Graduation Speech -- Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

Depending on who you talk to, you get different opinions on what subject that you’ve studied in high school will help you most out in the real world. Ms. Bow tried to tell you it’s being able to diagram sentences and understand Shakespeare. Mr. Roberts, on the other hand, has a picture of a toppling bridge that says "Engineer missed just one Trig assignment." If you’ve spent a lot of time staring at Mr. Groon's podium during lectures, you’ve read that "He who knows only his own generation remains always a child." But what does this all mean, how do we truly apply everything we’ve learned in the past four years to the rest of our life, and what really is the most important thing to take away with us from high school? Well, I’ll tell you my opinion: This diploma that we will all receive in a few minutes doesn’t just represent the facts we’ve memorized or the skills we’ve developed. I think the most important thing we can take away with us from Eldridge High School is our experiences that have shaped our lives. Any time you have worked hard to bring up a grade in a class, or set a goal and accomplished it, or anytime you’ve improved a skill, or challenged yourself to do something nobody thought you could do, you have helped shape the person you are becoming. You never know when you will need to diagram a sentence, or when knowing the cosine of 270 will come in handy. Never assume that because you don’t see the necessity of studying certain subjects that it is not worthwhile to study them. I have often heard people say that they will never be able to "use" it in real life, whether it be history or analytical proofs, but they don’t know that. And even if you don’t use something direc tly, you could be using it indirectly in ways you... ... They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parents’ generation, try "delousing" the closet in your own room. RULE 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life has not. In some schools they have abolished failing grades; they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life. RULE 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time. RULE 10: Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs. RULE 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.