This is the month when many of my colleagues will be addressing the Graduating Class of 2007. If they have not already written their speech yet, here’s my advice: don’t spell.
Mostly, graduation speeches are pretty forgettable. (Best line of this graduation season belongs to the Governor: “I have forgotten every word that was spoken at all my graduations, and I was the speaker at one of them.”)
But of the (many) cap and gown events I’ve endured, only two rise to the level of off-the-charts bad. Both were absolutely memorable, but not in the way the speaker would have hoped. And both involved the unfortunate rhetorical decision to organize the speech around the spelling of a word.Â
My own graduation (back in the Pleistocene Era) was one. Unfortunately for all of us, the speaker chose to base his speech on the letters in the name of our high school. Sadly, that was Watertown. W-A-T-E-R-T-O-W-N. Yes, NINE key points, including two that began with the letter “W.”
There are not two memorable things in the entire world that begin with “W.”
And of course, he droned on and on. It wasn’t a graduation, it was a hostage release. We finally crawled out of there about dawn.
Sara’s graduation from Princeton was a multi-day affair. (I guess they really wanted those grads to feel they’d gotten their money’s worth.)
One of the many speakers was e Bay’s Meg Whitman. Logical choice: member of the graduating class 25 years earlier who had just given about a gazillion dollars to the college.
And it could have been good. Except she chose to organize her speech around the word Liberty. Which she spelled “L-I-B-E-R-T-R” . . .
Believe me, an audience of Princeton grads is not the forum in which you want to misspell a word like liberty. “I think that second ‘R’ is silent,” the kids said gamely.
So here’s my advice. Have three key points. Four max. But no spelling. Trust me in this.
Perhaps the worst is when you are a musician. I’ve had to play at so many graduations (I’m a saxophonist) that I’ve essentially memorized any piece that might even be considered for performance at a ceremony. It gets to the point were you’ll often hear members of the band trying to work out some improve that fits into the music somehow.
The most memorable-bad commencement speech I’ve ever attended was at the University of Richmond a few years ago. The speaker was an executive at Google who had majored in something decidedly un-technical and not at all business-oriented which I’m sure was NOT philosophy while she was an undergrad at UR. Her initial comments were actually pretty appropos for the audience, but the part that stuck with me came towards the end as she came to wax philosophic about how her unlikely career at Google had emotionally brought her full circle. “Because in the end, aren’t we all a little like Google?” she asked the graduates. “Aren’t we all here each of us, searching for something relentlessly until we finally find it–before we go off searching for something else?”
I know Governor Kaine may think these things aren’t memorable, but after throwing up in my mouth a little bit, I’m going to remember the question “Aren’t we all a little like Google?” for the rest of my life. :)
Eric, that is truly a head-slapper. Sorry I missed it. And Bryan, how many versions of “Seasons of Love” HAVE you endured?