Graduation Speech :: Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

I want all of you graduates to do me a favor and just look around at your fellow classmates for a few seconds and think about the people you know out there and realize: After all of the parties and once all of the euphoria surrounding graduating has subsided, you are not going to see many of these people ever again. I'm sure it's a comforting though to many of you that you will never see me again, and I've come to terms with that. We are all headed in different directions now. Some of us are going to college, whether it be two-year, four-year, in-state, out-of-state, or whatever. Some are going straight into the workforce, maybe in construction, plumbing, commercial fossil fuel distribution or as Jeff Reynolds puts it so eloquently, "You could go into a life of being a government financial allocation specialist." And some of you are going straight to jail. Right now I'm sure many of you are sitting there with thoughts racing through your head at a mile a minute. Some people are anxious about the future, others are primed to get on the bus for the after-grad party. Some are thinking that they finally have their ticket stamped to leave Purple Lake, which I happen to be thinking right now. Some of you are looking at the clock and wondering how long it will be until I shut-up and get off the stage, I happen to know Goset is thinkin' that right now, aren't you Aynsley? Those kids, like Goset over there, just want their little case which actually doesn't contain a diploma, instead it just has a piece of paper which tells you when to pick it up. To those people out there I say, "Just cool off, I'll be done in a minute, the diploma cases aren't going anywhere, so just be patient!" Though you might not be thinking any of those things right now, I'm sure we are all thinking that we finally made it. Yup, high school is over, but we're not even close to being done. This is just the beginning of the rest of our life and it only gets harder from this point on. You will encounter obstacles at every turn, but you must persevere if you hope to succeed in this world. The key to your success will be to know what everyone expects from you and then you must commit yourself to exceeding those expectations, that is what will set you ahead of the rest.