It's that time of year when perfect strangers feel entitled to give out advice to thousands of people they don't know and likely won't ever meet again. You know: Wear sunscreen. Don't sweat the small stuff. Watch a movie with subtitles at least once a year, and we don't mean one of the "Star Trek" movies, where the subtitles are translating the Klingon dialogue.

In another words, it's graduation season. Last night, Corvallis High School and Crescent Valley High School graduated hundreds of seniors into their new lives.

Philomath High School graduated its seniors on Saturday. Other area high schools have been cuing up "Pomp and Circumstance" over the course of the past week or so. Oregon State University wraps up the graduation schedule in the mid-valley on Sunday with a bang: Assuming all graduate candidates pass, it will be OSU's largest graduating class, 4,365 strong, in history.

As the years pass, dear graduates, chances are good that you will not remember any of the advice handed down by the various

luminaries who have been invited to address your class. In fact, you'll be ahead of the game if you can even remember the name of the person who addressed your class.

So it is presumptuous of us at best to weigh in with our own thoughts - but, since editorial pages are always a bit presumptuous to begin with, and because graduation time always fills us with a curious mixture of optimism, nostalgia and hope - here we go anyway:

Class of 2008, we have left you quite a pile of messes to clean up. Better get on that right away.

Fortunately for us, you are part of a generation that always has put a premium on community service; it is our fervent hope that continues. We need you to engage on every level, from worldwide right on down to neighborhood-wide. Remember that the contributions you make on the neighborhood level can be just as important and long-lasting as your work to improve the world.

As you mark the end of your high school or college careers, dear graduates, do not for a second believe that your days of learning are over. If there's any lesson that our high-tech, always-on, increasingly flat world teaches us, it's this: We stop learning at our own substantial risk. With any luck, you encountered a teacher or two or three who helped stoke your own fires of curiosity: Keep those fires burning. If you keep asking the tough questions - and, when in doubt, "why" always is a good place to start - you will always continue learning.

Those are all the big ideas we want to burden you with this morning. But please accept our congratulations as you move into the next phases of your lives. Please accept our thanks for the ways you already have enriched our lives. And remember that there is some value in the small ideas as well: For example, it turns out that it IS a good idea to wear some sunscreen.