroad, make sure that those funds are used to invest in your country's future and not just in today's consumption.
And, finally, I hope that you will learn to judge this nation's progress not only by our average economic performance indicators--for example, GNP per capita--but also by the variances around these averages, because these variances can cause lethal social stress that can be just as dangerous to our nation's safety and integrity as can be an external aggressor.
As you may have read in the papers recently, the nation's income distribution has spread remarkably in the last twenty years. The United States now has the most unequal distribution of income and wealth in the industrialized world. It is no one's fault really. It is merely the byproduct of moving to a freely competitive global market in which mere brawn and muscle fetch a low price. Alas, we have no idea what it means to have such a wide distribution of economic privilege among a people packed tightly into the same geography, among a people fully apprised of one another's lifestyles through modern communication, and among a people that is now armed to the teeth. At this time, some 200 million guns are said to be on the loose in this country, and thousands more are produced and imported every month, often of the most obscenely lethal variety. At this time, too, you can obtain the recipe for a murderously lethal bomb on the Internet. To be sure, these guns and recipes are expressions of our personal freedom. But at what price do we buy this freedom now, and is it worth that price? Your generation will have to sort out that thorny question, because the fallout from our spreading income distribution and our internal arms race will hit you more than it hits us now.
As my colleague Professor John DiJulio, a nationally recognized expert on crime, recently observed, we seem to be powerless at this time to stop a predictable increase in violent crime in the next two decades. We shall probably not be able to stop the spill-over of violent crime from the inner city into our hitherto secure suburbs. As my colleague warns us soberly: "In violent crime, the worst is surely yet to come." That alarming prospect will be part of your heritage, along with the many blessings our generation has bestowed on you. Your World War may not be inter-national; it may be intra-national, like scenes from The Mad Max.
How will you cope with this troublesome legacy? I hope you will do better, much better, than my own generation did and does. I do not wish to alarm you unduly. None of the problems I alluded to are beyond resolution by a people with vision, courage and imagination, and this country traditionally has had these, when seriously challenged.
And what does that vision entail? Well, some time ago I asked a rabbi who struck me as very wise what makes for a strong, vibrant and lasting culture, such as his own. He told me that it is quite simple, really:
A culture will be vibrant, strong and lasting if every decision a generation faces is washed by one fundamental question: What will it do to or for our grandchildren?
Always remember the words of that wise rabbi, my friends. Take a very long run view. In the conduct of your generation's affairs, think about your grandchildren, always. Thus you will do well by your own family, by your own country, and by the world we all share.
Writing about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War in his The Wind, the Sand and the Stars, Antoine de Saint Exupery--perhaps better known to you as the author of The Little Prince--talks about the excitement that a flock of wild geese flying overhead can spark in the hearts of domesticated geese that usually are content merely to flap their wings in futile, heroic gestures, without ever taking off. One in a while, however, the excitement is such that even domesticated geese will be moved to take off. This imagery makes me think, once again, of your grandparents, the Iwo Jima Generation, who soared like wild geese when called upon, and of us, the Pepsi Generation who, with the exception of a few, are the contentedly domesticated geese and, finally, of you, the so-called X Generation. I urge you to listen to and read about the exploits of your grandparents, the wild geese of our century. Let their example inspire you to take off some day, to soar like eagles, and from that lofty purview to regain the broader vision which they knew and fought for, and of which the rabbi spoke. Think long term. And think big!
We the faculty and the administration of Princeton University hope that, in some small way, we have helped prepare you for that difficult feat. And you had better achieve it! We expect to read great things about you, decades hence, when we shall be tottering along the beaches at Martha's Vineyard or in other soothing climes.
In one of his songs, the contemporary artist Lyle Lovett laments both pitiably and pitifully, as only a bereaved macho-man can, "She's leaving me, because she really wants to!" I suspect he wrote that song about Julia Roberts who, my daughter tells me, dumped him.
Forgive us if we, at Princeton, feel a little bit like Lyle Lovett on this particular occasion. You are leaving us, my friends, because you really want to. We cannot understand why you would want to, and we simply refuse to say "Good Bye!" Let us, instead, send you off with a heartfelt
Au revoir, or
Auf Wiedersehn, or
Hasta La Vista, or
Dzie Dzjien, or
Sayonara, or
Daswidonia...
and so on, all of which, of course, are just particular ways of saying what we feel deep down at this moment:
See you later, dear friends.
We hope it will be often,
and we hope it will be soon!
