I love to watch commencement speeches. As a speechwriter in my former life, I know there’s no harder job than holding students’ and parents’ attention when they really just want that degree. You’ve got to keep the remarks short, make them personal and hopefully give the audience at least one useful insight to take with them into the next phase of their lives.
Jason Gay, a sports columnist for the Wall Street Journal, did that this year when he told the graduates at the University of Wisconsin about the recent overtime victory of the Wisconsin women’s hockey team to win the national championship.
When the game was tied and the time came for a penalty shot to potentially win the game, the coach gathered her team and asked, “Who wants it?” Knowing what you want and raising your hand in life to do it is the key to success, Gay told the students. He even got a column out of it, “I Polluted the Minds of 8,679 College Graduates.”
The AJC’s own Ernie Suggs spoke to his alma mater, North Carolina Central University, this month, where he also announced the Thelma Suggs Family Endowment Scholarship to honor his mother, on Mother’s Day, no less.
Ernie told the students about his career in journalism, telling stories that people in power did not always want to be told. “You tell the truth even when the truth shakes the room,” he said. “You tell the truth because you want to shake that room.”
Usher spoke at Emory University last week and told graduates the secret to his success was finding his passion, but only after he’d been put in remedial classes when his family moved to Atlanta from Tennessee. It was demoralizing, he said, and it made him think about what he could be passionate about if his teachers didn’t think he could succeed in school.
“Before I could sing, before I could dance, and before I was a doctor, I had passion,” Usher said, joking about his new honorary doctorate. “The system didn’t know what to do with a student like me.”
I’d guess a lot of people in the audience were excited to hear what Usher had to say, but commencement speeches from politicians can be tricky. Something meant to be inspirational can turn political or become a long-winded policy address. But this year, students got insight above and beyond the usual campaign speeches from President Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock — not at the same graduation, of course.
Trump spoke at the University of Alabama, where he gave the graduates his list of 11 things they should do to succeed in life, starting with, “Don’t waste your youth.”
He was 28 when he signed his first big real estate deal, he told them. Steve Jobs was 21 when he founded Apple. “If you just give it your all, you’ll look back a decade from now and you’ll be astounded by what you’ve achieved.”
Other items on the list were for the students to work hard, think big, be an original and choose something they like to do for work. But above all else, Trump said, never give up.
“One of the most important things you can learn is, if you just went a little bit longer, if you’d just held out a little bit longer, you would have been successful.” Case in point, he said, he’s the president.
It went on for an hour, and included plenty of red meat like Trump claiming he won the 2020 election, which he did not. But the crowd in Tuscaloosa gave him a standing ovation when he was done.
Warnock got a similar reception when he spoke at Paine College in Augusta, last week. Like Trump, the senator told the graduates to find what they care about and pursue it.
“Howard Thurman said: ‘Ask not what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go and do that,’” he said. “What the world needs is people who have come alive.”
But while Trump told the Alabama students they were graduating into the next “Golden Age of America,” Warnock told the students at the historically Black college they are going into a world full of challenges, including challenges created by the Trump administration. They need to rise to those challenges.
“Don’t you dare give in to the dystopian designs of an administration that does not know what America is all about,” he said. “We’re not about to go back.”
The best graduation speeches leave people inspired and energized, and as different as they were, Trump and Warnock both did that for the audiences they spoke to.
I’ve never given a commencement speech. But when I do, I’ll tell the students what I’ve learned about life after watching politicians succeed and fail for all these years.
The first is to know their “why.” Leaders who know what motivates them can get through the hardest times you can imagine. Also, know what you believe and why you believe it. If it’s just to get people to like you, or to get elected, that never works out in the end.
Also, tell the truth, treat people well, get up earlier than you think you need to and keep your family close. When you fall down, stumble or fail, as we all do, your family will be with you, even if your friends are long gone.
And finally, if you ever give a graduation speech, unless you’re the president, keep it short. They’re really just there for the degree.
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