Ben Stein gets ready for his own procession at the Shoemaker Center. Behind him is UC Trustee Jeff Wyler. (Glenn Hartong photos) | ZOOM |

        University of Cincinnati's 2002 spring commencement on Friday had it all: a joke about its hometown rival; a TV game-show host; and a mid-ceremony explosion of beach balls, Silly String and confetti.

        About 9,000 people jammed Shoemaker Center for the annual event at which school officials awarded more than 4,000 degrees.

        Ben Stein from the game show Win Ben Stein's Money kicked off his commencement address by poking fun at Xavier University and reciting a poem he wrote to this year's graduating class.

        In his famously deadpan voice, he offered students light-hearted advice on “How to Ruin Your Life.”

        “Assume you are the center of the universe,” he said in his tennis shoes and tilted cap to laughter and applause. “God went away on vacation and left you in charge.”

With a kiss for her mother, Delores Cornist, new graduate Michelle Miller, 39, of Springfield Township prepares to take the Pomp and Circumstance walk at UC Friday. | ZOOM |

        But Mr. Stein, who received an honorary doctorate of humane letters, also told student some things he wished he'd been told at their age.

        “Be grateful about the things you have by virtue of being American,” he said. Freedom of religion. Antibiotics. Great cars.

        “We owe gratitude to our parents, our grandparents, our teachers, our friends,” he said, later adding, “I don't know what the stock market will do. ... I know what the returns on my investments with my family will be.”

        Shadaia Gooden, 23 of Youngstown had plenty of family in town to share her excitement. The electrical engineering graduate will head to University of Pennsylvania in the fall for law school.

        “Engineering is five years so it has been a long road,” she said. “It'll be worth it. There's a lot to be proud of.”

        Jason Clanin, 22, a mechanical engineering graduate from LaGrange, Ohio, summed it up. “I'm just glad to get it over with. It took five years. I'm working full-time Monday with Cinergy.”

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