{"id":3577,"date":"2025-06-19T15:24:15","date_gmt":"2025-06-19T22:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shirscribe.com\/?p=3577"},"modified":"2025-06-19T15:24:16","modified_gmt":"2025-06-19T22:24:16","slug":"intro-to-my-commencement-speech-series-5-graduation-addresses-that-piqued-my-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shirscribe.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/19\/intro-to-my-commencement-speech-series-5-graduation-addresses-that-piqued-my-interest\/","title":{"rendered":"Intro to My Commencement Speech Series: 5 Graduation Addresses that Piqued My Interest"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I started watching commencement speeches when I was still in college, maybe my senior year. I first watched them on C-Span<\/a> before graduating to YouTube. I literally spent all day watching them at times. Well, I\u2019d flip back and forth between that and something like \u201cThe Real World\u201d<\/strong><\/a> marathon on MTV, but still. Years later, YouTube came along and changed the game. No longer did I have to wait and see when and whose speech C-Span was going to air. I could just do a quick search for the one I wanted and boom, it was there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The speeches I watched came mostly from schools considered to be prestigious. Those were the schools that were able to secure big names from various industries, and also garner C-Span\u2019s interest. I went to a relatively small school, a state school without a big name. Translation: I didn\u2019t have no celebrity or thought leader pulling up to speak at my graduation.<\/strong> In fact, I don\u2019t even remember who the guy was or what he said \u2013 some local businessman, I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I didn\u2019t really want to go to my alma mater anyway\u2026well, actually, by the time the opportunity to go there came around, I really did want to go. But during that hectic time in a high school senior\u2019s life when you\u2019re narrowing down the schools to apply to and prepping for S.A.T.s, the school I ended up at wasn\u2019t anywhere on my radar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In high school, I already knew what I wanted to do after college. I wanted to be an entertainment journalist. I did my research and discovered that Syracuse University<\/a> was hailed as having the best communications school in the country. Once I found that out, there was no other school for me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My senior year, I had a one-track mind to get into Syracuse University. I applied to Syracuse \u2013 and Syracuse only \u2013 on a hope and a prayer\u2026 okay, a lotta prayer, that I would get in in spite of my less than stellar academic record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was rejected \u2013 God is good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By the time I got my rejection letter in the mail, the application deadline for a lot of other schools had already passed. I scrambled to find other schools that were still taking applications, ones I thought were good enough, prestigious enough for me to attend. There were a few. They rejected me too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that point, it looked like I was headed to junior college, a fate that would have made me the embarrassment of my high school graduating class. Every time a student from my class got accepted to a college or university, the secretary would post their name on the wall in the office with the name of the school they were accepted to under it. Some kids had several schools under their names\u2026. My name never made it to the wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then one day, late into the summer of \u201997, when the last day of high school had weeks since gone by, on the way back from going in person to try to get into yet another school that didn\u2019t take me, when I didn\u2019t feel like I had another try in me, my mother convinced me to try one more time. We took a detour to a state school in a town halfway between the school we\u2019d just left and home. We had no idea if that school had already started, if it was still closed, or if they were even taking applications still. Once there, we spoke to some people in an office, took a small tour of the empty campus. I applied, then got back on the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Days later, so close to the first day of school they didn\u2019t even have time to send a letter, we got a phone call. It was the school. At one point, I would have never even thought of going to that school, would have never even wanted to go there. Now I was hoping and praying with everything in me that I would get in. My mother answered the phone. I didn\u2019t get in. At that moment, strangely enough, there was a calm that came over me. I was at peace. Doing all that last-minute work to try to get into a university had taken its toll on me. Immediately, I resolved to make the most of my junior college experience. Moments later, just as I came to that conclusion, the phone rang again. Someone higher up overruled my rejection. I got in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So you see, by the time I matriculated, I was very happy to go there. It had saved me from the embarrassment of not being able to go to a four-year university and allowed me to avoid going to junior college\u2026 well, kinda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I wasn\u2019t a great student in college either, but I entered at 17 and managed to exit at 21 \u2013 that was my goal. Granted I was a few weeks from 22, but I was 21 nonetheless. When I graduated, I had been in school every year since I was two. The New Year is of course in January, but for me, it felt more like it started in September when school did. Going to school every year was so routine, I didn\u2019t even realize how much structure it provided me until it was over. During the years I was in school, what came next was a given. There was always a guarantee to look ahead to even if I wasn\u2019t looking forward to it. Not so once I graduated college. After that, for the first time, there was nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since I didn\u2019t have the best grades, I didn\u2019t bother applying to grad schools. And the job market wasn\u2019t what I thought it was going to be either. The generation before me seemed to automatically progress into their careers after college. It seems like if they had a degree, that was all that was needed to land an entry-level job in their field. But after I graduated, it was a different story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s this? You want me to already have industry experience for this entry-level job even though I spent the last four years of my life as a full-time student earning this degree you also require me to have to even be considered for this position? I found out the hard way that my degree didn\u2019t make me a shoe-in for a professional job. It was just the first barrier to entry. Apparently you also needed to be able to walk fresh off the graduation stage, straight into the office with at least a year of on-the-job training already under your belt.. or maybe more appropriately put, under your cap and gown. I\u2019m here all night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anyway, I ended up working at mall jobs that didn\u2019t so much as require a high school diploma let alone a college degree. I had taken it for granted that I would be able to just go with the flow from college to corporate like I\u2019d done every year from grade to grade since I was two. That I was on an inevitable track that would take me seamlessly from kindergarten to career woman if I just stayed the course, and stayed afloat, only to find that some flows lead to dams \u2013 damn!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it was devastating to come to the realization that I had slim to no chance of getting an entry-level job with my degree alone. That I had been living my life primarily by default instead of with intention, or maybe I just didn\u2019t know what I didn\u2019t know. <\/strong>Still, I was willing to do what it took. I ended up going back to school. Guess where? A junior college. That\u2019s right, the very place I had so desperately tried to avoid five years prior, had once again become my saving grace. You see, I actually ended up taking several junior college classes during the summers between school years after failing a class at my university, wanting a truncated version of a class, or to work around having to first take a remedial class that would not give me graduation credit before taking a required class that would.  Now, with a whole degree in my back pocket, I was off to junior college again. This time, for an internship class. In the years to come, I would take several more junior college classes to do everything from learning how to use Excel, use HTML and even swim.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But taking the internship class didn\u2019t ensure I got one. Who knew securing an internship would be just as hard and competitive as landing a job. And back then, you weren\u2019t even paid. As a matter of fact, since most internships were for college credit only \u2013 college credits I could do nothing with since I already had my degree \u2013 and I had to pay for the class to earn college credit, I was essentially paying for this internship that wasn\u2019t paying me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After some hard work, determination and being sneaky and crafty as fuck, because gatekeeping was real, I landed an internship at MTV.  It was my first true corporate experience. Who knew that after all the hoops I had to jump through to get that internship, the actual work I would do would be so easy, as in not intellectually challenging. It was busy work that any high school dropout working the drive-thru at Jack in the Box could do.  Though I must say, there are some aspects of the system of organization my boss had then, that I still use to this day. And get this \u2013 wanna know why she hired me? For my very first job I worked at Chuck E. Cheese and had it on my resume. My boss had been to a kid\u2019s party at that restaurant and said if I could put up with that, I\u2019d do fine there. I also got my first real taste of office politics there, before I even knew what that shit was. I had no idea that mastering that part of the job would be just as important, if not more, than any skillset I brought to the table, or picked up along the way.  It\u2019s decades later now, I\u2019m still not sure I\u2019ve completely grasped this concept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what does all of this have to do with commencement speeches you ask? It\u2019s simple. When I kept hitting bumps in the road \u2013 some I created for myself; others that simply come with living, watching commencement speeches was a bit of escapism. I could pretend that I too went to a prestigious school and got the high-profile speaker to deliver my speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 In the year or so after I graduated, when I found myself working at jobs like being a hostess at a restaurant or a cashier at Sears, watching commencement speeches reminded me of the academic in me. But most of all I watched them because they were motivating. They prompted me to continue to believe in the possibility of my dreams.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over time, watching commencement speeches around May and June ceased to be my thing. But every now and then, I\u2019d get wind of a speech that was worth taking in. This includes Oprah\u2019s 2007 address at Howard University<\/a>, Jim Carrey\u2019s 2014 address at Maharishi International University<\/a> and Steve Harvey\u2019s 2016 address at Alabama State University<\/a>. There\u2019s also Robert Smith\u2019s 2019 address at Morehouse College<\/a>. Although I haven\u2019t seen this one in its entirety yet, the fact that he surprised the graduates with the news that he was paying off their student loans makes this one noteworthy regardless of whatever else he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly enough, out of the four mentioned above, Robert Smith is the only one who earned his degree before creating a successful career for himself. Oprah was already a household name by the time she finally earned her degree in 1988. Steve Harvey dropped out of college and Jim Carrey dropped out of high school. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year I got back into them for a bit, but not on purpose. A few weeks ago, I opened YouTube to commence a search \u2013 for what, I can\u2019t even remember \u2013 when I saw a certain famous someone who I was pretty sure didn\u2019t go to college, dressed up in full graduation regalia, on the thumbnail of a video that had a title referencing him giving an address at a prestigious school. And just like that, I was pulled back in. After I watched that video, I was kinda intrigued. I wondered what other celebrities were out there giving commencement speeches this year. Turns out quite a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Snoop and Jane Fonda at the University of Southern California<\/a> to Kermit the Frog at the University of Maryland <\/a>\u2013 that\u2019s right a muppet\u2014 famous folks and a fleece amphibian alike were racking up degrees like a hot summer\u2019s day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this modern age where Instagram likes and Tik Tok crazes are king, it appears these institutions of higher learning want in on the action, choosing commencement speakers who not only can impart words of wisdom, but who can also garner some social media attention.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One need look no further than how some of these schools decided to announce their speakers. Gone are the days of a post on a bulletin board, or a mention in the school paper. Commencement speaker reveals were being dropped like new celebrity product launches or concert tour dates. I mean, take a look at this for example: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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