Graduation Speeches
To end my week of "the end" reviews, I want to share with you some of my favorite graduation speeches. Having graduated myself this past weekend, I felt this would be an appropriate way to commemorate the end of my four years in college and the beginning of the rest of my life.
Typically these are cliched and the topics are overdone, but there have been a few that have stuck out to me over the years. Unfortunately, none of them are my own, but I guess I'll just pretend. Each graduation speech here has been picked because it is a) given by someone I respect deeply and b) has a creative message I feel every graduate should hear. In my past 4 years at Berkeley, I have learned a great deal. From multi-variable calculus to circuit analysis to picking up programming languages to performing monologues and scenes, there have been many technical skills acquired during my time at college. Furthermore, I made many friends, had many leadership opportunities, and stretched my soft skills as well.
However, I feel that I have been insanely lucky in life thus far. Most of my achievements seem to have just fallen into my lap, and my life has fallen into place so seamlessly. But looking back on what I accomplished at Berkeley, all the late nights, hours spent stressing, joyous moments, and time spent with friends doing fun stuff, I realize that even if it feels like everything has fallen into place, I worked immensely hard for all of it too. I'm not saying that I understand how to best live my life but merely that I have an idea of what it takes to be happy. And following the advice of these 4 people below, I think I'll be alright in the real world. So, I would to share that advice with you and hope that you all will be alright too.
Speech #1: JK Rowling
Delivered at Harvard in 2008
Main Message:
1. Learn from your failures as they will happen, but they will also help you discover yourself.
2. The power of imagination is that it allows us to empathize with others and connects everyone at a basic human level.
My interpretation/re-worded words of wisdom:
Don't fear failure as you will often learn more from your failures than your successes. Open up your mind to the rest of the world.
Why this speech:
First off, I'm a huge fan of the Harry Potter series. It was my childhood. I even wrote my college admissions essay on it. Yeah. That's how important Harry Potter is for me. Secondly, I think the messages in the speech, about failure and imagination, are so important. For high achieving individuals, we are taught at a young age to fear failure. But through my time in college, I have learned to embrace it. There is no success without failure, and as Ms. Rowling points out, failure can teach you things about yourself success will never touch. As for imagination and keeping an open mind, I think that is just as important for the real world, especially if you want to be a good person. There are already so many close minded people out there wreaking havoc (like those students who protested their commencement speakers and many people on the Berkeley campus), we don't need more of them. As we get older, our imaginations tend to wane. Many adults don't remember what it was like to be a kid any more, causing generational rifts. I think it's important to always keep that child inside of you alive for both your children's sake and your own. We could all benefit from a deeper understanding of each other. Lastly, she made a gay wizard joke.
Speech #2: Steve Jobs
Delivered at Stanford in 2005
Main Message:
A few quotes...
1. "[Y]ou can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever, because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make all the difference."
2. "You’ve got to find what you love [...] As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it and like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking, don’t settle."
3. "Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. [...] Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there and yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it and that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
4. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
My interpretation/re-worded words of wisdom:
1. Trust in your decisions and that it will work out even if at the time it doesn't feel like it. When you look back, you'll realize it all happened for a reason.
2. Search until you find what you love. Then do what you love.
3. Keep things in perspective. We're all human, we all will die one day. Figure out what's important for you and go after the things you want.
And because this speech just has so many quotes, I want to add one more. After all, I think Steve Jobs is probably the best person to summarize his speech anyway.
"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
Why this speech:
I don't even know where to begin with this speech. It's probably one of the most, if not THE MOST, influential speech I have seen or read. Ever. I have a list of quotes from this speech saved on my laptop, and when I feel sad, lost, hopeless, I turn to these quotes to find inspiration. I don't care if Steve Jobs was a jerk. He was an extraordinary innovator who gave popularity to the MP3 and smartphone markets, as well as starting the tablet and animated feature film markets. The guy was a visionary, and he led the life of someone who knew what he wanted and would do anything in his power to achieve his goals. Maybe he wasn't the nicest guy. Maybe Apple wasn't the greatest company to work for. But they churned out product after product, building a very solid fan base. He got things done. He got results. And with such an interesting life story, the late Mr. Jobs probably has more words of wisdom than any other person I know. More than all those politicians and academics who normally speak at graduations. When I think of a successful entrepreneur, I don't think of Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg or any of the thousands of other people who have up and running companies whose names I don't even know or bother to learn. No. I think of Steve Jobs, and I will always think of Steve Jobs.
Speech #3: Stephen Colbert
Delivered at Northwestern in 2011
Main Message:
1. "[T]hankfully dreams can change. If we’d all stuck with our first dream, the world would be overrun with cowboys and princesses. So whatever your dream is right now, if you don’t achieve it you haven’t failed and you’re not some loser."
2. "But just as importantly, and this is the part I may not get right and you may not listen to, if you do get your dream, you are not a winner. [...] You cannot win improv and life is an improvisation. You have no idea what is going to happen next and you are mostly just yanking ideas out of your ass as you go along and like improv, you cannot win your life, even when it might look like you’re winning."
3. "In my experience, you will truly serve only what you love because service is love made visible. If you love your friends you will serve your friends. If you love community you will serve your community. If you love money you will serve your money and if you love only yourself you will serve only yourself and you will have only yourself. "
My interpretation/re-worded words of wisdom:
In life, there are no winners and losers. Just those who are loved and love others, and those who aren't and don't.
Why this speech:
Although most of it is Stephen Colbert (the real person) making jokes and references to Northwestern University life, it's main message is something I think trumps even Steve Jobs' inspirational quotes. In high school and college, we are so used to competing and being better than everyone. Our goal is to win at whatever we do. But as Mr. Colbert has pointed out, you can't win (or lose) life. There are failures and successes, but you yourself are not a failure or success. You can't define yourself by these terms and measurements because that is not what life should be about. And even still, the scale we normally define our successes on do not apply in real life. You are not a GPA, a standardized test score, or a grade. You are not a number or a statistic. You are not a win-loss record. Life is not a game, it's something else entirely. It's much more. And the world would be a much better place if everyone remembers that.
On a lighter note, this speech is pretty funny. After all, this is Stephen Colbert, and he is a pretty funny guy. Elegantly written and well delivered, I would say this speech is a must read/watch for all. And his ending punchline is just too perfect to pass up.
Speech #4: Gwen Stacy
Delivered in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in May 2014
Speech:
*This speech was put together from bits and pieces found online (mostly Yahoo! answers) and is not fully coherent. If you have any corrections, please let me know!
Part I (in person)
"I know that we all think we're immortal, we're supposed to feel that way, we're graduating. The future is and should be bright, but, like our brief four years in high school, what makes life valuable is that it doesn't last forever, what makes it precious is that it ends. I know that now more than ever. And I say it today of all days to remind us that time is luck. So don't waste it living someone else's life, make yours count for something. Fight for what matters to you, no matter what. Because even if you fall short, what better way is there to live?"
My interpretation/re-worded words of wisdom:
What makes life beautiful is that it comes to an end, so you must make sure to live it to the fullest. Hold on to hope even in your darkest hours because you never know who might need you.
Why this speech:
I know this is technically a high school graduation speech and I'm graduating from college, but as I've already expressed in my review of this film, Gwen Stacy is an extraordinary person. Perhaps one of the reasons I love the new Spider-Man movies so much is because I relate to Gwen and look up to her. And although her speech is mainly used to foreshadow her death and is addressed most specifically to Peter, I still find something special in what she has to say.
In some ways, it echoes what Steve Jobs said about death being everyone's ultimate destination. That you should think, "if I were to die today, would I be happy with what I've accomplished and what I'm doing". It's the mantra, live every day as if it was your last. I'm not saying you should live in fear, I'm saying you should live without it.
Now as a theater minor, I know that it's actually impossible to live without fear. I will always be scared at auditions and always be jittery before performances. You cannot eliminate such a basic human emotion/instinct, but what you can do is channel it into something constructive. You cannot let fear stop you from living, and knowing that one day you will die, you must live each day the way you want to live it. Otherwise you become a shell of existence, not a source of life.
And in many ways, that's what Gwen is telling Peter. That even in his darkest hours, he needs to be a source of life. He needs to be hope for others because everyone needs hope. They need something to believe in. Something to trust in. Just as Gwen is a source of hope for Peter, Spider-Man is a source of hope for New York City. Without hope, we are all lost and darkness can take over. So it's important that through everything we do, we keep it alive.
I know, it's an interesting mix of graduation speech givers and an interesting mix of messages. An author, an entrepreneur, a comedian, and a fictional high school student. But as I take my first steps into the real world, I hope to keep all of their messages in my heart and never forget the words of wisdom they have imparted to their graduating classes. Because all of these pieces of advice have been things that I have learned myself during my four years at Berkeley. Perhaps not to the extreme that some of these notable people have, but to a certain degree I have experienced what they deemed as important. So to all of you beginning your journeys of life in the real world with me, I wish you the best of luck. For those of you who have already begun it, just know that it's never too late to make a change. And for those who will reach this point in a few years, here's a little preview of what is to come.
To everyone who has taken the time to make it to the bottom of my post, I sincerely hope reading this has given you some new philosophies as to how to live your life. And that by remembering what really matters, we can help make the world a better place together.
**Note: all pictures taken from Google searches online, speech links were found on gradspeeches.com.
Typically these are cliched and the topics are overdone, but there have been a few that have stuck out to me over the years. Unfortunately, none of them are my own, but I guess I'll just pretend. Each graduation speech here has been picked because it is a) given by someone I respect deeply and b) has a creative message I feel every graduate should hear. In my past 4 years at Berkeley, I have learned a great deal. From multi-variable calculus to circuit analysis to picking up programming languages to performing monologues and scenes, there have been many technical skills acquired during my time at college. Furthermore, I made many friends, had many leadership opportunities, and stretched my soft skills as well.
However, I feel that I have been insanely lucky in life thus far. Most of my achievements seem to have just fallen into my lap, and my life has fallen into place so seamlessly. But looking back on what I accomplished at Berkeley, all the late nights, hours spent stressing, joyous moments, and time spent with friends doing fun stuff, I realize that even if it feels like everything has fallen into place, I worked immensely hard for all of it too. I'm not saying that I understand how to best live my life but merely that I have an idea of what it takes to be happy. And following the advice of these 4 people below, I think I'll be alright in the real world. So, I would to share that advice with you and hope that you all will be alright too.
Speech #1: JK Rowling
Delivered at Harvard in 2008
1. Learn from your failures as they will happen, but they will also help you discover yourself.
2. The power of imagination is that it allows us to empathize with others and connects everyone at a basic human level.
My interpretation/re-worded words of wisdom:
Don't fear failure as you will often learn more from your failures than your successes. Open up your mind to the rest of the world.
Why this speech:
First off, I'm a huge fan of the Harry Potter series. It was my childhood. I even wrote my college admissions essay on it. Yeah. That's how important Harry Potter is for me. Secondly, I think the messages in the speech, about failure and imagination, are so important. For high achieving individuals, we are taught at a young age to fear failure. But through my time in college, I have learned to embrace it. There is no success without failure, and as Ms. Rowling points out, failure can teach you things about yourself success will never touch. As for imagination and keeping an open mind, I think that is just as important for the real world, especially if you want to be a good person. There are already so many close minded people out there wreaking havoc (like those students who protested their commencement speakers and many people on the Berkeley campus), we don't need more of them. As we get older, our imaginations tend to wane. Many adults don't remember what it was like to be a kid any more, causing generational rifts. I think it's important to always keep that child inside of you alive for both your children's sake and your own. We could all benefit from a deeper understanding of each other. Lastly, she made a gay wizard joke.
Speech #2: Steve Jobs
Delivered at Stanford in 2005
A few quotes...
1. "[Y]ou can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever, because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path and that will make all the difference."
2. "You’ve got to find what you love [...] As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it and like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking, don’t settle."
3. "Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. [...] Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there and yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it and that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new."
4. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
My interpretation/re-worded words of wisdom:
1. Trust in your decisions and that it will work out even if at the time it doesn't feel like it. When you look back, you'll realize it all happened for a reason.
2. Search until you find what you love. Then do what you love.
3. Keep things in perspective. We're all human, we all will die one day. Figure out what's important for you and go after the things you want.
And because this speech just has so many quotes, I want to add one more. After all, I think Steve Jobs is probably the best person to summarize his speech anyway.
"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice and most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."
Why this speech:
I don't even know where to begin with this speech. It's probably one of the most, if not THE MOST, influential speech I have seen or read. Ever. I have a list of quotes from this speech saved on my laptop, and when I feel sad, lost, hopeless, I turn to these quotes to find inspiration. I don't care if Steve Jobs was a jerk. He was an extraordinary innovator who gave popularity to the MP3 and smartphone markets, as well as starting the tablet and animated feature film markets. The guy was a visionary, and he led the life of someone who knew what he wanted and would do anything in his power to achieve his goals. Maybe he wasn't the nicest guy. Maybe Apple wasn't the greatest company to work for. But they churned out product after product, building a very solid fan base. He got things done. He got results. And with such an interesting life story, the late Mr. Jobs probably has more words of wisdom than any other person I know. More than all those politicians and academics who normally speak at graduations. When I think of a successful entrepreneur, I don't think of Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg or any of the thousands of other people who have up and running companies whose names I don't even know or bother to learn. No. I think of Steve Jobs, and I will always think of Steve Jobs.
Speech #3: Stephen Colbert
Delivered at Northwestern in 2011
1. "[T]hankfully dreams can change. If we’d all stuck with our first dream, the world would be overrun with cowboys and princesses. So whatever your dream is right now, if you don’t achieve it you haven’t failed and you’re not some loser."
2. "But just as importantly, and this is the part I may not get right and you may not listen to, if you do get your dream, you are not a winner. [...] You cannot win improv and life is an improvisation. You have no idea what is going to happen next and you are mostly just yanking ideas out of your ass as you go along and like improv, you cannot win your life, even when it might look like you’re winning."
3. "In my experience, you will truly serve only what you love because service is love made visible. If you love your friends you will serve your friends. If you love community you will serve your community. If you love money you will serve your money and if you love only yourself you will serve only yourself and you will have only yourself. "
My interpretation/re-worded words of wisdom:
In life, there are no winners and losers. Just those who are loved and love others, and those who aren't and don't.
Why this speech:
Although most of it is Stephen Colbert (the real person) making jokes and references to Northwestern University life, it's main message is something I think trumps even Steve Jobs' inspirational quotes. In high school and college, we are so used to competing and being better than everyone. Our goal is to win at whatever we do. But as Mr. Colbert has pointed out, you can't win (or lose) life. There are failures and successes, but you yourself are not a failure or success. You can't define yourself by these terms and measurements because that is not what life should be about. And even still, the scale we normally define our successes on do not apply in real life. You are not a GPA, a standardized test score, or a grade. You are not a number or a statistic. You are not a win-loss record. Life is not a game, it's something else entirely. It's much more. And the world would be a much better place if everyone remembers that.
On a lighter note, this speech is pretty funny. After all, this is Stephen Colbert, and he is a pretty funny guy. Elegantly written and well delivered, I would say this speech is a must read/watch for all. And his ending punchline is just too perfect to pass up.
Speech #4: Gwen Stacy
Delivered in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 in May 2014
*This speech was put together from bits and pieces found online (mostly Yahoo! answers) and is not fully coherent. If you have any corrections, please let me know!
Part I (in person)
"I know that we all think we're immortal, we're supposed to feel that way, we're graduating. The future is and should be bright, but, like our brief four years in high school, what makes life valuable is that it doesn't last forever, what makes it precious is that it ends. I know that now more than ever. And I say it today of all days to remind us that time is luck. So don't waste it living someone else's life, make yours count for something. Fight for what matters to you, no matter what. Because even if you fall short, what better way is there to live?"
"It's easy to feel hopeful on a beautiful day like today, but there will be dark days ahead of us too. There will be days where you feel all alone and that's when hope is needed most. No matter how buried it gets or how lost you feel, you most promise me that you will hold on to hope. Keep it alive! We have to be greater than what we suffer. My wish for you is to become hope. People need that.
As we look around here today at all the people who helped make us who we are, I know it feels like we're saying goodbye but we will carry a piece of each other into everything we do next to remind us of who we are and who we are meant to be.
I've had a great 4 years with you. I'll miss you all very much."
As we look around here today at all the people who helped make us who we are, I know it feels like we're saying goodbye but we will carry a piece of each other into everything we do next to remind us of who we are and who we are meant to be.
I've had a great 4 years with you. I'll miss you all very much."
My interpretation/re-worded words of wisdom:
What makes life beautiful is that it comes to an end, so you must make sure to live it to the fullest. Hold on to hope even in your darkest hours because you never know who might need you.
Why this speech:
I know this is technically a high school graduation speech and I'm graduating from college, but as I've already expressed in my review of this film, Gwen Stacy is an extraordinary person. Perhaps one of the reasons I love the new Spider-Man movies so much is because I relate to Gwen and look up to her. And although her speech is mainly used to foreshadow her death and is addressed most specifically to Peter, I still find something special in what she has to say.
In some ways, it echoes what Steve Jobs said about death being everyone's ultimate destination. That you should think, "if I were to die today, would I be happy with what I've accomplished and what I'm doing". It's the mantra, live every day as if it was your last. I'm not saying you should live in fear, I'm saying you should live without it.
Now as a theater minor, I know that it's actually impossible to live without fear. I will always be scared at auditions and always be jittery before performances. You cannot eliminate such a basic human emotion/instinct, but what you can do is channel it into something constructive. You cannot let fear stop you from living, and knowing that one day you will die, you must live each day the way you want to live it. Otherwise you become a shell of existence, not a source of life.
And in many ways, that's what Gwen is telling Peter. That even in his darkest hours, he needs to be a source of life. He needs to be hope for others because everyone needs hope. They need something to believe in. Something to trust in. Just as Gwen is a source of hope for Peter, Spider-Man is a source of hope for New York City. Without hope, we are all lost and darkness can take over. So it's important that through everything we do, we keep it alive.
I know, it's an interesting mix of graduation speech givers and an interesting mix of messages. An author, an entrepreneur, a comedian, and a fictional high school student. But as I take my first steps into the real world, I hope to keep all of their messages in my heart and never forget the words of wisdom they have imparted to their graduating classes. Because all of these pieces of advice have been things that I have learned myself during my four years at Berkeley. Perhaps not to the extreme that some of these notable people have, but to a certain degree I have experienced what they deemed as important. So to all of you beginning your journeys of life in the real world with me, I wish you the best of luck. For those of you who have already begun it, just know that it's never too late to make a change. And for those who will reach this point in a few years, here's a little preview of what is to come.
To everyone who has taken the time to make it to the bottom of my post, I sincerely hope reading this has given you some new philosophies as to how to live your life. And that by remembering what really matters, we can help make the world a better place together.
**Note: all pictures taken from Google searches online, speech links were found on gradspeeches.com.
Comments
Post a Comment