OK, so we are in the middle of graduation season and I had to sit through speech after speech to watch my brother get his diploma for .5 seconds. While I was sitting in the crowd, I decided to construct my own graduation speech for the masses.
*my disclaimer is that my high school experience was relatively good. I don't hate my high school or what my experiences taught me. This piece is almost purely satire*
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"I'm going to start off my speech with a list of thank you's. Thank you to the parents who did not mind that we were awake until 2 a.m. to finish a paper due the next day. Thank you to the teacher that dress coded every girl for wearing leggings or a tank top. Thank you to the teachers who gave too much homework on game days, or just too much in general. You all are the bomb.com, but let me tell you, it was a great ride. I forgot to thank you all, my classmates. Some of you made my classes bearable and some of you made me wish a bear would eat you.
Now that I have all my thank you's out of the way, let's get to the real meat and potatoes of this speech. I have packed at least five cliches and four meaningless quotes into this speech so you know it is top notch and totally original.
Today marks the first day to the rest of our lives. I bet you all had no idea that this was such a monumental day. I bet some of you thought that once high school ended that we all just disappeared, kind of like how people used to think the earth was flat and you would just sort of fall off. Adulthood is just a myth that was created by corporations to get you to go to school. Well we still have the rest of our lives ahead of us so go out and seize the day. Do something that is totally unexpected, like take a gap year or not post five hundred million times about how much you love your roommate before you even move in together. Or do something that is totally expected because the expectations of today are crushing and sometime's it is just easier to do stick to the status quo.
A great man once said 'I'd wish you the best of luck, but I believe luck is a concept created by the weak to explain their failures." That wise man was Ron Swanson from the hit comedy, Parks and Recreation. In a way I hope that we all grow up to be Ron Swanson, but in another way I hope that we do not. And that is up to you to you to decide. Are you going to be willingly disobedient or are you going to be fiercely headstrong? The decision is all yours.
Hey guys. We are the future. I doubt that one of us will become president, but if that happens, you might not have my vote. I would not trust a single one of you to run the a McDonald's yet alone run the country. Maybe someone will be the new face of stem cell research or be the next great engineer. I have faith in some of you and as Ron Swanson has also said there is 'a small number whom I do not actively root against. There I go getting sappy again.'
Now I'm going to give some advice that I learned from the greatest business man I know, Michael Scott of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. 'You know what they say. Fool me once, strike one, but fool me twice... strike three.' These wise words should show us all that in the real world, we have to be strong and tough and not let anyone walk all over you. It is going to happen. The pecking order of life will put us right at the bottom but don't let that scare you into doing something that you don't want to do or scare you into not doing something that you want to do. Be Michael Scott. Don't care what anyone else thinks or says. March to the beat of your own drum.
We all survived school!
So since we are the future and we did graduate, I'm just going to leave you with this quote from The Lion King, 'Oh yes the past can hurt. But the way I see it you can either run from it or learn from it.' And now I can't wait to see you all in 10 years at the reunion because let's be real, this is the last time we will all be together in the same room. This is not a 'see you later' this is a 'goodbye and good riddance.'"
