Greg Mankiw referred to his comencement address the other day. He said in part:

It is an honor to be able to speak to you today. When Mr. Conrad invited me, he suggested that maybe, as a professional economist, I could talk with you about the future economy that you will soon be entering and in which you will be spending your lives. It is true that as an economist, I know precisely what the future holds. But union rules prevent me from sharing that knowledge with the general public. So we economists usually just make stuff up, and it often turns out to be wrong. I won’t burden you with those made-up stories today.

The whole thing can be found through this link and is excellent and perhaps a little sad as the opportunities for mixing in the right community may not be as available to most of us as it was to him but partly that also depends on the individual. His point that community is important is a good one. We should treasure them.