Our elite college graduates know how to imitate, but they don’t know how to be independent.

I have given up on being able to properly pronounce the last name of today’s guest writer. But anytime I see the byline William Deresiewicz I make sure to read very carefully. He first came on my radar through friends who raved about him as a professor at Yale. But Deresiewicz separated himself from that herd when he wrote the book “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life,” which presaged so much of what we see today—and what he writes about, in part, in the essay below.

Keep an eye peeled for Deresiewicz’s new book, “The End of Solitude: Selected Essays on Culture and Society,” which will be out this August. — BW

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