Too many graduation speeches are pap and circumlocution

By Mark Franek

This is the time of year when students here and across the country approach the stage to receive their diplomas to a thunderous round of applause from family and friends. The documents and the applause are significant symbols of their persistence and accomplishment.

By comparison, most graduation speeches - those effusive penultimate affairs - fall short. Most are warm and fuzzy performances delivered by outside people on topics that appeal more to parents than to students. That's a shame.

Students have worked hard for many years and they deserve to hear words of wisdom that haven't been cribbed from an essay or a book, or taken from the grinding wheel of the speaker's day job.

I suspect that nearly all of the graduation speeches given around the country each year at both the high school and college levels share many of the same themes, let the details be what they may: Celebrate your accomplishments, follow your bliss, and avoid pitfalls, which come in many shapes and sizes.

(I sat through three such speeches last month.)

It would be nice if graduation speakers got off the beaten trail, so to speak, and took some real and calculated risks, which, ironically, are what they often tell students to do after graduation. Maybe then their arrival on campus each year would be met not with a desultory ho-hum, but with the fanfare befitting an intellectual gladiator.

Perhaps I expect too much.

This is my final year as a dean of students and an English teacher at one of Philadelphia's many fine independent schools, and I can honestly say that I've learned more from my students than from the impressive cadre of outside speakers we've invited to the school over the years, during the academic year, to speak on all sorts of topics, from climate change to mental health to politics.

If somebody asked me to give a graduation speech (which they haven't), I would look first to the words of students. All children, regardless of their school or community, have a lot to say about what they've learned over the years. Wouldn't it be nice if we really listened to them for a change?

Here are pearls of wisdom from my teenage students, gathered during the course of our conversations and writings together. All of the students will graduate tomorrow. Think of each sentence as the theme or a lead-in to a graduation speech.

Life is a group project, even though most people think solo.

Sliding down the roller-bars at the Discovery Zone when I was a child was the best ride I've ever been on. Every ride since then has been anticlimactic.

My dad and I always argue. If he heard me say that, he'd disagree.

Sports mirror life. There is always at least one pathetic, half-blind ref calling the game, there is always someone better than you, and you're never as good as you think you are.

Sometimes, when you feel fine, you realize that you got nothing.

If you stare at the clock on the wall, the hands will actually move slower. I noticed this in chemistry class last year (sorry, guys!).

I remember my first soccer game as a child. When the ball was kicked to me, I caught it and ran down the field and scored a goal. When did we start keeping score?

If you're a girl and you have an older brother, he will inevitably say: "I can hook up with your friends, but you can't hook up with mine." Boys aren't fair.

Why war?

If I could just get myself organized I could get all A's.

In kindergarten, I wanted to be a construction worker. Then I changed and wanted to be a paleontologist. I wish I still had that kind of direction.

Life is a group project. It bears repeating. We will be graduating soon, but we still have a lot to learn.

Applause, for our graduates!