Graduation speeches fail to make grade

by Joe Buffaloe

Daily Lobo

The best part of any graduation speech? When it finally ends.

I don't know about you, but I've always found graduation speeches pointless. If they told you exactly where to go to find a job in your field, then maybe someone would get some use out of them. But generally they consist of some old, successful person gabbing for 15 minutes while delaying the post-graduation parties.

Though I don't know why, someone has decided to put a bunch of these speeches together into a book and call it Take This Advice: The Best Graduation Speeches Ever Given. Just reading the title is a massive waste of time.

This book does nothing to change my opinion about graduation speeches. It's a collection of useless, boring rants that fail to say anything insightful, moving, or even funny. Maybe the problem comes down to the fact that there isn't much to say about graduation other than "Congratulations, now get a job."

If it's true these are the best graduation speeches ever, then I find it odd they were all given within the past 10 years, and that they're all given by celebrities - the book is divided into actors, comedians, musicians, poets, public figures and writers. Public figures is my favorite section, since at least world leaders do something interesting for a living. But who wants to read a graduation speech by Yoko Ono? You broke up the Beatles, Yoko - shut up.

One problem is that graduation speeches are meant for an occasion, to be heard once in a specific time and place, not read alone at home. What kind of creepy recluse sits at home reading a celebrity's advice to rich college kids over and over again, anyway?

That's another problem - since the book refuses to deviate from celebrities, all of the speeches take place at rich private schools. I guess you just have more money to throw away on graduation speeches if you charge $40,000 a year in tuition. This eliminates any hope of variety and ensures none of the speeches apply to lowly state-sponsored university students like us. The main message becomes, "If you're not rich enough or smart enough for private school, then you don't count."

Anyone with real problems will find this book a wasteland of pretentiousness, self-righteousness and ignorance. Speakers almost universally assume college students don't know what the real world is like. I guess they forgot what it was like to bus tables all night then go home and study chemistry for three hours. That just seems more realistic to me than performing in one movie a year and living in a $25 million house.

I bet there have been some decent graduation speeches before - Will Ferrell and Al Franken come closest in this collection. But this book is not, as it claims, the best graduation speeches ever given. Instead, it's a random collection of recent speeches slopped together without care or vision.

Someone in an office somewhere figures he can make some money off of this. I beg you, please prove him wrong.

Take This Advice: The Best Graduation Speeches Ever Given

Edited by Sandra Bark

Grade: D-