To the County High School Class of 2012: As you sit in front of me, I know what most of you are thinking at the moment. There are those who are already pondering about what life without high school will be like; those who are debating whether or not to tell your crush tonight about your whispers of adoration you’ve secretly held for four years; some simply want to get out of that ungodly chair, get that thing that isn’t really a diploma but only tells you when to pick up the thing, and then be the first one on the green bus to the grad party — you know who you are. And the rest, well, the rest aren’t even paying attention, you’re thinking, “Great, here comes one of the valedictorian speakers. Next up: a boring speech straight out of the pits of scholarly hell.” And it’s OK, I don’t mind — that sort of thing comes with the territory. But tonight, I ask that you give me a chance to break that stereotype so that I may address you in the full splendor that you deserve after 13 grueling years of work. I do not want to be known as your “valedictorian” as I stand here, c’mon guys, there is no time left to place labels on people anymore, instead I ask that you accept me as one of your peers — and as a man who will enjoy becoming a graduate alongside you.
Over the last three days I’ve been through two drafts of this speech, one dealing with the future and the other dealing with the past. I had the usual “we are entering a new chapter in our lives” spiel, and then, because everyone pressured me to “make it funny,” I followed this with some witticisms on flatulence and going to jail; and then going to jail for flatulence; and then flatulence inside a jail with a guy named Red. Needless to say, I ditched those speeches.
Twenty-four ho...
... middle of paper ...
...e that comes from the reflective mood of the evening. Enjoy the silence while you can for it is anticlimax you weren’t expecting after you finished LHS. Capture the silence as an aspect of taste. Remember it.
Finally, take a deep breath, and smile at that wonderful smell: the aroma of relief. After years of following the path of public schooling, I invite you to welcome the liberation that comes from graduation. This sugary aroma only comes once in a lifetime. Capture it with your sense of smell. Remember it in the years to come.
As our time together draws to a close, I leave LHS with no further anecdotes of wisdom or quotes dealing with success; only the sincere hope that you immersed yourself in the essence of commencement. Everybody, we’ll all be graduates by the time we leave tonight. Let’s enjoy it. Congratulations to the Lee High School Class of 2006.
In her ,“Harvard”, address, actress, comedian and producer Amy Poehler speaks to the graduating class of 2011. Her speech is filled with her uplifting sense of humor and her down-to-earth personality that you can’t help but enjoy. Poehler utilizes various rhetorical strategies throughout her address such as allusion, and conveying pathos in a humourous as well as an emotional way. By using these, she successfully encourages the young students and families at Harvard University to work their hardest and take on the world.
This speech is bigger than me... bigger than this graduating class... and the world surrounding us. It is an epiphany. This speech is for the little guy, the middle man and the guy who is always behind the scenes... For the past four years, we have seen stories, read newspaper articles, and have heard announcements about our star athletes, scholars and over achievers.
Graduating from school is only one of the essential tools for a young person to have a successful life. A person endures many long years of schooling, and then the graduation day finally arrives. That special day is one of the most momentous days in a young student’s life. Happiness and sadness are the two emotions a person will feel on that special day. A student will experience happiness because of a significant milestone that was completed in the student’s life. The sad emotions will arise because of a terrifying new chapter in the book of life that is about to begin. Both Bradley Whitford and His Holiness the Dalai Lama give their commencement speeches by using humor to relax the mood of the crowd, making light of their fame, and giving the usual words of wisdom to the graduating class of students.
David McCullough Jr., delivered the commencement at Wellesley High School in Massachusetts on June 1st 2012 to staff, the 2012 graduates, and their family and friends. The speech was straightforward and supplied valuable information for their future. . McCullough’s speech at times felt harsh, offensive, and insulting. His words and examples were given to achieve insight, knowledge, and awareness for each student’s future. The commencement expressed a great deal of achievement, but conveyed that there was more work to be done. His speech was effective and appreciated through humor parallelism, repetition, and anaphora. His point of view has obtained respect and determination by all those that have been challenged and have heard his words.
The commencement addresses to Penn State's class of 2011 by Denzel Washington and Tulane University's class of 2015 by Maya Rudolph are parallel and distinctive speeches in their own style. Washington's and Rudolph's speeches use humor to make them relatable to their group of graduates. While also telling stories that are also humorous give their messages integrity and hooks the audience. Their techniques and underlying message, taking risks for a greater reward, are the same. However, they differ in the methods, by either falling forward or saying yes, to taking chances.
Commencement is a critical juncture in our lives; it is a momentous occasion where we believe we are about to start anew. However, graduation is the bittersweet moment where the forces of past and future are simultaneously acting on us. Consequently, the past is not dead. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, suggests that our past experiences will be with us forever as he states, " [we] are a part of all that [we] have met; yet all experience is an arch where through gleams that untraveled world." That is why graduation, similar to other turning points in our lives, possesses two halves, which accentuate each other. We are looking forward, but the "arch" of experience beckons us to remember, value, and learn from our past experiences. Thus, I feel that in order to appreciate commencement fully, we must remember our own past, and in particular, the last four years:
As a recent high school graduated listened and read those commencement speech, I have been thinking about my future how is going to be, and it was like start a new chapter of life in a clean page. The commencement speech gives a lot of advice of how future is going to happen and how hard life I have to go through. During the commencement speech class of 2014, the principal got me thinking about my future, and it was like there is either emotion of sadness nor happiness. The sadness things are I’m going to miss my high school, friends and teachers. The happiness things are I now know there is a bright future waiting for me. These speech is a lesson for us to be learn. The writer of these speech know what is going on because they had
Let me begin by saying that I am very honored to be addressing the County High School Class of 2012 as students of this institution for the last time. We've spent these last four years creating some serious memories: four years of chieftain power, leaking roofs, questionable Homecoming skits, and musical principals. Four years of good teachers, bad teachers, new teachers, old teachers. Four years of youth, music, growing up and breaking free. Four rubber chickens, four yearbooks, four ASB presidents and four chubby bunnies.
Good afternoon everyone. Friends, family, staff members, honored guests and fellow graduates. On behalf of the Grad Class of 2016, we were selected by our class to give some parting words. Today is our day. After thirteen years of knowing only these walls around us, our time here has come to an end. We are officially stepping forward into our futures. No longer united on one path, as we are now branching off on our own, taking our own paths.
Graduation is two weeks away, which for most of us does not seem possible. As we look back at these past four long but fulfilling years, there are some things that we shall never forget. It’s hard to believe that at one point we were little freshmen entering into these doors, with no idea what was in store for us. Four years have passed since that first day, and we have made decisions that will frame our futures. After years of studying, filling out applications, scholarships, and taking tests, we are now thrown into the real world, where there are seldom retakes, second chances are only a memory of yesteryear, and honor codes are the way of life.
Having spent twelve years of my school life in just one small red brick building, the years tend to fade into each other. But the year I remember most clearly and significantly is my senior year of high school, where I finally began to appreciate what this institution offered to any student who stopped to look. Before, school had been a chore, many times I simply did not feel motivated toward a subject enough to do the homework well, and seeing the same familiar faces around ever since I was 5 years old grew very tiring soon enough. But I began to see things from a different angle once I became a senior.
Good evening parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, and friends. I would like to thank you all for coming to this very special day. I know how proud you must be. As we have grown over the years, there are many stages we all have gone through. From learning our shapes and colors, to getting our first kiss in middle school, or how about explaining to our parents why we skipped school because the principal called home. As we remember these days, things that we've done will be with us forever. But this is only the start of our journey. The day has come where we say goodbye to the big yellow buses, assemblies, assigned seating, and attendance policies. Are you really gonna miss it? For some of us maybe not right away. But eventually we will so for us to be here it is not necessarily an achievement, but a privilege. All of us have been in school over half our lives. To graduate is one more step we've taken in our lives.
I have been chosen today to come before you and give some words of encouragement to the graduating class because I am seen as an example of one who has succeeded in school. And yet, I am by no means the only person in our class who has succeeded. Woody Allen once said, “Success is 80 percent showing up” and since all of you have shown up here today and at school for the last 12 years, you all are most of the way there. So what makes up the remaining 20 percent? Not getting all As on your tests, or going to state or winning first prize in a contest. It is merely trying. If you try your best, you have already succeeded, regardless of where you end up. The world is a fickle place and too often the most deserving, hardest-working people are passed over in favor of the ones who obtain the best-looking accomplishments. Thus, one’s measure of success should be based not on how well you do by society’s standards, but on how hard you worked and how much you got out of it. As Tennyson once said, “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!” But rather, we should be, as he said, like the “spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought ... To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
Graduation is not as glamorous as everyone thinks. Sitting in the bleachers for four hours in the scalding heat with your nicest clothes on is not fun (at least for me). I would’ve had no problem skipping my graduation, except for one part. There is one segment of graduation that makes the whole thing bearable, the speech. The graduation speech plays a pivotal role in making or breaking graduation ceremony. These speeches not only serve to inspire the public, but also shapes the values of the academic community. If the speech blows, the graduation will most likely blow. No one wants to attend a lack luster graduation, right? There are certain elements that create a mind-blowing speech. Today, we will be exploring the different tactics speech
Graduation: the last day that I would unwillingly set foot on the fields of Horizon High School. I could feel my heart beating out of my chest, and tried so hard to keep my feet moving one after the other in order to maintain my perfect stature. After the two hour wait of opening speeches, class songs, and the calling off of the five hundred plus names that were in front of me, it was finally my turn. As my row stood up and we walked towards the stage it had set in at last, this is it, I am done. My high school career ended on that night, but it didn’t close the book that is my life, it only started a new chapter, and with it came a whole slue of uncertainties.