Words to inspire my brother as he writes a high school graduation speech?

March 16, 2009 5:17 PM

A family member is graduating first in his class but is having trouble with the graduation speech-writing part of things. Any thoughts on where an 18 year old could look for inspiration for writing a speech to commemorate graduating high school?

I'm trying to help my brother out by giving him speeches he can look to for wisdom and inspiration when crafting his valedictory speech.

I've found a bunch of cliche things to say...but they're exactly that. Wear sunscreen...yada yada....we look forward, not back.

I told him I'd help by Asking Metafilter if they remember any hilarious or awesome speeches from their own graduations or whether there's a particular body of writing he can look to for guidance. He's 18. Typical suburban high school. Everyone will scatter to the wind afterwards.

Thank you in advance.

posted by melodykramer to education (16 comments total)

Best advice: make it short. No one's there for the speech, so the shorter it is, the less people will be coughing and looking at their watches.

Also, it's a high school graduation speech; don't overthink it!
posted by The Michael The at 5:38 PM on March 16

Take a look at the last lecture series. Randy Pauschs is well done and might give some great direction.
posted by Black_Umbrella at 5:42 PM on March 16

The best high school graduation speech I ever heard was essentially a refutation of all the cliches that come up in graduation speeches. The speaker said "I'm not going to tell you X-cliche. Nor am I going to tell you Y-cliche" etc. in a way that ran through all the standard metaphors that people use in these things. Then she segued into a personal story that wasn't at all about graduating high school and going forth into the world, but rather was about all the trouble she got into one summer during college, how she nearly dropped out, but how, in the end, she turned out okay. The main message was "it's okay to fail. Getting great grades and always being the 'good kid' isn't the be-all end-all everyone makes it out to be."

It was a great speech, and totally unexpected.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:47 PM on March 16

Short is good. The shorter the better. Hopefully the school didn't give him something they want him to talk about like they did at my school.

I think an awesome speech would go something like this: "We're not all going to be doctors. We might not all even be successful. But on this day, we're not paying for the food. Let's go eat!"
posted by theichibun at 6:05 PM on March 16

I'm fond of Patton Oswalt's speech on returning to his old high school. Mefi thread here.
posted by twins named Lugubrious and Salubrious at 6:40 PM on March 16

I can't find it, but in 1989 or 1990 Bob Elliott (of Bob and Ray) did a faux graduation speech for Prairie Home Companion that contained every cliche in the book, one after the other. If you can find it, use it as a model of what not to say or perhaps as a way to deliver more cliche per cubic sentence and go for the laughs.
posted by plinth at 6:49 PM on March 16

Nthing make it short. I gave a speech at my high school graduation, and went up there with less than a page of notes (where each line had a sentence fragment/thought or a quote). I was ridiculously nervous, mostly due to never practicing my speech. I did mentally rehearse half of it once, though, if that counts for partial credit. Rumor has it that it came off smoothly (and apparently people didn't think I was nervous either; not sure what speech they listened to...), and everyone said they appreciated that it was both genuine but not epic in length either. I think I took about 5 minutes.

The main point was that it was fine to not have your entire life planned out, but that we all should make the decisions that move us toward where ever it is in life that will make us happy. And that the numerical representations of our academic careers to that point really don't mean nearly as much as having learned something about the Real World, like how to learn, how to deal with other people, etc. In retrospect, it was maybe a little cliche, but I meant (most of) what I said.

Also, don't get all dense with quotations. Quotations have the highest cliche factor as anything else you might come up with, in my experience. Don't worry about being funny or entertaining if you aren't naturally. I decided it was better to be sincere about what I was saying than to tell jokes that would most likely bomb.

Remember, everyone wants to get out of there just as much as you; even more so if they are the ones in the silly gowns (students, teachers, and administrators alike).
posted by ThyroidBob at 7:41 PM on March 16

Also, if he's prone to fiddling with stuff, especially while speaking, someone told me this tip (or maybe I figured it out on my own; I don't recall):

Take a paper clip up there with you, and you can fiddle with it all you want in one hand out of view (in my case, it was with my hands resting on the ledge of the podium), and you won't end up making any distracting movements (like sticking your hands in your pockets or dropping something important). I think I actually found one that matched the color of the shirt I had underneath the gown (or the gown itself) and clipped it to the bottom side of the cuff on one arm so I'd have it when I got up there.

I've used this strategy several times since, and have found it to be a great help every time...
posted by ThyroidBob at 7:47 PM on March 16

Here's some speaking advice.

1. Write your speech out word for word. The reason for that is not so that you memorize it, but so that you can time it. Your brother probably can speak 150 words a minute, so if he wants to speak for 5 minutes, he should write out about 750 words. If he wants to speak for 10 minutes, he should write 1500 words.

2. Start off with a story, preferably a personal story that shows some vulnerability, but demonstrates some virtue, either of a character in the story (such as a parent or a teacher), or by the speaker himself.

3. Have a "moment of reflection" that is the theme of the speech. Something that the story is trying to tell us. For some better instruction on steps 2 and 3, take a look at Ira Glass's advice on storytelling at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7KQ4vkiNUk.

4. Some small things that can make a big difference.

- Don't start off with "Thank You Principal Smithers" and audience acknowledgments. Go straight into the story.
- Watch what you do with your hands and body. Make your hands body open. Since your brother will probably be on a stage with a big audience, his gestures should be bigger. Watch out for rocking, for grasping hands, and from holding on to the lectern or podium (in fact, if you can, get out from behind the lectern or podium).
- Make eye contact with the audience as you tell the story.
- Have dramatic pauses.

All of these little things can have a big impact. You can see some videos of some pretty good amateur speakers here. http://iamkia.com/speech-contest/international-speech-contest-tips/

5. Finally, practice practice practice. For some great places to practice, find your local Toastmasters club (or clubs) and practice with them. Toastmasters gives great evaluations of speeches. (Plus it's cheap to free.)
posted by davidamann at 8:58 PM on March 16 [2 favorites]

Wow these are great. I think they'll alleviate a lot of his anxiety. Thank you.
posted by melodykramer at 9:18 PM on March 16

Tell him to write a speech about how absurd it is for an 18-year-old to give anyone advice about anything. Tell him to explain that he got to be first in his class by listening to people older and wiser than himself. Tell him to argue that if we lived in a society in which our elders were revered as repositories of cultural wisdom instead of annoying liabilities that can't operate an iPod, we'd likely all fear aging a little less. And tell him the applause he receives will be in direct opposite proportion to the length of his speech.
posted by jefficator at 10:08 PM on March 16 [2 favorites]

There's tons of good information on Presentation Zen.
posted by hummercash at 6:25 AM on March 17

Tell him to write a speech about how absurd it is for an 18-year-old to give anyone advice about anything.

I was going to say more or less this. My valedictory speech was full of the usual platitudes about, I don't know, I don't even remember. I will remember for the rest of my life how my speech was received by the kid who'd been bullying me for a decade. He came up after the ceremony and said, "Christ, bitch, this is probably the last time I'm ever going to see you. Why are you still talking to me like you know everything? You don't know shit." And he just rolled his eyes and walked away. It made me realize how completely clueless I was about so many things. So, OP's brother: don't be clueless. There are probably peers in your graduating class who are successfully raising toddlers now. People who've been to the depths of drug-addled hell and back already. And so on. It's fundamentally silly to think that you have some great wisdom to impart, or even that you would know where to look for such a thing, just because you're intelligent and keen. Well, ok, maybe you do, but I sure didn't.

That said, the best high school speech I heard came from someone who was a consummate storyteller. He gave maybe half a dozen vignettes of things that had happened to the class in the last few years ("hey remember that time we convinced the freshmen to try out for the lacrosse team that didn't exist?"). Some of the stories were familiar to everyone, some to just some in-group people, but they were just told with a really great tongue-in-cheek humor and gentle affection. Everybody likes hearing about themselves and people they know, so it was entertaining and warm-fuzzy-glowy. And then he sort of wrapped it up with a great moral: for better or worse, these people have had a huge impact on who you are and how you think. Wherever you go next, people are more or less the same. So find the good ones, with good stories to tell, that will help shape you into the kind of person you want to be next.
posted by miagaille at 6:57 AM on March 17

He could talk about how bleak the future looks and how each of them should make it their goal to make the future as bright as possible.
posted by anniecat at 9:09 AM on March 17

Well, I think he'd like it to be positive...he's an optimistic person.
posted by melodykramer at 12:12 PM on March 17

I'd have to second (or third/fourth/twelfth) what people have said here. He's going to have a bunch of people expecting something fairly banal — 'enjoy the good times', etc. I think short is as important as interesting here, and you have to remember, he's not exactly going to have a captive audience, so I would imagine a relatively short speech is going to be the main consideration.

If he's a good speaker and can write well, then it's all about content. None of us know what his high school is like, but he could perhaps brainstorm what he'd want to hear if he wasn't giving the speech, and then try it on for size and see if it's any good. If he includes any jokes or anecdotes, then he needs to test them on people to make sure the former are definitely funny and the latter interesting. The dog in the water fountain story may make him and his friends die with laughter but if it dies a death in a room full of people he's going to really feel it. Other than that (fairly arbitrary!) advice, it's either got to be fairly conventional or refreshingly unexpected.

More importantly than that, though, is the length. If it's short, it can be wonderful but if it sucks then at least people didn't suffer too long. Everyone remembers the Gettysburg address, and it was three minutes long. William Henry Harrison spoke for north of an hour at his first inaugural and a half and died a month later. :P

The best thing is to encourage him to just write his own mind and then take it from there. Either read it over yourself or pass it onto a friend, either a writer or possibly someone studying English.
posted by jaffacakerhubarb at 8:50 PM on March 17