Micah Davis (written by Elias Peters): Charles D. Owen High School - 2017

10 June 2017, Charles.D.Owen High School, Black Mountain, North Carolina, USA

Barack Obama: “This is your generation’s world to shape”, Virtual Commencement speech - 2020

17 May 2020

Hi, everybody. Aniyah, thank you for that beautiful introduction. I could not be prouder of everything you’ve done in your time with the Obama Foundation.

And of course, I couldn’t be prouder of all of you in the graduating Class of 2020 — as well as the teachers, and the coaches, and most of all, parents and family who guided have you along the way.

Now graduating is a big achievement under any circumstances. Some of you have had to overcome serious obstacles along the way, whether it was an illness, or a parent losing a job, or living in a neighborhood where people too often count you out. Along with the usual challenges of growing up, all of you have had to deal with the added pressures of social media, reports of school shootings, and the specter of climate change. And then, just as you’re about to celebrate having made it through, just as you’ve been looking forward to proms and senior nights, graduation ceremonies — and, let’s face it, a whole bunch of parties — the world is turned upside down by a global pandemic. And as much as I’m sure you love your parents, I’ll bet that being stuck at home with them and playing board games or watching Tiger King on TV is not exactly how you envisioned the last few months of your senior year.

Now I’ll be honest with you — the disappointments of missing a live graduation — those will pass pretty quick. I don’t remember much from my own high school graduation. I know that not having to sit there and listen to a commencement speaker isn’t all that bad — mine usually go on way too long. Also, not that many people look great in those caps, especially if you have big ears like me. And you’ll have plenty of time to catch up with your friends once the immediate public health crisis is over.

But what remains true is that your graduation marks your passage into adulthood — the time when you begin to take charge of your own life. It’s when you get to decide what’s important to you: the kind of career you want to pursue. Who you want to build a family with. The values you want to live by. And given the current state of the world, that may be kind of scary.

If you’d planned on going away for college, getting dropped off at campus in the fall — that’s no longer a given. If you were planning to work while going to school, finding that first job is going to be tougher. Even families that are relatively well-off are dealing with massive uncertainty. Those who were struggling before — they’re hanging on by a thread.

All of which means that you’re going to have to grow up faster than some generations. This pandemic has shaken up the status quo and laid bare a lot of our country’s deep-seated problems — from massive economic inequality to ongoing racial disparities to a lack of basic health care for people who need it. It’s woken a lot of young people up to the fact that the old ways of doing things just don’t work; that it doesn’t matter how much money you make if everyone around you is hungry and sick; and that our society and our democracy only work when we think not just about ourselves, but about each other.

It’s also pulled the curtain back on another hard truth, something that we all have to eventually accept once our childhood comes to an end. All those adults that you used to think were in charge and knew what they were doing? Turns out that they don’t have all the answers. A lot of them aren’t even asking the right questions. So, if the world’s going to get better, it going to be up to you.

That realization may be kind of intimidating. But I hope it’s also inspiring. With all the challenges this country faces right now, nobody can tell you “no, you’re too young to understand” or “this is how it’s always been done.” Because with so much uncertainty, with everything suddenly up for grabs, this is your generation’s world to shape.

Since I’m one of the old guys, I won’t tell you what to do with this power that rests in your hands. But I’ll leave you with three quick pieces of advice.

First, don’t be afraid. America’s gone through tough times before — slavery, civil war, famine, disease, the Great Depression and 9/11. And each time we came out stronger, usually because a new generation, young people like you, learned from past mistakes and figured out how to make things better.

Second, do what you think is right. Doing what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy — that’s how little kids think. Unfortunately, a lot of so-called grown-ups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way — which is why things are so screwed up.

I hope that instead, you decide to ground yourself in values that last, like honesty, hard work, responsibility, fairness, generosity, respect for others. You won’t get it right every time, you’ll make mistakes like we all do. But if you listen to the truth that’s inside yourself, even when it’s hard, even when its inconvenient, people will notice. They’ll gravitate towards you. And you’ll be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

And finally, build a community. No one does big things by themselves. Right now, when people are scared, it’s easy to be cynical and say let me just look out for myself, or my family, or people who look or think or pray like me. But if we’re going to get through these difficult times; if we’re going to create a world where everybody has the opportunity to find a job, and afford college; if we’re going to save the environment and defeat future pandemics, then we’re going to have to do it together. So be alive to one another’s struggles. Stand up for one another’s rights. Leave behind all the old ways of thinking that divide us — sexism, racial prejudice, status, greed — and set the world on a different path.

When you need help, Michelle and I have made it the mission of our Foundation to give young people like you the skills and support to lead in your own communities, and to connect you with other young leaders around the country and around the globe.

But the truth is that you don’t need us to tell you what to do.

Because in so many ways, you’ve already started to lead.

Congratulations, Class of 2020. Keep making us proud.

Barack Obama: 'This was a school where only about half the kids made it to graduation', Booker T Washington High School - 2011

16 May 2011, Booker T Washington High School, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

The school was the winner of the 2011 Commencement Challenge contest.

Thank you very much, everybody. (Applause.) Everybody, please have a seat. Thank you, Chris. Hello, Memphis! (Applause.) Congratulations to the class of 2011! (Applause.)

Now, I will admit being President is a great job. (Laughter.) I have a very nice plane. (Laughter.) I have a theme song. (Laughter.) But what I enjoy most is having a chance to come to a school like Booker T. Washington High School and share this day with its graduates. (Applause.) So I could not be more pleased to be here.

We’ve got some wonderful guests who are here as well, and I just want to make mention of them very quickly. First of all, the Governor of Tennessee, Bill Haslam, is here. Please give him a big round of applause. (Applause.) Three outstanding members of the Tennessee congressional delegation, all of whom care deeply about education — Senator Bob Corker, Senator Lamar Alexander, and Congressman Steve Cohen is here. (Applause.) You’ve got one of Memphis’s own, former Congressman Harold Ford, Jr. is in the house. (Applause.) And the Mayor of Memphis, A.C. Wharton is here. Please give him a big round of applause. (Applause.)

I am so proud of each and every one of you.

STUDENT: Thank you!

THE PRESIDENT: You’re welcome. You made it — and not just through high school. You made it past Principal Kiner. (Laughter and applause.) I’ve spent a little bit of time with her now, and you can tell she is not messing around. (Laughter.) I’ve only been in Memphis a couple of hours, but I’m pretty sure that if she told me to do something I’d do it. (Laughter.)

Then I had the chance to meet her mom and her daughter, Amber, a little while back, and we took a picture. It turns out Amber actually goes to another high school. She was worried that the boys would be afraid to talk to her if her mom was lurking in the hallways — (laughter) — which is why my next job will be principal at Sasha and Malia’s high school. (Laughter and applause.) And then I’ll be president of their college. (Laughter.)

Let me also say to Alexis and Vashti — I heard that you were a little nervous about speaking today, but now I’m a little nervous speaking after you, because you both did terrific jobs. (Applause.) We’ve had some great performances by Shalonda and Tecia and Paula, and the jazz band. Give them a big round of applause. (Applause.)

Last but not least, I want to recognize all the people who helped you to reach this milestone: the parents, the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles, the sisters, the brothers, the friends, the neighbors — (applause) — who have loved you and stood behind you every step of the way. Congratulations, family.

And I want to acknowledge the devoted teachers and administrators at Booker T. Washington, who believed in you — (applause) — who kept the heat on you, and have never treated teaching as a job, but rather as a calling.

Every commencement is a day of celebration. I was just telling somebody backstage, I just love commencements. I get all choked up at commencements. So I can tell you already right now, I will cry at my children’s commencement. I cry at other people’s commencements. (Laughter.) But this one is especially hopeful. This one is especially hopeful because some people say that schools like BTW just aren’t supposed to succeed in America. You’ll hear them say, “The streets are too rough in those neighborhoods.” “The schools are too broken.” “The kids don’t stand a chance.”

We are here today because every single one of you stood tall and said, “Yes, we can.” (Applause.) Yes, we can learn. Yes, we can succeed. You decided you would not be defined by where you come from but by where you want to go, by what you want to achieve, by the dreams you hope to fulfill.

Just a couple of years ago, this was a school where only about half the students made it to graduation. For a long time, just a handful headed to college each year. But at Booker T. Washington, you changed all that.

You created special academies for ninth graders to start students off on the right track. You made it possible for kids to take AP classes and earn college credits. You even had a team take part in robotics competition so students can learn with their hands by building and creating. And you didn’t just create a new curriculum, you created a new culture — a culture that prizes hard work and discipline; a culture that shows every student here that they matter and that their teachers believe in them. As Principal Kiner says, the kids have to know that you care, before they care what you know. (Applause.)

And because you created this culture of caring and learning, today we’re standing with a very different Booker T. Washington High School. Today, this is a place where more than four out of five students are earning a diploma; a place where 70 percent of the graduates will continue their education; where many will be the very first in their families to go to college. (Applause.)

Today, Booker T. Washington is a place that has proven why we can’t accept excuses — any excuses — when it comes to education. In the United States of America, we should never accept anything less than the best that our children have to offer.

As your teacher Steve McKinney — where’s Steve at? There he is. (Applause.) AKA Big Mac. (Laughter.) And I see why they call you Big Mac. (Laughter.) As Mr. McKinney said in the local paper, “We need everyone to broaden their ideas about what is possible. We need parents, politicians, and the media to see how success is possible, how success is happening every day.”

So that’s why I came here today. Because if success can happen here at Booker T. Washington, it can happen anywhere in Memphis. (Applause.) And if it can happen in Memphis, it can happen anywhere in Tennessee. And it can happen anywhere in Tennessee, it can happen all across America. (Applause.)

So ever since I became President, my administration has been working hard to make sure that we build on the progress that’s taking place in schools like this. We’ve got to encourage the kind of change that’s led not by politicians, not by Washington, D.C., but by teachers and principals and parents, and entire communities; by ordinary people standing up and demanding a better future for their children.

We have more work to do so that every child can fulfill his or her God-given potential. And here in Tennessee we’ve been seeing great progress. Tennessee has been a leader, one of the first winners of the nationwide “Race to the Top” that we’ve launched to reward the kind of results you’re getting here at Booker T. Washington.

And understand, this isn’t just an issue for me. I’m standing here as President because of the education that I received. As Chris said, my father left my family when I was two years old. And I was raised by a single mom, and sometimes she struggled to provide for me and my sister. But my mother, my grandparents, they pushed me to excel. They refused to let me make excuses. And they kept pushing me, especially on those rare occasions where I’d slack off or get into trouble. They weren’t that rare, actually. (Laughter.) I’m sure nobody here has done anything like that. (Laughter.)

I’m so blessed that they kept pushing; I’m so lucky that my teachers kept pushing — because education made all the difference in my life. The same is true for Michelle. Education made such a difference in her life. Michelle’s dad was a city worker, had multiple sclerosis, had to wake up every day and it took him a couple hours just to get ready for work. But he went to work every day. Her mom was a secretary, went to work every day, and kept on pushing her just like my folks pushed me.

That’s what’s made a difference in our lives. And it’s going to make an even greater difference in your lives — not just for your own success but for the success of the United States of America. Because we live in a new world now. Used to be that you didn’t have to have an education. If you were willing to work hard, you could go to a factory somewhere and get a job. Those times are passed. Believe it or not, when you go out there looking for a job, you’re not just competing against people in Nashville or Atlanta. You’re competing against young people in Beijing and Mumbai. That’s some tough competition. Those kids are hungry. They’re working hard. And you’ll need to be prepared for it.

And as a country, we need all of our young people to be ready. We can’t just have some young people successful. We’ve got to have every young person contributing; earning those high school diplomas and then earning those college diplomas, or getting certified in a trade or profession. We can’t succeed without it.

Through education, you can also better yourselves in other ways. You learn how to learn — how to think critically and find solutions to unexpected challenges. I remember we used to ask our teachers, “Why am I going to need algebra?” Well, you may not have to solve for x to get a good job or to be a good parent. But you will need to think through tough problems. You’ll need to think on your feet. You’ll need to know how to gather facts and evaluate information. So, math teachers, you can tell your students that the President says they need algebra. (Laughter.)

Education also teaches you the value of discipline — that the greatest rewards come not from instant gratification but from sustained effort and from hard work. This is a lesson that’s especially true today, in a culture that prizes flash over substance, that tells us that the goal in life is to be entertained, that says you can be famous just for being famous. You get on a reality show — don’t know what you’ve done — suddenly you’re famous. But that’s not going to lead to lasting, sustained achievement.

And finally, with the right education, both at home and at school, you can learn how to be a better human being. For when you read a great story or you learn about an important moment in history, it helps you imagine what it would be like to walk in somebody else’s shoes, to know their struggles. The success of our economy will depend on your skills, but the success of our community will depend on your ability to follow the Golden Rule — to treat others as you would like to be treated.

We’ve seen how important this is even in the past few weeks, as communities here in Memphis and all across the South have come together to deal with floodwaters, and to help each other in the aftermath of terrible tornadoes.

All of these qualities — empathy, discipline, the capacity to solve problems, the capacity to think critically — these skills don’t just change how the world sees us. They change how we see ourselves. They allow each of us to seek out new horizons and new opportunities with confidence — with the knowledge that we’re ready; that we can face obstacles and challenges and unexpected setbacks. That’s the power of your education. That’s the power of the diploma that you receive today.

And this is something that Booker T. Washington himself understood. Think about it. He entered this world a slave on a Southern plantation. But he would leave this world as the leader of a growing civil rights movement and the president of the world-famous Tuskegee Institute.

Booker T. Washington believed that change and equality would be won in the classroom. So he convinced folks to help him buy farmland. Once he had the land, he needed a school. So he assigned his first students to actually build the chairs and the desks and even a couple of the classrooms. You thought your teachers were tough.

Booker T. Washington ran a tight ship. He’d ride the train to Tuskegee and scare some of the new students. This is before YouTube and TMZ, so the kids didn’t recognize him. (Laughter.) He’d walk up to them and say, “Oh, you’re heading to Tuskegee. I heard the work there is hard. I heard they give the students too much to do. I hear the food is terrible. You probably won’t last three months.” But the students would reply they weren’t afraid of hard work. They were going to complete their studies no matter what Booker T. Washington threw at them. And in that way, he prepared them — because life will throw some things at you.

The truth is, not a single one of the graduates here today has had it easy. Not a single one of you had anything handed to you on a silver platter. You had to work for it. You had to earn it. Most of all, you had to believe in yourselves.

I think of Chris’s stories, and what he’s faced in his life: Lost his father to violence at the age of four. Had a childhood illness that could have been debilitating. But somehow he knew in his heart that he could take a different path.

I think of all the graduates here who had to leave their homes when their apartments were torn down, but who took two buses each morning to come back to Booker T. Washington. (Applause.)

I think of Eron Jackon. Where is Eron? Eron has known a lot of setbacks in her young life. There was a period when she lashed out and she got into trouble and she made mistakes. And when she first came to Booker T. Washington, she struggled. Is that right? There are plenty of people out there who would have counted Eron out; a lot of people who would have thought of her as another statistic. But that’s not how the teachers here at Booker T. Washington saw her. And that’s not how Eron came to see herself. So she kept coming back to school, and she didn’t give up and she didn’t quit. And in time, she became a great student.

And she remembered what Principal Kiner told her: “You can’t let the past get you down. You have to let it motivate you.” And so now here Eron is, graduating. (Applause.) She’s going to keep studying to get her barber’s certificate so she can cut hair and save for college. She’s working toward her dream to becoming a lawyer. She’s got a bright future.

Everybody here has got a unique story like that to tell. Each of you knows what it took for you to get here. But in reaching this milestone, there is a common lesson shared by every graduate in this hall. And Chris said it himself in a recent interview: “It’s not where you are or what you are. It’s who you are.”

Yes, you’re from South Memphis. Yes, you’ve always been underdogs. Nobody has handed you a thing. But that also means that whatever you accomplish in your life, you will have earned it. Whatever rewards and joys you reap, you’ll appreciate them that much more because they will have come through your own sweat and tears, products of your own effort and your own talents. You’ve shown more grit and determination in your childhoods than a lot of adults ever will. That’s who you are. (Applause.)

So, class of 2011, the hard road does not end here. Your journey has just begun. Your diploma is not a free pass. It won’t protect you against every setback or challenge or mistake. You’ll make some, I promise. You’re going to have to keep working hard. You’re going to have to keep pushing yourselves. And you’ll find yourselves sometime in situations where folks have had an easier time, they’re a little bit ahead of you, and you’re going to have to work harder than they are. And you may be frustrated by that.

But if you do push yourselves, if you build on what you’ve already accomplished here, then I couldn’t be more confident about your futures. I’m hopeful and I’m excited about what all of you can achieve. And I know that armed with the skills and experience and the love that you’ve gained at Booker T. Washington High School, you’re ready to make your mark on the world.

So thank you. Thanks for inspiring me. God bless you. God bless the United States. (Applause.)

Jimmy Fallon: 'Thank you for showing me and the whole world that there is hope', Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School - 2018

3 june 2018, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,  Parkland, Florida, USA

Thank you very much. Thank you, Principal Thompson, the parents and staff, family and friends. And most of all, thank you to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Class of 2018.

When you think of commencement speakers, you think of people who are inspirational, people who are eloquent, people who have changed the world. When you think of high school students, you think of people who are a little immature and slightly awkward and still learning to be an adult. Welcome to opposite day.

Today you’re graduating from high school. You should feel incredibly proud of yourselves. That doesn’t mean you should rest on your laurels — or your yannys. Some of you will grow up to hear yanny, some of you will grow up to hear laurel. But the most important thing to know is that neither of these things will matter by the end of the summer. Here’s what will matter: You, the Class of 2018, will have graduated, and you won’t be classmates anymore. You’ll be adults who Facebook search each other at 2 in the morning for the next 10 years.

But more important than that, you’ll be out in the real world. So before you go, I wanted to share a few thoughts with you. Not advice necessarily, just a few things I’ve learned that helped me along the way. The first thing is this: When something feels hard, remember that it gets better. Choose to move forward, and don’t let anything stop you. I met many of you earlier this year at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C. It was an amazing day. Thank you for your courage and your bravery and for giving amazing speeches I could never possibly live up to. My wife and I brought our two little girls because we wanted them to see what hope and light looks like. And as I was standing there watching you guys, in awe, I was lucky enough to stand with a lot of your teachers. And let me tell you something: Your teachers are so proud of you. Really, they were like, “I taught him! I taught her! I taught them history!” And now you’re making history. It’s pretty cool. And that’s just a few of you I was able to meet. I can only imagine what the rest of this class is accomplishing and will be able to accomplish. And your teachers, everyone, they’re all so proud of you.

My teachers weren’t really proud of me like that. I wasn’t really the best student. I wouldn’t say I was dumb; I just had “other strengths.” I didn’t always feel like studying, so I had to go to summer school. My Mom and Dad were like, “Look at you, Mr. Smart Guy, huh? Now you’re going to go to summer school. How does that make you feel? Ruin your whole summer now?” It made me feel awful. I went to my bedroom. I cried. But here’s the thing, I got up and went to summer school, and I met 15 versions of myself. Everyone was funny and slightly dumb, and I loved it. I loved summer school. It was fantastic. I met my people.

So my point is — a lot of you already know this — every bad experience can have something good that comes out of. Sometimes things that seem like setbacks can take our lives in totally new directions and can change us in ways we don’t expect and they make us better and stronger. You guys have already proved that to everyone. You took something horrific, and instead of letting it stop you, you started a movement — not just here in Florida, not just in America, but throughout the whole world. The whole world has heard your voice, and that was you making a choice. That was you choosing to take something awful and using it to create change. That was you choosing hope over fear.

Another thing I want to say is: Keep making good choices. I’m not saying it because I think you need to learn it. I’m saying it because you already taught it to all of us. I can’t promise you that life will be easy, but if you make good choices and keep moving forward, I can promise you that it will get better in ways that we haven’t even thought of yet

That brings me to another thing I want to tell you guys, which is: We have no idea what the future holds, and that’s OK. Don’t get too hung up on it. My advice to you is don’t think about what you want to do. Think about why you want to do it, and the rest will figure itself out. I love what I do. I get to tell jokes and make people laugh and it’s awesome. People always ask me, “What’s the best part of your job?” And I say, “I get to make people happy.” You know, it’s great. I’ll give you an example. About six or seven months ago, I ran into this girl on the street. She came up to me and she said, “Oh I just want to let you know that I was going through a tough time. I was very depressed, and you got me through my depression. And I’ve watched all your clips on YouTube, and I just want to thank you so much for getting me through such a tough time.” And then we talked for about 20 minutes. And then she goes, “Can I get a selfie?” I go, “Yeah, of course.” So we take a selfie, and then she goes, “Can we get one more for Snapchat?” And I go, “Yeah, yeah of course.” So we take another one, and then I said goodbye to her, and as she’s leaving, she said out loud, “Oh my God, I just met Jimmy Kimmel.” The point is: I love my job, and I know I could make her laugh if she knew who I was.

A question people ask me a lot is, “What would you tell your younger self?” And there’s so many things I’d say, but the first one would be: Lay off the carbs. The second, I would say, is listen. Listen to everyone around you. Hear other voices. There are so many different voices in the world, and we’re all different voices, different flavors, different colors. But we’re all on the same rainbow. And we need red just as much as we need yellow and purple and orange and blue and green and burgundy. There’s good in everyone, so find what’s good in people. If we listen to each other, we can find it. Another thing I’d tell my younger self is: Work hard for everything. Put one foot in front of the other, and keep going — day by day, moment by moment. You always have the chance to be building something, working on something, pushing something up the hill, practicing every day — rain or shine, in the mood or not. It’s not easy, but you have to keep trying and keep failing and having goals and pushing them ahead every day.

I’d also say, take good care of yourself. Check in with yourself every day. Put your phone down, and be silent for a moment or two. And be kind, and think ahead, and have courage. Try new things. Remember the past, but don’t stay there. Honor your fellow humans. Keep laughing. Celebrate anything you can as often as you can — because it’s fun. Write letters and send them with a stamp in the mailbox. Try that. Say hello to people. Smile more often. Be kind to people who wait on your table, bag your groceries, move your furniture. And when you dance, dance from the inside.

If I could give you one last piece of advice, it would be this: Don’t ever get off your parents’ wireless plan. Ride that train as long as possible because you don’t know how expensive data is.

On our show, we write out thank you notes every Friday. For the most part, they’re funny or at least they try to be. But today, I want to say a real thank you. I want to thank you guys, personally, for showing us what it looks like to have integrity and courage and bravery in the face of terrible tragedy. Thank you for showing me and the whole world that there is hope. Most commencement speakers, they’ll get up here and they’ll talk in the future tense. “You will succeed. You will make us proud. You will change the world.” Most commencement speakers, they say, “You are the future.” But I’m not going to say that because you’re not the future. You’re the present. You are the present. You are succeeding. You are making us proud. You are changing the world. So keep changing the world, and keep making us proud. Thank you so much for having me, and congratulations to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Class of 2018.

Shaan Patel: Valedictorian dumps girlfriend on stage, Ed W. Clark High School - 2015

2015, Clark High School, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

So, I was gonna stand up here today and talk about my biggest accomplishment during high school, which most of you may already know....how I brought sexy back.

Unfortunately, that idea didn't make it past administration, so instead, I want to tell you a story about this girl I met. I've known her for four years now and she's become my best friend. Although we've had some ups and downs in our relationship, she will always be in my heart and I will never forget her.

When I first met this girl, I was unsure about how close we would eventually get. Many of my friends told me to stay away from her and instead, pursue this other girl who seemed more attractive and lived closer to home. Plus, the first few times I hung out with her, it didn't seem like she paid much attention to me because she already had so many other friends.

Nevertheless, I stuck it out through though and am glad I did, because as it turns out, I discovered that this girl is absolutely perfect for me. She has introduced me to some of my best friends. I've spent most of my life for the past four years with this girl; I've had so much fun with her. We ran joggers together, dissected cats together, had a senior barbecue, and she was even with me the night of homecoming. Sometimes, I would be with her from the early morning to late at night - four, five, even six days a week. But I've cherished every minute with this girl and I love hear with all my heart.

I could not have been happier with any other girl. However, the relationship I once had with this girl will never be the same because one week ago, she died of my life(?). This girl's name is Clark High School.

I hope my mom's blood pressure is back to normal now and so, we all share this one common best friend, Clark. She has always been there for us, unconditionally, during our times of joy, pain and excitement. Although she departed from our lives, her memory will live on. As we continue our journey through life, she shall never forget this friend, whom all of us have come to know so intimately. Remember all that she has given us, what she has taught us, the friends she introduced us to, the laughter and the happiness she has brought us.. And most important, the exceptional character she has brought out in each and every one of us.

Although I will be spending the next four years of my life with another girl, this one will always stay in my heart. And so finally, I'd like to thank God, my parents, my family, and my friends, for helping me make the decision four years ago to take the road less traveled and meet this girl. Because for me, it has made all the difference.

Jeremy Ludowyke: 'I think we need to talk about men', MHS Speech night, Principal address - 2017

28 November 2017, Melbourne, Australia

I think we need to talk about men.

It seems the world has finally had a gut full of the damage violent, abusive men do. Each day that goes by there is a new revelation in the media of their damage, particularly to women and girls.

It has been less than three months since the New York Times published allegations of sexual harassment and assault perpetrated by Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and in this time mostly women have come forward with reports of predatory sexual behaviour that run the gamut from unsolicited lewd texts to sexual assault by over 60 men in the movie industry.

There have also been allegations of sexual misconduct perpetrated by 3 of America’s past 5 Presidents. In the case of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, these allegations were widely canvassed prior to and during their election campaigns yet both were elected regardless.

Public figures who until then had been universally admired such as Rolf Harris, Bill Cosby and Jimmy Saville have been charged with systematically preying on young women and girls over decades. Their predatory behaviour was no secret to many of their colleagues yet these colleagues remained silent and allowed the abuse to continue.

This wave of disclosure and exposure exemplified by the #MeToo movement has also reached these shores, as inevitably it would and should. In the past month, 500 Australian women have come forward naming 65 men as abusers in the media industry alone. The first high profile case of Don Burke was broadly in December. No doubt here will be many more.

I have no doubt that a culture of systemic and pervasive misogynistic abuse of women is not confined to the media industry alone. Let’s consider a uniquely Victorian industry.

In the past decade, the Police have instigated investigations into sexual misconduct perpetrated by over 30 AFL footballers. Most recently this has included a Richmond player distributing an explicit image of his girlfriend to his mates immediately after the Grand Final after assuring her he had deleted it.

Earlier this year, two of the AFL’s most senior executives were sacked following revelations of predatory sexual behaviour towards young women in their workplace. This is the same workplace where a list of the Top ten hottest female staff members had been circulated amongst most of the male staff.

There are three very hard truths we must confront about this as men.

First, we can no longer dismiss this as the behaviour of a few bad apples. There is a false comfort in confining and defining this problem as the despicable acts of an evil few. If this were true we just pluck out the bad apples and the problem goes away but unfortunately the core of this evil lies much deeper.

The second hard truth is that these abuses were enabled and perpetuated by the systems of power surrounding these men. The senior managers of Children’s hospitals in the UK welcomed Jimmy Saville’s charity visits to their wards in full knowledge that he would use those visits to sexually assault the young children in their care. 

When a woman made a police report of sexual assault by an AFL footballer, senior officers intervened saying they needed to make the complaint disappear.  A young actress’s publicist sent her to Harvey Weinstein’s hotel room in full knowledge of what she would encounter, alone.

It’s not just the apples that are rotten. There is something very rotten in the systems that overtly and inadvertently protects these men and moves to marginalise and silence those who speak out. In the words of one Hollywood insider who had heard ‘stories’ about Weinstein’s predatory behaviour:

Since this story broke last week, I have been struggling with my shame. It shouldn’t matter what my place was, my level of success, my degree of power. It should only matter that I knew this was happening and I stayed silent.

We all stayed silent.

The final hard truth is that there is something rotten about the way we men think and act towards woman and the way we think and about ourselves as men.  You only have to look at the raw statistics to understand the magnitude of violence and abuse towards women in Australia.

Every week at least one Australian woman is killed by her current or former male partner. One in every 3 Australian women over the age of 15 has been physically or sexually assaulted by a man they know. Almost every Australian woman has been subjected to some form of sexual abuse or harassment.

These women are our sisters, our daughters and our mothers. But they are not defined their relations to men. They are every woman.

But there is another way of looking at these statistics.

Every week at least one Australian man kills his current or former partner. One in every 3 Australian men will physically or sexually assault a woman they know. And almost every Australian man will subject a woman to some form of sexual abuse or harassment or at least be complicit in this.

These men are our brothers, our sons and our fathers. These men are us.

To all of the men out there who want to say back that is not me, I have never done any of these things, I sincerely hope that it true. But let me ask you this.

Were you ever in a group of men when someone made a disparagingly sexist or misogynistic remark or joke about a woman?  Did you do anything about it? Did you snicker uncomfortably about it but otherwise let it pass?

Have you ever witnessed a woman being wolf whistled or leered at in public? Did you do anything about it or did you decide it wasn’t your business? Well it is your business.

I want to light upon street harassment for a minute to illustrate why it is your business and I do so deliberately because I am guessing and hoping that there are not too many wolf whistlers in this audience.

A 2015 US study found that 85% of women had experienced sexual harassment in the street by the age of 18. I wonder how many men have been subject to sexual harassment in the street by the age of 18?

What is the motive, the message and the impact of street harassment? 

This is how one woman has described it.

The words of street harassment fall on a spectrum of disrespect. They are not just words, they are a threat. The threat of implied violence lies behind every word. The words are nothing compared with what they could be and they are intended that way, as a smirking warning to all women.

It is our responsibility as men to face this uncomfortable truth about our own culture, about masculinity.  Men are not inherently violent or abusive but we make ourselves so by our silence and inaction and permit others to be so.

Not all men will abuse or assault women but it is the responsibility of every man to call out both friends and strangers when they perpetuate the sexist and misogynistic attitudes and behaviours that allow abusers to go unchallenged. Unless you speak out, your silence will be taken as complicit support by perpetrators.

The research clearly shows that allowing everyday low-level sexism and sexual harassment to continue feeds the climate and attitudes that perpetuate sexual violence. It is the seed from which the rot grows. The research also suggests that if a man is called out for using abusive language by their peers the risks of them progressing to more serious forms of abuse drops by 80%.

It will take a critical mass of good men to turn around the male culture that allows the rotten seeds of sexual violence to propagate.

It will take a critical mass of good men to change the way their peers think about and treat women. It will take a critical mass of good men to root out the rottenness in the hearts of men that engenders violence and harassment of women.

Every year this school will send out into the world 330 good men to add to that critical mass.

 I hope sooner rather than later, the tide will turn.

As Edmund Burke said, The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

Mark Merry: 'How do we become wise?', Yarra Valley GS Valedictory Address - 2017

26 October 2017, Yarra Valley Grammar School, Melbourne, Australia

This was the headmaster's address to graduating Year 12 students.

We are here to mark the end of thirteen years of formal education. This is cause for considerable celebration and acknowledgement of hard work, contribution and perseverance. Congratulations and well done.

Ought we now to consider our graduates to be educated?

Well…No!

I would hope that none of us in this room would describe ourselves as educated. This may sound a strange thing to say, but let’s consider the term.

To be ‘educated’ suggests that our studies are complete. We have learnt all that there is needed to be known…the process is finished. We have grown enough. Today more than ever, what we need to know and understand can shift in an instant. A better aspiration for us in a racing world is not to be educated but rather to be in the process of educating.

Of course, education is not confined to schools and universities and the process doesn’t stop. It’s continuous and it’s evolving. It’s not a store of knowledge that we rely upon but rather a set of skills to find, capture and use: the right knowledge at the right time and in the right way.

Our graduates are acquiring those skills.

·         Our science and mathematics students employ the skills of experimentation, observation, analysis of data and equations to find solutions. 

·         Our humanities students analyse text, find evidence and propose theories,

·         Our artists express themselves in creative and unique ways. They show us an alternate view of the world.

·         This is very clever stuff…important skills which will stand them in good stead. But it’s not enough.

I have a greater aspiration for you and it’s bound up in a word which has gone out of fashion. We don’t use it very much anymore because there doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence of it…but we should. The word is “Wisdom”. Wisdom…or to be wise. It’s good to be clever…but as Euripides once wrote:

“Cleverness is not wisdom”.

Wisdom is more than ability and more than knowledge. It’s more than just being clever.

Wisdom is not just having knowledge or just having access to facts. Google does not bestow wisdom. Google is a shorthand way of finding information, most of it accurate. Michel de Montaigne was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He invented the essay…Not a popular figure amongst some students.

He wrote that:

“Learned we may be with another man's learning: we can only be wise with wisdom of our own.”

It’s not enough to learn and repeat what other people think, we need to learn to think and understand for ourselves. We can’t and we shouldn’t outsource our thinking. To create an original thought in a world awash with the thoughts of others literally at the push of a button is becoming increasingly difficult.

Wisdom is not just having strong opinions either. The American philosopher William James asserted that:

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.”

We see this in all aspects of modern commentary, on social media and in political discourse. One side of politics today has a tendency to tell us what we must believe and say whilst the other side will believe and say anything.

There’s not much wiggle room for original thought.

Julius Caesar called it out when he said:

'Libenter homines id quod volunt credunt.”

'Men readily believe what they want to believe”

It’s hard to have an original thought where trolling forces conformity and not just opinion but now facts are subjective. I am a keen observer of US politics. I do this by watching MSNBC, CNN and FOX to try to understand how others with different views see the same events.

The bizarre thing is that we seem to be living in parallel universes where meaning is lost amongst “alternate facts”, “fake news” and political spin. It’s no longer just difference of opinion, it’s become a difference of facts.

The Nazi Minister for Information and Propaganda Josef Goebbels once cynically said that:

“A lie told once remains a lie. A lie told a thousand times becomes the truth”.

I don’t often reference Josef Goebbels. Our world has become a world where we only commune and speak to those who agree with us…the rest of the time we yell formulas at those who don’t.

If cleverness and knowledge are not enough… what is wisdom? How do we become wise?

Wisdom or sapience (from the Latin sapientum: to be wise) is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, self-knowledge and insight. Importantly, wisdom is also associated with virtues such as compassion, ethics and benevolence.

Let’s look at the checklist and ask ourselves if we can tick all the boxes:

·         Knowledge

·         Experience

·         Understanding

·         Common sense

·         Insight: Socrates: “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”

·         Self-knowledge: Aristotle said: “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

·         Compassion:

·         Ethics

·         Benevolence

The US President Theodore Roosevelt once wrote:

“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”

Remember when we could quote American Presidents? So wisdom seems to be a combination of the intellectual and the ethical, the mind and the heart. Wisdom is not a factor of age. I have met many wise young people and many unwise older people. Wisdom is attainable, but we need to work on ticking all of the boxes.

It’s quite a confronting question…am I now or will I ever be considered to be a wise person? Do I tick all the boxes? Do I have the energy, the capacity and the will to become wise? Do I even want to be wise? Perhaps asking these questions of ourselves are the early stages of the getting of wisdom?

One considered to be one of the great wise persons of the last century, Albert Einstein once quipped:

“It is not that I'm so smart. But I stay with the questions much longer.”

It’s my earnest hope that as you enjoy life after school, continue to learn and to aspire to be wise, and that you like that genius Albert Einstein,

“Stay with the questions much longer.”

Thank you, God bless and good luck with all that you do….

Peter Butera: 'The title of Class President could more accurately be Class Party Planner', Class President speech - 2017

18 June 2017, Wyoming Area School District, Pennsylvania, USA

When Valedictorians 'go rogue'. Class President Peter Butera had some criticism for the way his school is governed. It didn't please the school authorities and he was shut down.

“Good evening, everyone. The past four years here at Wyoming Area have been very interesting to say the least. To give you an idea of what it was like, I’m going to take this time to tell you all a bit about what my Wyoming Area experience was like and the people who were a part of it.

I would like to start off by thanking my mom, my dad, and my baba, who have raised me since the day I was born and have helped me become the person I am today. Every one of us graduating have those special people in our lives that care for us every day, and love us unconditionally. And to all of you here today, we cannot thank you enough for everything you’ve done for us.

I would now like to recognize a few teachers who are extremely committed to their jobs as educators, and have worked to make me and many others, better students every day: Mr. Hizynski, Mr. Pizano, and Mr. Williams. In addition to these three, there are a number of other very good teachers at our school as well. It is dedicated teachers like these that truly help to develop students and prepare them to further their educations.

Not only does Wyoming Area have some great teachers, but a couple great administrators as well. Mr. Quaglia had been our principal for 3.5 years, and was as great a leader as they come, always extremely caring and reasonable. Over the summer, our school hired a new principal, Mr. Pacchioni, and despite the hesitancy that some students may have had about getting a new principal our senior year, he quickly put that to rest by coming in and always looking out for the students here since day 1.

Throughout my time at Wyoming Area, I have pursued every leadership opportunity available to me. In addition to being a member of Student Council since I was a freshman, my classmates have also elected me Class President the past 4 years, which has been my greatest honor, and I would like to thank you all for that one final time, it really means a lot. However, at our school, the title of Class President could more accurately be Class Party Planner, and Student Council’s main obligation is to paint signs every week. Despite some of the outstanding people in this school, a lack of real student government and the authoritative attitude that a few teachers, administrators, and board members have, prevents students from truly developing as leaders.

Hopefully in the future, this will change. Hopefully for the sake of future students, more people of power within this school, who do not do so already, will begin to prioritize education itself as well as the empowering of students. Because at the end of the day, it is not what we have done as Wyoming Area students or athletes that will define our lives, but what we will go on to do as Wyoming Area Alumni. And I hope that every one of my fellow classmates today, as well as myself, will go on to do great things in this world, and find true happiness and success. Thank you all for coming out to this great celebration today.

The full text is also on Peter's facebook page.

Related content: Sarah Haynes, Ravenswood school captain, 'Ravenswood's not perfect", 2015

"I don’t know how to run a school. but it seems to me that today's schools are being run more and more like businesses where everything becomes financially motivated. Where more value is placed on those who provide good publicity or financial benefits."

Full transcript and video

Larissa Martinez: 'America can be great again without the construction of a wall built on hatred and prejudice', McKinney Boyd High School - 2016

8 June 2016, McKinney, Texas, USA

Good afternoon. My name is Larissa Martinez and I am delighted to be standing here as the valedictorian of the class of 2016. In all, it's been a great year so far. As we are graduating today, the leader of the free world, Beyonce, dropped a new album Lemonade, and the greatest entertainer in our generation is leaving the White House. First and foremost, I would like to thank all of the parents and family members who are always there to make sure we would make it all the way to today. I would also like to thank all of the faculty and staff at McKinney Boyd because this school wouldn't be the same without them. Now I know some of you may be prepared to call me out, like Damian from Mean Girls, but I assure you that I do in fact go here.

Even though two fifths of you don't know of my existence. To each and every single one of you I saw thank you. You taught me that it's OK to be different and to overlook those differences, and accept you for being yourself. You also taught me that it is OK to push people to the side while rushing to class. I would also like to give special thanks to the people that have changed my life in one way or another and have stuck with my for the last few years. I know I am not always the easiest person to deal, so thank you for being there when I needed you the most. I would also like to thank my sister Andrew for giving me one more reason to keep going when it all seemed pointless. Finally the person I am most thankful for is my mother. You've been there with me through thick and thin. You are my best friend. While most mothers move move mountains for their children, you literally moved countries. Every sacrifice you have made, you have made for us. You are my number one fan and you never lost faith in me, even when I lost faith in myself. For that and many other things I will be eternally grateful.

Let me be frank. I am not going to stand up here and give you the Hallmark version of the valedictorian speech. Instead I would like to offer you a different kind of speech. One that discusses expectations versus reality. Many of you see may see me standing up here and must think "Her life is pretty great." Her parents must be very proud. I decided to stand before you today, and reveal these unexpected realities because this might be the only chance I get to convey the truth to all of you, that undocumented immigrants are people too. Those are only half truths. They are the expectations.

My reality is slightly different. On July 11 it will be exactly six years since I moved to McKinney from Mexico City, where I was born and raised. When people see me standing up here, they see a girl who is Yale-bound and has her life figured out. But that is far from the whole truth. So now I would like to convey my fair share of realities.

Reality number one: At the age of 11 I was nothing more than a girl with an abusive and alcoholic father who had to depend on her mother's strength. I was a girl with a dream that one day I would become an American and a girl that thought moving countries would solve all of the problems in her life.

Unexpected reality number two: At the age of 12 I was faced with the task of having to adapt and embrace a new culture. Often my intelligence was questioned due to my background. I was also faced with giving up part of my childhood so I could look after my little sister Andrea while my mom worked from morning until late at night. School became my safe haven because, despite not having internet, a washing machine, or even my own bed. I always had knowledge at my fingertips thanks to my school. And I realized that my be the only way I could help my family. Although we do not all share the same struggles or the same obstacles throughout life, we do share some of the sentiments. I know what it is like to be put down, to have your achievements put down, to not be acknowledged to be powerless. So at this time I would like to commend each and every single one of you here for preserving through your own challenges and being the resilient human beings you wanted to be. And from not letting any obstacles getting in the way of you today. We all have struggles. Struggles we want to face behind closed doors because others discovered them, it would be at our must vulnerable state and we would never be looked at the same way. Well, after all of these years, I have finally mustered up the courage to stand before and share a struggle I have to deal with each and every day.

Unexpected reality number three: I am one of the 11million undocumented immigrants living in the shadow of the United States. I decided to stand before you today, and reveal these unexpected realities because this might be the only chance I get to convey the truth to all of you, that undocumented immigrants are people too. I was hesitant to speak about this today, because of the great divide in opinions concerning the topic of immigration in America. But I feel like I owe it to you to be honest, and I owe it to myself. The most important part of the debate, and the part most overlooked, is the fact that immigrants, undocumented or otherwise, are people too. People with dreams, aspirations, hopes and loved ones. People like me. People who have become a part of the American society and way of life and who yearn to help make America great again - without the construction of a wall based on hatred and prejudice. We are here without official documentation, because the US immigration system is broken. And it has forced many families to live in fear. I myself have even been waiting seven years for my application to be processed. So I hope that all of you leave here today knowing that we are trying to do it the right way, but we don't know how.

I ask for all of you to try and look beyond the way the media portrays us and the dehumanizing accusations some politicians have made. I ask for you to please keep your hearts open and try to find the love and understanding that makes us human. Because after all we are people, just like you. While I can't predict the future, and tell you how successful you are all going to be. But by sharing my story today, I hope I can convince all of you that if I can break every stereotype based on what I am classified as - Mexican, female, undocumented - so can you. We do not have to let expectations become our reality. I am no expert in this journey we call life. But I am living proof that beating the system is possible. We do not have to conform to the limitations that others put on us. There will always be people that judge us, and set expectations based on their preconceived ideas of who they think we are and who they think we should be. However we have the ability to prove them wrong. In those moments when you need a reason to continue moving forward, close your eyes and picture yourself in the future setting. They told me I couldn't so I did. Thank you

Jack Black: 'Never listen to dudes like me, ever!', Montverde Academy - 2015

May 2015, Montverde Academy, Montverde, Florida, USA

Jack Black agreed to the high school speech because his stunt double's kids were in the graduating class

Woooooooohooooooo

I'm going to use a microphone. I just wanted to show I didn't need it

I'm here for Jack and Zac Weightman.

I’ve known these kids since they were little ones, as you’ve heard my good friends Jimmy and Michelle, have been in my life for a long time, and yeah, Jimmy rescued me, on the set of a movie, I was in a movie called Tropic Thunder, and I had to ride a water buffalo, and it was a bucking bronco it turns out, and it threw me off. And i had a flipper view ... and Jimmy just kind of ran up ... what do you call that talent ... you’re like a miracle man. You saved me many times. He dresses up like me and jumps off of buildings. What, I’m going to say no? [when asked to speak]

But I told you, I don’t do these.

So wish me luck.

Just going to get a quick photo ...

[Selfie to cheers]

Just had a birthday, I got a seven and nine year old, and now they can see what they have to look forward to.

Um ... I wrote down a speech.

I’m going to read it from my iPhone because I can’t remember it.

Finishing touches this morning. It was a page one rewrite. The whole thing was garbage until this morning and now it’s awesome.

Hello, I’m Jack Black, and I’d like to offer my congratulations to the Montverde Academy graduating class of 2015 ... you did it!

You focused hard, you learned, you turned, you changed, you grew.

And all the while you were counting the minutes to this magical moment of freedom, yes ... freedom! This is real. Breathe in that big sigh of relief.

You put the time in, you kicked butt ... you know what, you’re parents aren’t in charge any more. You kicked ass.

It’s a cuss word.

It’s a swear word. But you’re graduates now, you can say that.

But I’m not here to drop a-bombs all day. I’m here to give you some golden nuggets of wisdom on how to move forward with the rest of your lives.

Your headmaster paid me 10 million of your tuition fees to speak, and I plan on giving you your money’s worth.

Golden nugget of wisdom number one: Take a minute and just enjoy life. Sniff those roses, you guys. Sniff deep, don’t just rush into life’s next chapter. You just climbed a mountain. Twelve years of nose top the grindstone. Don’t you want to just chill for a minute. Don’t you want top just chill for a minute? And by a minute, I mean, like, five years. Maybe ten. You need to just stare off into space for a while. Do a little fishing, questing, and catch up on the old Xbox, and recharge the batteries, and by batteries I mean these batteries [points to chest]. Soul batteries. Mom and dad have plenty of room, just stick around as long as you need.

Golden nugget of wisdom number two:  Don’t go to college. It’s super expensive, and super hard. I slept through the whole thing. You know what they do? They make you sit in a movie theatre, but they don’t show movies! You got to listen to an old guy talk about crap, for hours! Seriously,  don’t waste your time and money in college, unless you want to be a doctor ... the I totally get it. Nobody’s going to let you take out their spleen unless you’ve got a degree.

The rest of you, go read some books!

Golden nugget of wisdom number three: fake it until you make it.

Figure out what you want to do for the rest of your lives. .. that’s the hard part. But once you’ve figured that out, do a little google research, and then if anyone asks you if you have any experience in the field, ALWAYS SAY YES!

Never say no.

That’s the key. You figure it out along the way, I’m the master. That’s the key. Do you think Einstein knew what he was doing before he solved the riddles of the universe? Hell no he didn't. He faked it. Fake it until you make it!

Golden nugget of wisdom number four: and this is the most important one. Do not listen to me. I don't know jack diddly squat about nothing, I'm just a really good looking rocker that stumbled into a tremendous acting career. Never listen to dudes like me ever. My ego is so big I don't even realize I'm talking until I hear the applause.

You gotta listen to your parents, you gotta listen to your teachers, you gotta listen to your friends ... everyone who helped you to get to this magical moment where you are right now.

Listen to those people, because they’re going to help you move forward.

And never forget this moment. This moment right here, this is the most important moment in your lives. You will get married, you will get promotions, you will have babies, but nothing will measure up to this because this is the only time in your lives that Jack Black will toss you some nuggets ... it’s your high school graduation!

Good luck.

Rock on.

Adios amigos.

David McCullough: 'You are not special. Because everyone is', Wellesley High School -2012

1 June 2012, Wellesley High School, Massachusetts, USA

David McCullough is an English teacher at the school. This address went viral and had over 2 million views on Youtube.

Dr. Wong, Dr. Keough, Mrs. Novogroski, Ms. Curran, members of the board of education, family and friends of the graduates, ladies and gentlemen of the Wellesley High School class of 2012, for the privilege of speaking to you this afternoon, I am honored and grateful.  Thank you.

So here we are… commencement… life’s great forward-looking ceremony.  (And don’t say, “What about weddings?”  Weddings are one-sided and insufficiently effective.  Weddings are bride-centric pageantry.  Other than conceding to a list of unreasonable demands, the groom just stands there.  No stately, hey-everybody-look-at-me procession.  No being given away.  No identity-changing pronouncement.  And can you imagine a television show dedicated to watching guys try on tuxedos?  Their fathers sitting there misty-eyed with joy and disbelief, their brothers lurking in the corner muttering with envy.  Left to men, weddings would be, after limits-testing procrastination, spontaneous, almost inadvertent… during halftime… on the way to the refrigerator.  And then there’s the frequency of failure: statistics tell us half of you will get divorced.  A winning percentage like that’ll get you last place in the American League East.  The Baltimore Orioles do better than weddings.)

But this ceremony… commencement… a commencement works every time.  From this day forward… truly… in sickness and in health, through financial fiascos, through midlife crises and passably attractive sales reps at trade shows in Cincinnati, through diminishing tolerance for annoyingness, through every difference, irreconcilable and otherwise, you will stay forever graduated from high school, you and your diploma as one, ‘til death do you part.

No, commencement is life’s great ceremonial beginning, with its own attendant and highly appropriate symbolism.  Fitting, for example, for this auspicious rite of passage, is where we find ourselves this afternoon, the venue.  Normally, I avoid clichés like the plague, wouldn’t touch them with a ten-foot pole, but here we are on a literal level playing field.  That matters.  That says something.  And your ceremonial costume… shapeless, uniform, one-size-fits-all.  Whether male or female, tall or short, scholar or slacker, spray-tanned prom queen or intergalactic X-Box assassin, each of you is dressed, you’ll notice, exactly the same.  And your diploma… but for your name, exactly the same.

All of this is as it should be, because none of you is special.

You are not special.  You are not exceptional.

Contrary to what your u9 soccer trophy suggests, your glowing seventh grade report card, despite every assurance of a certain corpulent purple dinosaur, that nice Mister Rogers and your batty Aunt Sylvia, no matter how often your maternal caped crusader has swooped in to save you… you’re nothing special.

Yes, you’ve been pampered, cosseted, doted upon, helmeted, bubble-wrapped.  Yes, capable adults with other things to do have held you, kissed you, fed you, wiped your mouth, wiped your bottom, trained you, taught you, tutored you, coached you, listened to you, counseled you, encouraged you, consoled you and encouraged you again.  You’ve been nudged, cajoled, wheedled and implored.  You’ve been feted and fawned over and called sweetie pie.  Yes, you have.  And, certainly, we’ve been to your games, your plays, your recitals, your science fairs.  Absolutely, smiles ignite when you walk into a room, and hundreds gasp with delight at your every tweet.  Why, maybe you’ve even had your picture in the Townsman!  [Editor’s upgrade: Or The Swellesley Report!] And now you’ve conquered high school… and, indisputably, here we all have gathered for you, the pride and joy of this fine community, the first to emerge from that magnificent new building.

But do not get the idea you’re anything special.  Because you’re not.

The empirical evidence is everywhere, numbers even an English teacher can’t ignore.  Newton, Natick, Nee… I am allowed to say Needham, yes? …that has to be two thousand high school graduates right there, give or take, and that’s just the neighborhood Ns.  Across the country no fewer than 3.2 million seniors are graduating about now from more than 37,000 high schools.  That’s 37,000 valedictorians… 37,000 class presidents… 92,000 harmonizing altos… 340,000 swaggering jocks… 2,185,967 pairs of Uggs.  But why limit ourselves to high school?  After all, you’re leaving it.  So think about this: even if you’re one in a million, on a planet of 6.8 billion that means there are nearly 7,000 people just like you.  Imagine standing somewhere over there on Washington Street on Marathon Monday and watching sixty-eight hundred yous go running by.  And consider for a moment the bigger picture: your planet, I’ll remind you, is not the center of its solar system, your solar system is not the center of its galaxy, your galaxy is not the center of the universe.  In fact, astrophysicists assure us the universe has no center; therefore, you cannot be it.  Neither can Donald Trump… which someone should tell him… although that hair is quite a phenomenon.

“But, Dave,” you cry, “Walt Whitman tells me I’m my own version of perfection!  Epictetus tells me I have the spark of Zeus!”  And I don’t disagree.  So that makes 6.8 billion examples of perfection, 6.8 billion sparks of Zeus.  You see, if everyone is special, then no one is.  If everyone gets a trophy, trophies become meaningless.  In our unspoken but not so subtle Darwinian competition with one another–which springs, I think, from our fear of our own insignificance, a subset of our dread of mortality — we have of late, we Americans, to our detriment, come to love accolades more than genuine achievement.  We have come to see them as the point — and we’re happy to compromise standards, or ignore reality, if we suspect that’s the quickest way, or only way, to have something to put on the mantelpiece, something to pose with, crow about, something with which to leverage ourselves into a better spot on the social totem pole.  No longer is it how you play the game, no longer is it even whether you win or lose, or learn or grow, or enjoy yourself doing it…  Now it’s “So what does this get me?”  As a consequence, we cheapen worthy endeavors, and building a Guatemalan medical clinic becomes more about the application to Bowdoin than the well-being of Guatemalans.  It’s an epidemic — and in its way, not even dear old Wellesley High is immune… one of the best of the 37,000 nationwide, Wellesley High School… where good is no longer good enough, where a B is the new C, and the midlevel curriculum is called Advanced College Placement.  And I hope you caught me when I said “one of the best.”  I said “one of the best” so we can feel better about ourselves, so we can bask in a little easy distinction, however vague and unverifiable, and count ourselves among the elite, whoever they might be, and enjoy a perceived leg up on the perceived competition.  But the phrase defies logic.  By definition there can be only one best.  You’re it or you’re not.

If you’ve learned anything in your years here I hope it’s that education should be for, rather than material advantage, the exhilaration of learning.  You’ve learned, too, I hope, as Sophocles assured us, that wisdom is the chief element of happiness.  (Second is ice cream…  just an fyi)  I also hope you’ve learned enough to recognize how little you know… how little you know now… at the moment… for today is just the beginning.  It’s where you go from here that matters.

As you commence, then, and before you scatter to the winds, I urge you to do whatever you do for no reason other than you love it and believe in its importance.  Don’t bother with work you don’t believe in any more than you would a spouse you’re not crazy about, lest you too find yourself on the wrong side of a Baltimore Orioles comparison.  Resist the easy comforts of complacency, the specious glitter of materialism, the narcotic paralysis of self-satisfaction.  Be worthy of your advantages.  And read… read all the time… read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect.  Read as a nourishing staple of life.  Develop and protect a moral sensibility and demonstrate the character to apply it.  Dream big.  Work hard.  Think for yourself.  Love everything you love, everyone you love, with all your might.  And do so, please, with a sense of urgency, for every tick of the clock subtracts from fewer and fewer; and as surely as there are commencements there are cessations, and you’ll be in no condition to enjoy the ceremony attendant to that eventuality no matter how delightful the afternoon.

The fulfilling life, the distinctive life, the relevant life, is an achievement, not something that will fall into your lap because you’re a nice person or mommy ordered it from the caterer.  You’ll note the founding fathers took pains to secure your inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness –- quite an active verb, “pursuit” -- which leaves, I should think, little time for lying around watching parrots rollerskate on Youtube.  The first President Roosevelt, the old rough rider, advocated the strenuous life.  Mr. Thoreau wanted to drive life into a corner, to live deep and suck out all the marrow.  The poet Mary Oliver tells us to row, row into the swirl and roil.  Locally, someone… I forget who… from time to time encourages young scholars to carpe the heck out of the diem.  The point is the same: get busy, have at it.  Don’t wait for inspiration or passion to find you.  Get up, get out, explore, find it yourself, and grab hold with both hands.  (Now, before you dash off and get your YOLO tattoo, let me point out the illogic of that trendy little expression–because you can and should live not merely once, but every day of your life.  Rather than You Only Live Once, it should be You Live Only Once… but because YLOO doesn’t have the same ring, we shrug and decide it doesn’t matter.)

None of this day-seizing, though, this YLOOing, should be interpreted as license for self-indulgence.  Like accolades ought to be, the fulfilled life is a consequence, a gratifying byproduct.  It’s what happens when you’re thinking about more important things.  Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air and behold the view.  Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you.  Go to Paris to be in Paris, not to cross it off your list and congratulate yourself for being worldly.  Exercise free will and creative, independent thought not for the satisfactions they will bring you, but for the good they will do others, the rest of the 6.8 billion–and those who will follow them.  And then you too will discover the great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself.  The sweetest joys of life, then, come only with the recognition that you’re not special.

Because everyone is.

Congratulations.  Good luck.  Make for yourselves, please, for your sake and for ours, extraordinary lives.

You can purchase this speech and other writings by David McCullough here.

Clare Wright: 'Be ambitious, be creative, take risks', Northcote High School - 2014

26 October, 2014, Northcote High School, Melbourne, Australia

In keeping with the spirit of reconciliation, I’d acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands on which we gather today, the Wurrundjeri people, and pay my respects to their Elders, past, present and emerging. I recognize that this has always been a place of teaching, learning and celebrating rites of passage.

I’d also like to thank Kate Morris for inviting me to give the valedictory speech tonight. It’s a great honour and a great pleasure to have the chance to join you all in this special milestone event.

I reckon I’m well placed in several respects to stand behind the microphone.

For one, I was myself a Year 12 students once, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and I well remember my own Graduation Night in this very room.  I thought it was boring and unnecessary and bloated to bursting by long-winded speeches delivered by pompous, self-satisfied adults giving well-meaning advice that I was sure we’d all forgot by the time we spilled out onto Swanston Street and tried to find an underage drink.

I’m also the parent of two kids at Northcote High, one who will be doing his Year 12 next year.   So I have some idea of the anxieties and pressures that beset today’s high school students, particularly at the pointy end of your secondary education.  I know from the inside what those uncertainties and misgivings about the next step look like.

And, because I work at a university, I’m actually on the front line of what does happen next in that great leap forward.  Not all of you will go on to a tertiary education, but most of you will experience not only the sense of elation in finally achieving some hard-won freedom and autonomy but also the disappointment and frustration of life’s inevitable crash landings.  I watch those first year students wave and flail around and bob up and down in the heaving tide of new experiences and expectations, but I’ve yet to see one drown.

So now that I’ve convinced you that I’m the right woman for the job tonight, or perhaps that I’m one of those smug windbags I abhorred when I was 17, let me begin.  I want to tell you a bit about me, a bit about you, and a bit about the country we live in.

First to me: my favourite topic.  I did my Year 12, or HSC as it was known then, at MacRobertson Girls High School in 1986.  (The Maths Methods students have just figured out I’m 45.)  I got straight A’s for my final exams, with a perfect 100% in English.  It was the last perfect thing I ever did, though it would take me until I was about 40 to realize that perfection wasn’t the goal.  I took a Gap Year, worked and lived in Canada, travelled in Europe on the money I made waitressing in Toronto.  I lied on my job application.  Told the restaurant manager I was 18 and knew how to make a good coffee.  (I was from Melbourne wasn’t I?)  I snogged boys and ate a lot of junk food.  From those experiences I learnt that it’s hard to make a good coffee, that it’s much easier to get boys to kiss you than to take you seriously, and that eating fast food was about as satisfying as being a fast girl. 

I came back to Australia and started an Arts/Law Degree at Melbourne Uni.  I did Law because that’s what you were expected to do if you got straight A’s in your Year 12 exams.  I spent a lot of the first semester of Uni crying.  I felt homesick in my own home and I hated Law.  (Well, I actually loved the intellectual rigour of Law as a discipline, but I could see that Law as a profession was going to right for me.)

But in the midst of that confusing, lonely year, I was very lucky.  I fell in love twice.  I fell in love with the boy who is now my husband and the father of my three children.  We’ve been together for 26 years, enjoying a relationship of true companionship, respect, conversation and humour.  I also fell in love with History, the Uni subject I most adored, despite the fact that I had no idea what I could possible do with it.  And I was fortunate for another reason: when I told my parents I wanted to drop Law and just study History, they told me to do whatever made me happy.  They told me to do what I must do, and do it well.  (I later discovered that’s a line out of a Bob Dylan song, but it was well chosen for the occasion.)

And so, that is what I have done.  I did an Honours degree in History, a Masters degree in History, a PhD and postdoctoral research in history.  I’ve published two history books and made two history documentaries for tv.  I’ve won awards and received numerous grants and scholarships.  But I also need you to know that my path to professional success and personal fulfillment hasn’t been all straight and narrow.  I’ve suffered periods of depression and anxiety, moments of profound despair, and run myself ragged in the attempt to be 100% in control and on top of my game.  I learnt the hard way that it’s ok to fail every once and a while.

I tell you all this because I’m sick to death of watching successful women either undermine their own achievements or blame themselves for every blemish. 

Girls, be proud of your accomplishments, don’t apologise for your strengths and talents, don’t be afraid to take up too much space, don’t be silent about your dreams and your grievances.  There is enough in our public culture to demean and trivialize you, and enough in even our own homes to threaten and belittle you, that you do not need to contribute to your own denigration.   And boys, trust the women around you.  They will be your friends, your workmates, your bosses, your lovers and your staunchest allies.  Give them credit where credit is due, and give yourself some credit too: credit for having the courage to swim against the tide of prejudice and discrimination that can so easily carry us away.

Since the death of Gough Whitlam earlier this week, there has been a lot of reflection about the legacy of this larger-than-life former Prime Minister.  Whitlam came to power at a time in Australia’s history when there was a great wave of restless energy and ambition, largely on the part of young people, to change the world that they had no choice but to live in.  The era was not unlike the gold rush period that my latest book is about: a youthful population who were angry about the fact that they had no right to participate in the institutions or systems of making the very laws that governed them.  Later, once men had secured democratic voting entitlements, women also began to fight for their rights to be heard, to be recognized, to be treated as full and equal citizens.  And in the 1960s white men and women came together to support indigenous Australians to also be included in the democratic process.  At this same time, young men were being sent off to fight a war that most Australians didn’t support – imagine that: instead of leaving school and going to uni or learning a trade or starting your own business, you are being shipped off to Vietnam whether you like it or not — and non-European people could still be excluded from entering the country under the legal framework of the White Australia Policy.  Successive conservative governments had turned a blind eye to the changes in the Australian population and the global movement towards social justice.

And then along came Gough – with the election campaign slogan IT’S TIME.  Time for a better, stronger, fairer Australia.  Time to use power to make a difference.  You will have heard a lot this week about his reforms: indigenous land rights, single mother’s pensions, free tertiary education.  But I want to read you some lines from one of my favourite of Whitlam’s speeches.  He said these words in Ballarat on 3 December 1973, while unveiling a newly restored Eureka Flag.

He said: “the kind of nationalism that every country needs … is a benign and constructive nationalism [that] has to do with self-confidence, with maturity, with originality, with independence of mind.  If Australia is to remain in the forefront of nations … if it is determined to be a true source of power and ideas in the world, a generous and tolerant nation respected for its generosity and tolerance, then I believe that something like ‘the new nationalism’ must play a part in our government and in the lives of us all”.

With his deeds in the parliament, and his carefully chosen words at moments like these, Whitlam created a vision of the sort of country Australia could be.  He wanted this country to be the BEST country it could be.  He didn’t try to instill fear and anxiety among the Australian people.  He didn’t say that it was okay to be a bigot or a racist or a homophobe or a sexist pig because what harm was there in a little fun right?  He didn’t try to set neighbor against neighbor; community against community, in the hope that a scared and vulnerable population would cling to the familiar terrain of what they already knew of the world and its ways.  “Better the devil you know”, goes the saying (or the Kylie Minogue song if you’d prefer), but that is such a monumentally unadventurous and conformist position from which to face life that no self-respecting teenager could ever agree.  “Workers of the world: you’ve got nothing to lose but your chains” is the aphorism I prefer.  If you don’t try to change the world, who will?

So what does all this have to do with you.  Gough Whitlam was the Prime Minister in 1972, long before you were born.  Ancient history.  And I’m certainly not trying to turn you all into Marxists.

But listen closely to Whitlam’s language: self-confidence, maturity, originality, independence of mind, generosity, tolerance.  These were all values and attributes that Whitlam wanted for Australia.  And as you make this tentative but inevitable leap from high school to the world of work and higher education, they are exactly the skills and outcomes I wish for each and every one of you.

Some, but not all, of you will be high flyers.  Few of you, I sincerely trust, will be low hanging fruit. You have been given far too good an education to resort to that.  Most of you will live quietly productive lives, making objects, making homes, making children, making money, making grand designs.  I hope more of you are producers than consumers.  You will be happier, believe me.  But all of you will have to make choices about what sort of person you want to be and what sort of a country you want to live in.

And here I have only one piece of advice: do what you must do, and do it well.

Be ambitious, be creative, take risks with your ideas, your philosophies, your opinions. Make mistakes, learn from them, reach out when you are flailing and throw others a line when you can see that they are not waving but drowning too.

In other words, be your best self.  It’s all — and everything — you can be.

Tony Wilson: 'That was my advice on happiness, so here’s my advice on misery', Penleigh & Essendon Grammar School - 2000

17 October, 2000, Moonee Valley Racecourse, Melbourne, Australia

Ladies and gentleman, graduating students, PEGs staff, and last but not least, Moonee Valley punters who have stumbled into the function by accident and have no idea what’s going on

On my last day at school, I became the second person in the history of Camberwell Grammar to be sent home for an inappropriate costume. The first instance occurred in 1988 when a guy arrived wearing Rambo style fatigues, a semi automatic and live ammunition. He didn’t actually fire any rounds, and I’m not sure anyone could find a specific school rule dealing with semi-automatics, but the police were nevertheless called, and he was sent on his way.

When I was giving my marching orders two years later, it was for the lesser offense of smelling of rotten fish. My mother, who has a nasty habit of over-enthusing in the task of dressing up any of her children, decided that the costume for me was the polar bear suit. So while half the year was out enjoying a big night on the town, Mum and I sat at home together, drawing claws on my ug boots, sowing my sister’s old 'lambie' to the front of Dad’s white pyjamas, and attaching a dead thirteen pound cod to the end of a homemade fishing rod.

In the cool of the morning, my cod was an enormous hit, accompanying me in all the flour throwing and water fights. But as the day warmed up, both me and the fish started to smell worse and worse, until I was told at lunchtime that I should make a trip home to de-fish. 

The dressing up era at my old school has now ended, the headmaster obviously deciding that if the day was generating problems as diverse as live ammunition and dead fish, it was time to reassess. Actually, the official reason that was given when they banned dressing up was said to be that too many Camberwell Grammar boys were dressing up as women, a fact that no doubt confirms a lot of suspicions you all might harbour about my old school.

Today, it’s been your turn to dress up for a last day at school, and I’m sure there will be some aspect of it that stays with you always. Just as everyone should have a memory of their first day of school (mine is that my red-haired prep teacher who was called Mrs Wolf introduced herself via a game of ‘What’s the Time Mrs Wolf’) well we should similarly have a memory of the day it all comes to an end. As for everything that has been learned in the days in between, it’s helpful to have some retention there too. Particularly when it comes to the small matter of the exams that are now just nine days and fourteen hours away.

I’m tempted to just start counting the minutes and seconds down as well to see if those of you who are a bit edgy make a panicked bolt for the library. The fact is that of all the countdowns you’ve no doubt been conducting over the last weeks and months, the exam one is the most important of all. When you go home tonight, you’ll be in the nightmare they call swot-vac, and I’m sure you all can’t wait to grab your alarm clocks, set them to 6.58, and bang out that first practice exam before breakfast tomorrow.

The trick with swot-vac is to have a realistic study timetable that you stick to, no matter what other temptations beckon. Actually one of the first temptations you’ll discover is to spend so much time on the timetable that you waste half of swot-vac drawing it up. Colour coding each subject. Drawing and re-drawing the lines to make sure that they’re straight. My timetable was a work of art, but it was also very important in keeping me to my targets of 10-hour study days.

As a freelance writer, I also face the procrastination demons on a daily basis. A basic guide is that if you find yourself watching any two of Totally Wild, Fresh Prince of Bel Air or Mrs Mangle era Neighbours, you’ve got yourself a problem. You don’t want to be sitting there in an Australian history exam, laboring over the names of our wartime prime ministers but knowing the Fresh Prince’s pick up lines word for word.

In year twelve and at uni, another great procrastination device for me was taking showers. Sometimes I’d have 5-6 showers a day and when I wasn’t taking showers I’d be brushing my teeth. After all, can’t be too clean. Wouldn’t want my practice exam paper to think that I’ve got body odour or bad breath.

It is worth a bit of pain now though. Just think, a few weeks of hard work, and then you get to do bugger all for months. And every time a parent tells you to go out and do something, you can just say, ‘But Muuuum, Daaaaad, for months I didn’t go out. I didn’t watch the Fresh Prince -- can’t I have a rest noooow?’

Those of you with soft parents can probably get away with this for several months. Those of you with tough parents, you’ve probably still got a couple of weeks, and then you can start crashing at the houses of your friends who have soft parents. The trick is to get the hard work part out of the way now, so you’ve got a few bargaining chips up your sleeve when heaven descends, sometime in November.

There is a temptation to look at the upcoming exams and regard them as either life making or life breaking in their outcome. Of course they’re important. If you get a TER high enough to gain entry to the course you want, it’s a terrific advantage. But for those who are worriedthey’ll become instant and permanent failures on results day in December, it’s just not the case.

The fact is that you can’t be a failure at eighteen, because there’s just so much time and opportunity left to find something at which you can be a success. Ten years after leaving Camberwell, I look around my group of friends from school and see one who dropped out in year eleven who is now doing well in golf course management on the Gold Coast. Another wanted to be a lawyer, but now runs a successful billboard business in India.  Another tried for years to be accepted into vet science, only to last year find a position in Cameroon as the head of a wildlife park.

As for myself, at school, I had only two goals in life. One was to represent Australia in basically any sport that would have me, and the other was to play league football for Hawthorn in the AFL. It quickly emerged that football was probably my best chance, and I became fanatically obsessed with it.  At the age of fifteen, when some classmates were embarking upon romantic relationships, I was still sleeping with a Sherrin. When they were out on their dates, I’d stay home listening to the radio, writing down the kicks, marks and handballs for every player in the Hawthorn side.

Actually the last time I was at PEGS was in 1990 -- one of the memorable days of my football career, when I captained the Camberwell First XVIII to a five point win over your team. I’m pretty sure we haven’t beaten you since that day and we may never beat you again, so what I thought I’d do from here is give you a twenty minute, kick by kick summary of the game as it unfolded. I might even insert the odd detail that didn’t actually happen, like that moment late in the last quarter when I took a big hanger on Dustin Fletcher’s head. Or was it Scott West’s, I can’t remember. Although I did have 26 marks that day. I'm worried you think I'm joking. Stop laughing please. Damn that boastful hyperbole from earlier on! I need my credibility back! If you take nothing else away from this -- 26 marks.

Eventually, I made it through to the under 19s, then I captained the under 19s, and then finally in 1992, I was drafted onto the Hawthorn senior list.

The first inkling I had as to the fact that I was pursuing the wrong career came after the players’ skit night. I’d played five pretty uninspiring reserves games to that time, and when fan mail was being handed out, it rarely made it to ‘hack corner’ which is what the good players called the lockers numbered higher than 40 (John Platten was our union rep). But the week after the skit night, to the amazement of the entire club, I received some fan mail. I’ve still got it, and I’ll read it to you now.

Dear Tony Wilson

I’ve never seen you play or heard of you, but I thought that Colliwobbles song you sung with Austin McCrabb on Saturday was excellent. Not your singing so much, but the words -  which reminded how much I hate Collingwood. Keep up the good work.

Best wishes

Marcus

P.S. Can you send me a signed copy

It was my fifth ever autograph, the first four coming one night when I was talking in the car park next to Dermott Brereton, and he made some kids get my autograph as well. As for the song, I wrote it in 1990 during Year 12 swot-vac and it’s a lament for the fact that Collingwood finally won a Grand Final. Given tonight is the tenth anniversary of its existence, and it’s proof of the wonderful achievements you can pull off when you’re avoiding doing old maths exams, I thought I’d sing a verse to you guys. Actually the real reason I’m singing it is that one day, you guys might be running entertainment venues, and if you’re ever looking for a guy who can’t sing, and can’t play guitar … well here it goes:

A long long time ago I can still remember;

How the Magpies used to make me smile

And Dad and I would sing and dance

As the Pies stuffed up each finals chance

And lost each shot at glory with such style

But 1990 made me shiver, with every victory they delivered

Bad news on the doorstep, the woodsman had much more pep

I can’t remember if I cried, when I heard that they had made the five

But something kicked me deep inside, the day the Wobbles died.

... It goes for another 11 and a half minutes ...

Can you believe that when Madonna covered ‘American Pie’ this year, she went with Don McLean’s version and not mine?

But although I’d made history at the skit night by being the first footballer who didn’t dress up as a woman, things weren’t going quite so well on the field. In fact a few weeks later, reserves coach Des Meagher pulled me up in front of my teammates, pointed a finger into my chest and gave me the following piece of encouragement,

‘Willo, you can’t kick, you can’t handball, you can’t run … you can mark but you’re not even doing that at the moment.’

So it wasn’t that surprising when I was sacked, me vowing to Allan Joyce as I walked out the door that I would make him regret the decision for the rest of his life.

He hasn’t.

Fortunately, I had university to fall back on, a time of my life that was absolutely brilliant.  My parents had always told me really boring, long-winded anecdotes about uni being 'the best days of your life’ -- but until I got there, I didn’t really listen. Unlike school, it was relaxed -- no uniforms or disciplinarian teachers or kids in the tuckshop line who make a living out of asking everyone for 20 cents. At uni, I had just nudged into what should be known as my post-sleeping-with-a-Sherrin era, and I had my first real girlfriends.  I even got to go to Montreal in Canada for six months as an exchange student. In fact, so good were my five years as a student that I’m currently preparing a set of long-winded, boring anecdotes of my own to ram down the throats of any children I might have in the future.

It is however, possible to love being a uni student, but hate just about everything you’re studying. Unfortunately, that’s how it was with my course, which was law. If I had any guts, I would have quit to do a course that I actually liked. I didn’t though, and when I graduated in 1996, I blindly followed the other graduates into working at a law firm.

My time as a lawyer was just miserable. I joined Minter Ellison in 1996, and from my first day on the job, discovered that the glamorous life they painted in LA Law and A Few Good Men did not match the reality of leafing through 310 boxes of documents in a warehouse in Sunshine. Don’t be fooled by the way young lawyers are portrayed on television and in the movies. If they made a film about young lawyers at my firm they would have called it A Few Good Shit-kickers.

But despite my inexperience some big jobs did start coming my way. Like the day that a partner in my department arrived at my corral carrying a belt and a pair of gumboots. Yes, I was to be Santa Claus at the firm picnic, and you can imagine the pride I felt when he came back the following Monday and said I was ‘the best goddamn Father Christmas in the history of the firm.’

Then there was the articled clerks’ revue, performed for the firm at the mid-year ball. I was co-writer and director of the production, and even made my debut with a video camera, filming a piece we titled Twelve Angry Articled Clerks. This was a work of enormous emotional depth culminating in us all painting our faces blue, making a Braveheart style charge on photocopier, and smashing it with a sledgehammer. In another scene we stormed a rival law firm in chicken suits. In another, we pranced around the firm’s library naked, save for a strategically placed ‘Hot Stocks’ edition of the BRW.

By the middle of my second year at Minters, I was struggling with the fact that I’d never really found a goal to replace the league footy one. I toyed with the idea of doing some writing or amateur film-making, but didn’t really get off my backside. In fact I turned into one of those very annoying ‘guuna’ people. I was gunna write a screenplay, gunna write a book, gunna travel, gunna go to the bar, gunna leave to provide opportunities for younger, fresher Santas coming up through the ranks. I talked to people about my plans, until those people banned me from talking to them, at which point I found new people. Eventually, my father took me out for breakfast one morning at the Nudl Bar, and quietly suggested that if I was to consider myself a good writer, at some stage I should consider actually writing something. In fact we made a deal that morning -- he said he would help me with financing a travel writing trip, if I gave him a 25,000 word sample within 4 weeks of what he could expect. I took annual leave the next week, and started on my 25,000 words. They weren’t brilliant, but finally I was going for something that I actually enjoyed.

And then came the RMIT information evening that changed my life. In October 1997, a friend who knew about the travel book idea told me that the executive producer of RATW was holding a seminar.  For those who don’t know the show, it was a program on ABC that sent 8 people to 10 countries around the world over 100 days, with each person travelling alone and having to produce a four minute documentary for broadcast on the ABC. John Safran had made the show famous the year before by taking his clothes off and running through Jerusalem to the tune of Up There Cazaly. I loved the show and loved the seminar, and when he said, ‘Imagine you’re one of the thirteen selected finalists in Sydney’, I decided that I owed it to myself to apply. After all I’d paid $22 bucks to attend the lecture, and I wanted to get my money’s worth.

The greatest miracle of my life is that my application actually came off. The application video I sent in was about an Italian soccer coach called Paolo who coached the Essendon under sevens just down the road here with the zeal of a man who has his sights set on the World Cup. He gave them diets, he gave them tactics sessions, he abused them for not going to bed early enough. And all this was done through a translator, because Paulo himself couldn’t speak a word of English. Not only that but that translator was a mother of one of the boys, so Paulo would say something like ‘you’re all hopeless, it’s pointless coaching you’ and the translator would soften it to something like, ‘keep going, you’re doing really well.’ Basically, the topic was so good that I couldn’t really muck up the film, and after two months of interviews, and a 4 week documentary course at AFTRS in Sydney, I was selected for the show.

When I was attending my Year 12 dinner at the Malvern town hall in 1990, I could never have known that I’d be travelling to 10 countries in 100 days and making stories that would be shown on national television. A story on children in prison with their father in Bolivia, a cowboy poet in Idaho, the Italian version of Wheel of Fortune in Italy, the soccer World Cup in Paris, a laughing club in India.  Perhaps my favorite story was about a wheat farmer in Lebanon called Faeez, who couldn’t shoot pigs that were eating his crop because he was only 800 metres from the Israeli border, and the border guards would blow his head off if he went out in the fields with a gun. Indeed, as bombs thundered in the hills around us, Faeez told me to hide my camera tripod under my jumper, 'because Hazballah use tripods to launch rockets'. That was one of the truly exhilarating nights of my life. A sunset, a full moon, a tripod under my jumper, and a five kilometre walk down to the village, thinking all the while that I’d finally found the perfect career.

Not only that, but Race Around the World allowed me to achieve a childhood dream that I thought had passed me by. As I said before, I always fantasized about representing my country in international sport, and then, during my fourth story in Italy, it finally happened. I had the opportunity to lift this beautiful bronzed arm wrestling trophy above my head at the 1998 European Arm Wrestling championships. The tournament took place in Brescia, and as I understand it, I remain the only Australian to have ever competed. This is not good news for people trying to enhance Australia’s international reputation as an arm-wrestling power. My scorecard at the end of the tournament was four bouts in the 95 kilogram division for four, complete, motherless jelly-armed shellackings. One of my opponents from the Ukraine told me that I was the weakest opponent he had encountered in five years on the world tour. Still I had a professional arm-warming sock, and for a few brilliant seconds before each bout, I experienced the mad stare and scream that was so central to the Sylvester Stallone arm wrestling film, ‘Over the Top’. Not only that, despite my beatings the organisers handed out participation trophies to competitors from each of the countries represented at the championships. And so today, I am now the proud owner of one of these.

If I could give a single piece of advice on pursuing happiness, it would be to make sure you actually do pursue it. The unhappiest times I’ve had over the last ten years have been when I’ve let things drift, and not taken any positive steps. My success in getting to make stories around the world only came because I put four months into doing the best application I could at the end of 1997. Other friends of mine said they were going to do one, but in the end, the amount of work involved in finding and editing a story meant none of them did. I later found out that 18,000 people downloaded application forms for Race but didn’t send in applications. Again, the only reason I got to write articles at the Olympics was that I went into the Age offices and asked the Olympics editor if I could. Apply, apply, apply. You might think you don’t stand a chance, I certainly thought that with Race, but you definitely don’t stand a chance if you don’t apply.

That was my advice on happiness, so here’s my advice on misery. Endure swot-vac and work as hard as you can. Hard work does bring its rewards. As fun as my Race Around the World trip sounds, it was unbelievably stressful. In each place you had to find a story (which would take 2-3 days, film a story another 3 or so) and then write down all your shots and every word of every interview, so you could do an edit script, which was then sent back to Australia with the tapes. I reckon on average I worked about 14 hours a day, travelling alone and spending about as much on international phone calls as Paul Reith and his housemates. But throughout the hard times, there was always the knowledge that there was an end point, and I didn’t want to look back when I finished and think I didn’t do my best.

Despite what your parents or grandparents might say along the lines of ‘if you don’t know it now, you’ll never know it’, there are thousands of degrees hanging on walls around Australia that have been earned entirely in the month of October. The three magic words to remember now are these – ‘short term memory’. It’s amazing what you can stuff into the human brain for a few weeks, even if most of it will inevitably seep onto the beaches of Byron Bay or the Gold Coast in the months to come.

But while scientific formulae and English quotes and Keynesian economics all fight for their places in your short term memories, I’m sure there will be elements of this place, Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School that will be deeply embedded in your long term memories. Maybe you’ll remember a certain teacher. Maybe a sporting occasion (26 marks I tell ya). Or maybe some lines you had to write out at a Friday detention, and I say that because fourteen years after I stood up to leave an English class early in year nine, I can still remember having to write out fifty times.

‘The period does not end when the ophacleide hoots. It ends when the master in charge, or mistress, says as of how, it has.’

I don’t even think that ‘as of how, it has’ makes sense, but I’ve remember it all the same.

Most of your long term memories will no doubt relate to the people who are celebrating with you here tonight. And amid the celebration of finishing, there’s also the sadness that in almost every case, you will not see as much of each other from now on. Of course you can always catch up at that English exam that’s on in, what is it, now, nine days, thirteen hours and fifty minutes, but you might have other things on your mind then. So enjoy the night, enjoy each other’s company, which will be a lot easier to do if I sit down and shut up.

Thank you for having me; best of luck for the next few weeks, and for the rest of your lives. 

Tony Wilson's most recent book is Emo the Emu (Scholastic, 2015), a rhyming ballad about a grumpy bird cheering himself up by visiting every state of Australia. Good tourist book. You can buy it here.

Trevor Henley: 'Live and love life to the full, you don’t know how long or how short it might be', Year 12 Valedictory Dinner, Camberwell Grammar - 2015

21 October, 2015, Members Dining Room, MCG, Melbourne, Australia

Headmaster, Chairman and Members of Council, Special Guests, my Wife Kay, Members of Staff, Parents and Year Twelve Leavers.

Thank you for the invitation to speak tonight and to propose the toast to the Class of 2015.

In 1995, the first of the two year build of the PAC and Music School, I was asked to propose the same toast as the then Headmaster Colin Black wished to break the tradition of someone retiring to speak. So here we are 20 years later!

In actual fact I sang most of my speech that night, to a little “ditty” from the operetta “The Mikado”, something I will not attempt this evening. The then VCE co-ordinator, Mr. Geoff Shaw, asked me to delay moving to the lecturn so some introductory music could be played….so I duly waited and yes! The strippers music was played!

Anniversaries, Milestones, Graduations, Leaver’s or Valedictory Dinners and the like.

Are they that important?

Why do we celebrate them?

Yes they are important and we celebrate them as a mark of how far we have come on the journey of life.

Your birthday for instance, I think most of us would be pretty upset if our day of arrival into this world was not remembered. The day, as little boys, you moved from the Junior School or your Primary School into the Middle or Secondary School.

Your first pair of long trousers, your first school white shirt, the day you turned 18, obtained your license, your first “legal” drink in a pub.

Today we celebrate that you have completed your secondary school. This is a milestone in your life and you are about to take that somewhat forbidding leap away from the sheltered walls of Mont Albert Rd into the unknown. For some of you it will be total relief, “at last” you say, “ I am out”! and we, your teachers, completely understand your sentiments.

For others of you this will be a time of contemplation, reflection, exploration, to take those first unsure steps, gently feeling your way. For everyone of you it is the next phase of your lives, for you to make of it what you will.

As we celebrate this milestone with you today we also take time to look back, reflecting on what we have done and how far we have travelled from whence we came. It doesn’t matter if we are the youngest or the oldest here tonight, we all need to do this and be thankful for where we are at this time before we move on into the future.

The Class of 2015 has travelled quite a distance. Some have stayed close to home, never changing schools, others may have had one change of school, or a number of schools. Some will have travelled thousands of miles to change schools.

Having arrived at CGS how far have you travelled during your time here?

Perhaps these “vignettes” may bring back some memories.

At the house aths, a “hurdler”; having knocked over every single hurdle; gave up on the last one…. he simply walked around it.

One of the house captains was caught on a lunch date, during school hours, with CGGS girls.

Another senior office holding boy attempted to jump a wire fence whilst carrying a radio back pack…a broken leg was the result. Someone else knows the figures .345 quite well!

One of you mistook the cafeteria doors as opened and discovered them closed…. shattering them.

 “Nibbles” I hear has no hand to eye co-ordination, knows all the symbols in Naruto and was put on the “time out bench” by Mrs Beck.

One of you decided that it was more fun spending the evening playing “warcraft” than being at the formal.

Another of you “messed up” one of your peers new $200 shoes!

A certain English teacher ensures that every boy in his English class has “another name” besides the one on the school roll.

Soapsuds, Milk Bar, A—Hem, Hawkeye.

A certain musician, whilst struggling to be at school on time, finds it difficult to kick a ball straight, photographs all his food,  conducts date interviews for “the school formal” and owns a onsie!

The Clifford Head of House has outdone me in the colourful suit stakes.

One of you set off a Junior School fire extinguisher “on purpose”. Another ate bush berries on year 8 camp where the reaction was a swollen face to the point that he couldn’t talk.

There is always “one show pony” and from his early drama days in Junior School, nothing has changed…. at all!!

And one of the top sportsman here has always been too “cool” for school and preferred to be mates with the male teachers.

There will be many of you who will go onto  careers of great variety, and changes of career. Perhaps you will make a name for yourself in the nation or in the world. But not at a Frap Party on tour, then be despatched home!

Others of you will quietly go about your careers and life contributing in your own way to the communities in which you live. But hopefully not with a street name of “snake”.

How far will you travel?

What milestones will you reach?

In Sept 1971, I returned to CGS to teach the flute and in 1974 I was appointed Ass D of Music. The then Headmaster David Dyer and the Director of Music, John Mallinson were prepared to take a risk with me. And it was a risk.

A more inexperienced 23yr old, very young, a bit green, “wet behind the years” you could not imagine. Perhaps a little bit like you, about to embark on the next stage of your life without the security of school.

However I grew into the role, learnt on the job, watched and observed others…..discovered how to operate and perhaps more importantly how not to operate.  

I have been engrossed and fulfilled in my work here at CGS doing what I do best, nurturing, encouraging, persuading, cajoling, moving both furniture and boys around the stage and the school, letting people know exactly what I think! and having the occasional “hissy fit.”

Making sure I never wear the same clothing ensemble in any one week and to prevent members of the choir giving me a hard time, ensuring that my socks match my trousers!

But more importantly making music with the boys of this school.

I share this with you tonight because with determination, direction, listening, watching and learning, caring for others and to some extent the right timing, you can make your way and be a success at what ever you do. Try not to  allow failure to get in the way or prevent you from finding another way around the problem. If failure visits you make it a learning tool.

Some might say I haven’t travelled very far at all.

I feel I have travelled a very long way.

To quote Tony Little in his book ‘An Intelligent Guide to Education’, “Teaching is a noble profession. Teachers devote their energy and skill to helping the young develop into purposeful adults who, in their turn, may lead and change society for the better”.

Where else is there the opportunity to play a major part in helping to shape and lay the foundation for young people’s futures.

Joel Egerton, actor and film director, said in an interview, “School is something you will always remember. It is unclouded. Later events in life tend to become clouded in our memories, school doesn’t”.

I wonder what you leave behind?

What have you achieved?

One career at one school, a very special school, where it has embraced me and I have embracedit.

A place where I have been accepted for all that I am, and all that I do both musically, and in other areas.

It has been an honour to be a member of staff of this wonderful school.

Will you be able to look back in forty or fifty years and have the same feeling about your careers?

To have achieved more than I could ever have hoped or dreamed.  Many people aspire to this, but few attain it. I feel so fortunate to be one of those people who have had that experience.

Will you have this same feeling at the end of your careers? I hope so.

Remember the old saying “ that in giving you receive.”

I have received far more than I could ever have asked or hoped, from my colleagues, from parents and friends and especially from you young men.

Hopefully, we your teachers and your parents have given you the right set up for the future. You in return have given us joy, fun, times of frustration and worry, laughter and happiness in working and living with us.

If you receive, during your working life, what I have experienced and received during mine, then you will be very lucky men indeed.

If I was to leave you, the Class of 2015, with a message tonight, it would be that you have a happy and fulfilling life and career.

Live and love life to the full, you don’t know how long or how short it might be.

Stay safe, but be prepared to take a risk, you never know where it might lead.

Be kind, considerate and generous to your fellow human beings.

Remember that in giving you receive…

“Spectemur Agendo”…..By Your Deeds You will be Known.

“I slept and dreamt that

Life was joy.

I awoke and found that

Life was duty

I Performed, and behold

Duty was Joy

The past is History

The future a Mystery

And the Present

Is a Gift of God”                

(by: Rabindrath Taqore)

Ladies and Gentlemen, while the boys remain seated, would you please rise and join me in a toast to the Class of 2015.

21 October 2015, Members Dining Room, MCG, Melbourne, Australia

Hasan Minhaj: 'Fight Through the Pick', Davis Senior High - 2015

June 2015, Davis Senior High School, Davis, California, USA

Daily Show correspondent & comedian Hasan Minhaj graduated from Davis in 2003.

I graduated from Davis Senior High School a little over 10 years ago and my senior year of high school, my biggest dream was to play on the varsity basketball team. I mean, I just loved it. I loved the sweatshirts, I loved the shooting shirts, the shoes, the tearaway pants, I wanted to be a part of it so bad, even if I sat the bench I just wanted tearaway pants that I knew I would never actually tear away. I wanted it so bad! In my senior year, I definitely thought it could happen. I hadn’t seen myself in the mirror; I was 5”9, 115 pounds of just raw Indian muscle ladies, just raw.

I remember my favorite basketball player growing up was this guy named Penny Hardaway. I mean he had the speed, he had the flash, he had the hops, and he had the most amazing shoes: the Nike air pennies. And I was like, those shoes are gonna make me make get on the team! So I went up to my mom and I said mom can I get the pennies? And she’s like, “do they sell them at Ross?” And I say “no….” And she says “Okay well we have a dress for less budget so if they don’t sell them at Ross, that’s on you. And I ended up getting a job over at Office Max in South Davis, and the hardest part of the job is that you have to sell printers for people who don’t know any better. So people will come in and they’d be like “I’m looking for a printer!” And I say “that’s great, well the Epson 3640 is available right now for $129.99” and they’re like “Oh that’s very affordable! How much...are ink cartridges?” And I’m like “yeah, they’re about $8972 for the rest of the year.” So I sold printers for a bit and I eventually saved up enough money to get the pennies. And I remember I took them home and I opened them up and I pulled them out and you could just like smell the leather and you’re walking around in them like you’re constipated, but you don’t want to crease the shoes so I was like walking like this, Imma make the team in these shoes.

Soon enough, the first day of tryouts roll around in my senior year, and as soon as I get to the court, I’m like these are wayyy too fresh to wear to tryouts so I run back to my locker and I put my pennies away and I put on my old shoes. And I started my first day of tryouts, and Mr. G, the head basketball coach, had this drill, and it was called fight through the pick, and basically he would take the biggest guy, and you would have to just fight through him, you would have to just get around him. And there was this kid named Tommy Wilson, that’s not his real name, I’m not petty, but his name was Tommy Wilson. And I mean he was huge, he had like thighs like this [gesture], he had like, muscles connected from his ears to like here [point ear to shoulder], and Mr. G would blow the whistle and he would be like FIGHT THROUGH THE PICK! And I would just run, my Indian arms would be flailing and Mr. G’s like what are you DOING Hasan, fight through the pick, fight through the pick like you’re trying to get into UC Berkeley! I’m like, I get that analogy! And I ran as hard as I could, and I hit Tommy like BOOM like a forcefield; I bounced right off of him and I hit the deck HARD, right. But I gave it my all, I gave it my all, and I remember at that first day of tryouts I was drenched in sweat. I looked like an immigrant family at waterworld, just soaked, top to bottom, just like “EFFORT! I DID IT!”

Now we’re all waiting in the parking lot, we’re waiting for our parents to pick us up. And all the guys trying out were huddled around each other and then all of the sudden, Tommy Wilson sees me and I’m wearing the pennies. And he goes “Hey dude! Where’d you get those pennies?” And I’m like ‘Aw man, Tommy Wilson’s talking to me!’ And I tell him “Hey dude, I got them from Nike outlet! they’re on sale right now Tommy!” And he goes “Naw dude, you got them from the urinals dog.” See, during tryouts, he went into the locker room and he pulled out my pennies and he put them in the urinal, and he peed in them and he put them back in my locker. And I look down at my shoes and I realize, my shoes are not sopping wet from sweat, no they’re sopping wet from Tommy Wilson’s pee. And then my dad’s 91 Nissan Stanza pulls up to the front of the group and I sloshed my way over and got into the car, and we just drove home in silence, like we normally did, but this time it was because I had pee in my shoes. We get home, the garage door opens up, dad goes into the house, and I pull off my pennies and I put them straight into the dumpster. And, I never wore Air Pennies ever again. And then, it was the infamous day where they post the results of tryouts. I made sure I got up early, I woke up at like 7, 7:15 I got to class because I knew he was going to post the results. I mean, I wanted to be alone, that way if anything happened, that way no one could see me. And around 7:20, the blinds just sort shift to the side, and then those hands go up and they posted the results, and my name wasn’t on the list. I walked home, and I ran upstairs and I closed the door. It kind of set in at that moment that the dream was over.

That day taught me something. Getting cut from the basketball team was the best thing to ever happen to me in my life because I learned that you can’t fall off the floor. And even when you do fall on the floor, it’s not even that bad. The bell rings, life moves on, I went to Chipotle the next day for lunch, like that was it. They’re like you want some guac on your burrito, I’m like yeah I deserve some guac, a dollar 95; I got that guac money right now. The following year I went to college, and I thought to myself, I want to do something where I slowly lose my dignity night in and night out just like basketball, so I decided to do stand up comedy. I did it every night, and I got my shoes peed on proverbially, night in and night out. I was not very good but I stuck with it. And on October 9th, 2014, my life changed forever. I was the last correspondant to be hired by Jon Stewart to be on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I had been doing stand up for 10 years, one month, and nine days. I was not the funniest, I was not the brightest, I was not the tallest and I’m not the best looking, all those things I’m not. But I never stopped fighting through the pick.

I do this for you guys. I do this for the 99 percent. For those of you guys that are going to Stanford and Harvard, yknow, enjoy investment banking and ruining the economy, you’re going to have a great life. Private jets are great, shout out to your health insurance, you’re going to have a great life. For the rest of us, I do this for you guys. I really do, because your parents, teachers and counselors are going to tell you that it gets better. And I’m here to tell you, it always doesn’t. It doesn’t, the world does not care about your dreams, they do not care one bit. But, I will say this, you gotta keep trying, it’s worth it. And if you give yourself an opportunity to try and survive failure, you will eventually find what you were meant to do. I’m telling you right now from my own personal experience, never stop fighting through the pick. If you can’t get in through the front door, go in through the side. If you can’t get in the side door, go in through the backyard, and if you can’t get in through the backyard, go in through the window. No matter what, never stop wearing your Air Pennies, and never stop fighting through the pick. I promise you, I promise you, you’ll eventually find where you are supposed to be. Now, I know there’s a lot of parents looking at me right now, like this guy is crazy, he’s only 29 years old, why is he pontificating about life? I 100% agree with you, but here’s what I do definitely know. I do know that the Epson 3640 is available right now for $129.99 at OfficeMax. My name is Hasan Minhaj, and thank you so much.

http://speakola.com/ideas/martin-flanagan-welcome-new-legal-year-2017

Lance Jabr & Jeffrey Herman: 'Suck it Yale: A Musical Journey Through the High School - Experience' - 2008

June 2008, Mountain View High School, Los Altos region, California, USA

Faculty and distinguished guests

You know, the only thing better than completing high school, is the chance to convey the entire experience, to a captive audience, through a lengthy speech comprised of highly personal anecdotes.

A chance which I now plan to take full advantage of.

Now I realise that some of you may be less than excited for what is about to pass, so in an attempt to fix this problem, I’ve invited my friend Jeff up here to accompany me, with some mood setting music, that I hope will enhance the speech greatly.

[music wafts in]

Relaxing isn’t it?

Now the speech is designed to exactly what YOU want to hear.

And if you just relax, and let this experience move you, you’ll find that as soon as you’re not interested in what I’m saying, your subconscious will automatically fade my voice, gently out of your senses.

Time will fly by for you, and you may even slip in and out of consciousness, as you are left to relax with the soothing sounds of the keyboard.

So now, if everyone’s ready ... I would like to begin our mystical journey through the high school experience.

[jaunty music change]

Our adventure begins with freshman year, easily our best year of high school although you may not appreciate it, [speaks deliberately inaudibly with large gesticulations, music carries on]  ... that finding a date to homecoming is easy, if you sweat as much as I do, let me tell you ... [lapses into inaudible monologue again] ... that’s when I realised that everyone else’s bodies were changing too and I didn’t have to be embarrassed about what was happening to me. [lapses back into inaudible] ... by that time it was already four in the morning, and it would have taken me another three hours to have got all the maple syrup off a the walls [lapses into silent gesticulating] ... and that brings us to senior year.

Now don’t worry, your senior year of high school will be much simpler than the previous three, because, you’ve pretty much been checked out most of the time, but there is one little thing you should get out of the way, before you start caring, and I think I can best describe how that feels, with this metaphorical story.

Let’s say you’re a single guy, and you decide it’s time to start thinking about getting married. But you’re still young, you don’t want to rush into anything, so you spend years searching for the perfect girl. Every chance you get, you travel all over the country just to meet new people. Some you like more than others, some are too nerdy, some party too much, but finally, after all your searching, you think you’ve found the perfect one.

[dramatic music]

Oh she’s incredible, she’s fun, she’s smart, she’s sexy, everything you wanted in a woman.

You decide to propose.

But - you only get one shot, and you can’t screw it up, so you spend months agionising over how you’re going to do it. What you’re going to say to her. You set a deadline for yourself, so you cna’t put it off forever.

[Music faster]

And as the deadline approaches you begin to get more nervous, are you good enough, yes you perform well and get good marks, but is that all she wants? Does she need a man who can lead, or maybe you should have volunteered to coordinate that project last week. Does she want a man who can show compassion, or maybe you should have done more community service?

And maybe when that old woman asked you to help her across the street, you should have tricked her and laughed, it feels like everything you’ve been doing in your entire life has been leading up to this moment.

Finally the deadline is here

[Big dramatic piano]

Oh you’re so nervous. You’re sweating all over her. It’s like there’s ivy around your neck. She’s way out of your league. Is the ring big enough? Is it too late to go back? How many mistakes have you made so far? Can a public institution funded by a state government that’s millions of dollars in debt really provide the same level of education as an overpriced private school?

And then it’s over. You’ve submitted your proposal and there’s nothing more you can do.

And she looks at you ... and she says ...

[piano staccato]

Mmmmmm let me get back to you in like four months.

[jaunty music]

That’s pretty much what applying to college is like. You know what sucks the most about it? She’ll probably say no. But guess what you didn’t tell her. You proposed to like, hella backup chicks just in case she rejected you, and they’re all begging you to come and marry them instead.

So suck it Yale, I could never have married a smoker anyway.

Alright, now that we’ve completed high school, it’s time to start thinking about the future.

You know, a lot of people tell me that in like, twenty years, I’m going to go to a high school reunion, and I’m going to laugh at how stupid I was as a teenager.

I’d say, that sounds like a pretty good plan, because as teenagers, we’ve had to put up with a lot of ridiculous stuff to get to where we are today.

And as adults, we’re going to have to put up with a lot more ridiculous stuff to where we will be in twenty years.

And that’s been true for every generation. And I think the most important thing we can learn from that is, things just don’t always make sense. Life for example, if a couple of random guys give this really weird speech at your high school graduation, that you didn’t get at all, maybe it was just a dumb speech that wasn’t meant to be taken seriously 

Or maybe, maybe they were trying to say that life is ridiculous, and that being able to make a fool of yourself in front of a lot of people and then laugh about it, is a great skill that’s vital for success in all fields of life.

But they were probably just being dumb. Anyway, it’s not important because I doubt that’s happened to anyone here.

Although ... if it did happen to you, make you sure you never forget the guys who gave that speech, because I bet they were awesome. And, attractive, though you may never have noticed it for the entire duration of high school.

Just a thought.

[music restarts]

Alright, I guess that pretty much sums up everything I have to say.

The only thing left is, congratulations to the Mountain View High School class of 2008, and to everyone who helped us get here.

I look forward to laughing with you all about this, in twenty years.

Thank you.

Evan Bilberdorf: 'I put the fun in fundamentally incapable', Rundle College - 2013

June 2013, Rundle College, Calgary, Alberta, Canada

My name’s Evan, and I’m here today to reflect upon the past years of our high school, predict our outstanding, bright futures, and hopefully reduce you all to tears.

I would like to start by saying this is a huge huge honour ... for you to all be here listening to me, what a treat for you!

This speech is lovingly titled, life beyond the Rundle vest... and I’m going to begin by saying, I’m not going to feed you all the Hallmark versions of a valedictory address, you know what I’m referring to [mimics] ‘as I look out here, I see future pioneers of technology, lawyers and surgeons' ... Don’t get your hopes up!

No no it’s cruel to give you such high hopes. We’re all going to be broke students for the next sixteen years, so get used to it.

Having high school come to an end is a bit surreal.

If anything for the reason that now I’ll have to buy my own loose grey slacks so that construction workers have something to whistle at.

More importantly, it accurately and concisely ends what has been for most of us three six, and for some twelve years of education at Rundle.

Throughout those years we’ve created special bonds with the physical campus, the teaching staff, and undoubtedly each other. Admittedly, when I began writing this, it was difficult to encapsulate what Rundle had been to me.

Apart from a place to go and worship Mr Howk every day.

And a place that says ‘there’s no excuse for speeding in the parking lot’. It sounds like a challenge!

I liken it to a big community, our diversity being our strength. And I would like to say that it has been a privilege to be part of this community for so long.

We all know the warm, safe, familiar feel of our Rundle sweaters. You know, forty percent nylon, sixty percent cotton. And pre-washed with the tears of school children.

For a long time now, this has been our identity. Something that identified us merely by appearance.

I grew fond of the uniform, because, personally I’m sick and tired of being outdressed by the overly stylish Keenan McVeigh.

The only one who could pull it off would be Lucas with his longshawn suit.

Although the scratch wool uniform made it seem as though we were all the same, it enabled us to have a certain unity, a togetherness. Similar itchy, red patches of eczema could only draw us closer together.

It was in those clothes that I learned math, English, most of chemistry, Mr. Franklin has a very soft voice, it’s not my fault, however this stylish ensemble has served a larger purpose than just covering my tattoos all these years.

It has become a constant in all of our lives. Something that nobody will physically miss, but the familiarity and the security we will all wish to have back.

So when I was looking back at the time spent at Rundle, between the embarrassing haircuts and everyone having braces at some point, it was the only thing that was consistent.

So when we finish our last diploma and we take our sweaters off for the very last time, we aren’;t just saying goodbye to highly fashionable outer wear, we say goodbye to years of memories and experiences that we’ve had.

In this regard, I’m not surprisingly not ashamed to admit that I’m going to miss the uniform.

But most importantly all the people I’ve met in it.

I would be remiss had I not take time to actually thanks some people.

Without # and her help, this speech would not exist, and I would certainly not be literate enough to read it. And with out Miss # something Ukrainian I would not actually be graduating, so her wonderful introduction would never have existed.

I thank both of those teachers from the bottom of my heart, that is already filled with love for myself.

When I look out at this auditorium today, I’m surprised that the # of Tim # isn’t actually here. Manages will surely be sad to see one of his best customers go.

What I do see are the smiles of good friends that have grown up with me, through the truly greasy years of junior high. It is with this sight that I speak directly to you, my fellow graduates.

There are seventy seven of us graduating today.

I feel as though I barely know some of you, something that I regret.

I also regret knowing far far too much about some of you.

For example, nobody should ever be comfortable enough with somebody to ask, ‘Brooke, yogurt doesn’t’ have an expiry date, right?’

To hear the answer is ‘you’re fine, the good folks at Yoplait would not do that to you.’

Your all lucky to see Josh here today, and not in his natural habitat of the West Side Gym. I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t try to bicep curl his diploma.

To have the future Yankees hall of famer, Ryan Cozoli graduate with us today, it’s a true honour.

There’s one guy who doesn’t need a high school diploma to know how to spell win.

And Angus, I won’t make any jokes about you. Please don’t hurt me!

This is the first time I’ve seen some of you girls without Starbucks cups in your hands. I’m al little weirded out that you were able to sit still for so long. Yeah, resting heart rate, it’s weird isn’t it?

I would like to have something insightful to say about the future. But the simple truth is, I’m absolutely terrified of it. I have not marketable skills, reading gives me a headache, I’m not a particularly hard worker.

I put the fun, in fundamentally incapable. And the can in ‘cannot do most simple tasks’.

Most of you will never see me again, depending how often you check the FBI’s most wanted list.

Although I’ve established that many of you are much more talented than I, and thus more qualified to give this advice, my final and only partition of wisdom is this:

Regardless of your experience here over the past years, we have shaped each other, for better or for worse. We all wore that uniform together, becoming strong, capable individuals. And that is due to the people you are sitting with, right now.

Try to remember them as they are now, and not at that tall awkward stage of grade 8 that some of us may still be in.

I would like to truly thank all of you for giving me the honour of speaking on your behalf. 

But most importantly, for being the best community that I could ask for for the last six years of my life.

We’ve now all gotten through high school, which is no easy feat. Most importantly, we got through it together.

Congratulations, class of 2013.

Unknown: 'Sorry I forgot to tell you. Sometimes I dream in musicals', East Jessamine High School - 2008

May 2008, East Jessamine High School, Nicholasville, Kentucky, USA

I want to say how honoured I am to stand before you all.

My friends, my classmates, my family, my academic adjudicators, and the people who thought their connecting flight to Chicago was leaving out of this terminal.

Go outside. Take the moving sidewalk. But before we begin, Southland has kindly asked me to point out your emergency exits on the left, and the right of the building, and in case my speech crashes, your seats do double as a floatation device.

Now I’m not trying to start off by making fun of Southland. I don’t think you realise what a rush it is to speak in a building of this size and magnitude. I google earthed this place on the way in to give to some of my family as directions, and it took up two pages. It’s very impressive.

Yet before I stood before this crowd, I thought I wouldn’t see any friends.  I thought there’d be too many people for me to pick you out one by one. But that’s what I found to amaze me standing before you. When I look around, I see people who over the last twelve years, I have grown very close to. So close to, today, instead of giving the speech I had in theory planned, I’m going to tell you about a dream I’ve had.

No not that dream, don’t worry.

But over the past twelve years, I’ve had a some sort of reoccurring dream about this day. I dreamed that I would stand before you all, and I would get to say those words that you’ve been waiting to hear over those twelve long years ... twelve long hard painful years. Congratulations East Jessamine High School Class of 2008, [singing] ‘looks like we made it after all’.  Sorry I forgot to tell you.  Sometimes I dream in musicals.

And then after I sang that song, some [ ??] would come up here, and ask us to take these funny looking cat toys off our geometrically shaped hats. And moving to the other side. And then in my dream, they play that awful, 'As We Go On' song, and I would shed a tear. Now today is the day I get to live out that dream, standing before you all today. Someone’s going to come up here - tell us to move our tassles, and god forbid they play a different song at graduation one year!

I suggest Freebird if you’re looking for something for next year’s ceremonies.

But one thing that’s different about today and my dream. Okay a couple of things are different. You’re all fully clothed. You don’t have animal heads and angel wings. And I’m not going to have to change my sheets when I leave here hopefully. But one thing solely is different. Standing before you today, the most emotionally charged day of my life to this point, the first major milestone on the path to my inevitable successes, I thought I would need to cry, but for some reason, I have no urge to tear -- happy or sad.  

Partially because I know if I did, WK would never let me live it down. For how many times I’ve told the story over the years, how in fifth grade every time Wes would steal my chocolate milk, and I’d poke him in the stomach, and once he cried. But a more legitimate reason for my lack of tears would be this ... and I can’t express it better than Dr Seuss said before me:

'Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.'

But when I read this quotation, when preparing for this speech, I felt kind of selfish thinking that I would cry today standing before you all. Would I look back at the memories we’ve shared together as a class over the past twelve years? I should be smiling for the rest of the summer, maybe even longer if I didn’t have to go to college at the end of it.

And for the record, I am going to college, I’m sorry if you lost that bet.

Standing in the cafeteria, tenth grade, watching AH teach our grade the very practical definition of collateral damage in a food fight as he hit everybody around us. Hitting JB in the face by accident in French class. Winning ‘Air Band’. Losing Air Band, even though, we kinda shoulda won, whatever.

The West Jessamine student section holding up a picture of Justin and I in a very compromising position. I have somebody else, I don’t want to talk about it in front of everyone.

These memories are more important than anything else I had over the last twelve years. More important that this cap and gown. Or this ... [class of 2008 scarf] ok whatever that is. But here’s what I want to make sure that you know this. These should not be the best twelve years of your life. That is a pain I don’t wish on any of my enemies. If CATS testing and portfolios are the best years of your life then you have done something wrong.

So this is what I want to stress to you today. As my last, and honestly I never expected very much from any of you, first demand as Commander-in-Chief, I want all of you to leave here today, and make memories so happy, so great, that if these memories that we’re talking about today’s sole job was to make a shelf for your new ones, they would fail the weight. Because that’s what life’s about.

So as I sit down today and have somebody come up here and tell us to turn our tassles, because I doubt they’d let me do it for fear that I’d sing again,  I start to put this day to memory. Because that’s what I realised I want all of my memories to come from. Dreams I got to live out, I can now reflect upon down the road. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has dreamed about walking across the stage in this ridiculous attire. It means a lot to all of you, it’s why you’re still here. So that’s what I want to tell you. Live out your dreams, quickly, because you don’t know how much longer we all have left. Live them out, but once you have, lay them out, fast enough to make new ones, live them out too. So one day, when I meet you all again down the road, we’ll have some awesome stories to talk about.

Congratulations, I honour you all, and good luck. Not that any one of you should need it.

Arjun: 'Babies, it’s your world', Pine View High School - 2013

May 2013, Pine View High School, Florida

Good afternoon.

My name’s Arjun.

Graduates, parents, Coach Bay and the [half show oysters], esteemed faculty and administration, and of course Dr Dean.

Good afternoon, and congratulations to the Pine View Class of 2013.

I would like to say, thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak. I am a hundred percent sure you will regret it. Now, I would be remiss if I addressed the class of 2013 without mentioning a classmate who is no longer with us. TR was an amazing friend of mine, a brilliant violinist, and a genuinely good person. And I’m truly saddened that he couldn’t be graduating with all of us today. I would hope that in all we can do we will never forget TR, our classmate, and that we can keep his memory alive.

But before I begin I want to apologise for the abundance of quotes that I will employ today. I thought it was only appropriate given how quotatiously inclined our departing principal Mr Lago is, to include the wise words of many sagacious individuals. With that I’d like to start with a quote from rapper and philosopher Nick Minaj. In her conveniently titled song High School, she sings [singing] ‘anywhere, everywhere, baby it’s your world, aint it /Baby it’s your world, aint it?’

I could go on but I digress.

I realise that I probably shouldn’t be saying ‘aint’ at a celebration of the triumph of education. But that is my theme for today, ladies and gentlemen, babies it’s your world. You just have to own it. Being a graduate of Pine View High School means you ‘ll be left on your own to conquer the real world. It means there is no more hand holding, no more living with mom and dad, no more wildly inappropriate PhD commentary, and sadly, no more Nacho Day.

Graduating means using your Pine View education to be successful, and to give back to the community that we have been so blessed to come from. Yet recalling the thirteenth president or the derivative of 4x4, is not the education that will really make you change this world. (By the way it’s Millard Filmore and 16x3). This dumb guy Albert Einstein once said, ‘education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school’. After so many years at Pine View, we have learned how to learn, and have been taught not so much what to think, but how to think. And that is the true measure of our Pine View education.

More than anything, I urge you all to dream and to dare and don’t be afraid of failing in your aspirations. My boy Teddy Roosevelt once said, ‘far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checked by failure, than to live in the grey twilight that knows no victory nor defeat .

And that my friends, is what we should do.

From this country’s inception, from when our founding fathers dared to envision a brand new nation, to the space race, when Americans dared to put a man on the moon, to the glorious KFC double down, when we dared to replace the bread on a sandwich with not one but two chicken patties! Ladies and gentleman, success has always been about daring.

So the thought I’ll leave you with today is in your post high school life, don’t shy away from using your many gifts. Whether you want to be a big time lawyer, a chemist, whether you want to be a doctor, yes I’m talking to the Indian kids out there, whether you want to be an SNL cast member, or whether you just want to ‘play the por-tes’. Go for it. And apply to be on MTV, may they always help you out.

But seriously, if you don’t dare, you’ll just be another smart kid. So, I hope you do, because, baby, it’s your world. Aint it?

Thank you.

Issac Hunt: [singing] 'Looks like we made it’, High School Graduation - 2011

21 May, 2011, USA

[Enters to 'Old Time Rock n Roll']

My last day of high school went a little like this.

7am Waking up in the morning. Gotta be fresh. I gotta have my bowl! I’ve got to have cereal.  I’ve gotta to get to the bus stop to get my bus. Wait! I see my friends. [inaudible] in the front seat, [inaudible] in the back seat. I gotta to make up my mind. Which seat can I take? As I try to make this life changing decision I thought to myself, ‘it’s Friday’. Good Friday. I’ve got to get down on Friday. Everybody is looking forward to the weekend. Friday. Friday. Partyin’! Partyin! Yeah! Fun, fun, fun, fun. Looking forward to the weekend. Time was running by so fast and then I remembered, ‘I have a speech to write for graduation’. Yesterday was Thursday - Thursday - which makes today Friday, Friday. Tomorrow is Saturday, and then Sunday comes afterwards. Only a couple of days left until the biggest moment in our high school careers.

We’re so excited. We’re so excited! Looking forward to the weekend.

Saturday came around I thought of all the times we’d never said never. Class of 2011, I’m going to tell you one time! Your world has been my world. Your fight my fight. And your breath has been my breath. And we’ve needed some Tic Tacs along the way. You know you love me, and I know you care, so just shout never and I’ll be there. Only for games, or just a text, I’ll be in college soon so I won’t have time or money to drive to some [inaudible].

Um, eeeny meeny, miney, mo - Ryan. [singling] You smile, I smile.

Guys I know we’re all very charming, so I’m going to need a tally. I mean I can put me down for at least one [inaudible] girl. Spencer, can I put you down for a two a week? We all should just pull our weight on this one. I know we’d rather study but it’s a sacrifice we should make. For all the girls.

As I imagined today’s speeches, that were going to be given, I thought ‘that should be me holding her hand’, figuratively of course, that should be me making you laugh, that should be me staying so sad, that should be me, that should be me.

I wrote this next part as a tribute to my favourite math teacher. ‘Never never never never never. I never thought that I’d see so much homework / I never thought that I’d be bored to tears /And there’s just no turning back / I really don’t dig this math / I gotta give everything I have /It’s trigonometry!’ You know I’m just joking Mr Edgar. You’re not really my favourite math teacher.

No but seriously, I’d like to share a dream I’ve had with you. A dream that has been reoccurring over the years. Don’t worry, not that dream. This is a dream where I stand in front of my friends, my family and my academic adjudicators, and congratulate the class of 2011 on a job - done. Today that dream of mine has become a reality. So congratulations class of 2011 -

[singing] ‘Looks like we made it’

Oh I forgot to mention. I dream in musicals.

It’s as [inaudible] says, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of our lives, and so is tomorrow.’

And now, for a man who needs no introduction.

[walks off to laughter]