毕业典礼英语演讲稿15篇
演讲稿以发表意见，表达观点为主，是为演讲而事先准备好的文稿。在现在的社会生活中，演讲稿在我们的视野里出现的频率越来越高，大家知道演讲稿的格式吗？下面是小编整理的毕业典礼英语演讲稿，欢迎阅读，希望大家能够喜欢。
毕业典礼英语演讲稿1
My mother was right – because you will encounter difficult times in your life, requiring tough decisions and tough time-sensitive responses.
My first taste of adversity came in 1969, when I helped to integrate a private school in my home city of Atlanta. I was a handful of…I was one of a handful of African-American students – student of color #8 – who passed the entrance exam and was admitted to attend. Now while passing the exam was the technical requirement for admission and acceptance, it was not the path to acceptance from my peers. In fact, from 7th grade to 12th grade, I endured being called the N-word at least once a day.
It was tough to get through a single day, let alone come back and repeat the entire process all over again. I can recall that I told my mother I didn’t want to go to school there anymore; the challenges were just too much. And she would repeat the washing machine adage to me more times than I can count.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿2
See most of us are afraid of the thief, they comes in the night to steal all of our things. But there is a thief in your mind who is after your dreams. His name is you see him call the cops and keep him away from the kids because he is wanted for murder. So he has killed more dreams than failure ever did. He wears many disguises and like a virus will leave you blinded, divided and turn you into a kinda is lethal. You know what kinda is? There is a lot of kinda people, you kinda want a career change, you kinda want to get straight As, you kinda want to get in shape. Simple math, no numbers to crunch. If you kinda want something, then you will kinda get the results you want.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿3
The search for truth became its core animating idea and the American Universities flourished over time to institutionalize and idealize that way of life. Also, in 1919, at the more local level, on this campus, the new year-long required course for Columbia freshman has launched call contemporary civilization.
Though today, we know C.C. is the Genesis of the famed curriculum, then it was nothing more than a bold experiment in higher education. The objective reflected in the course name was to apply learning and reason derived from classic texts to the problems facing society in the aftermath of a cataclysmic war. The idea was to double down on the academic mission and it has made a difference as generation after generation has attested to its value in creating an open mind and intellect.
Both of these century-old intellectual innovations arose from the same sensibility. Both assumed that the best side of human nature includes the desire to learn and to live by the truth and to acquire and to create knowledge. And while our natural negative instincts activated by our fears, greed and lust for power sometimes divert us from that quest. A life worth living will only follow from a determined effort to engage with ideas at the most profound levels, even those ideas we dislike and firmly believe to be in error.
This time, your time presents the conundrum this is above all a moment when we must reassert our commitment to open inquiry, to reason and to the sanctity of knowledge and understanding. As was the case a century ago, these pursuits are increasingly out of step with the currents of the broader world, making it all the more essential that we express our devotion to that endeavor.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿4
Members of the Class of 20xx, Stanford faculty and staff, former and current trustees of our university, government officials, distinguished guests, and cherished family members and friends:
I thank you for joining us on this very special day to celebrate Stanford’s 128th Commencement. It’s my great honor to warmly welcome all of you.
To all those who are receiving degrees today, I offer a very special welcome:
Our senior class members and our graduate students – congratulations to each and every one of you. Today, we celebrate your accomplishments during your time at Stanford, and we look ahead with anticipation that everything you will do next.
Now we gather this weekend in joy and celebration. But as we do, we are also thinking of those in our community who have left us this year – including, tragically, within the last few days.
The loss of any member of our Stanford community is a loss to all of us.
And so, as we begin this morning’s program, I’d like us to take a moment to acknowledge their passing and to reflect on how they have enriched our lives.
Please join me in a moment of silence.
Thank you.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿5
All of which he opposed -- from paying tens of millions of dollars in arrearages to an institution, he despised, the United Nations -- he was part of the so-called "black helicopter" crowd; to passing the chemical weapons treaty, constantly referring to, "we’ve never lost a war, and we’ve never won a treaty," which he vehemently opposed. But we were able to do these things not because he changed his mind, but because in this new relationship to maintain it is required to play fair, to be straight. The cheap shots ended. And the chicanery to keep from having to being able to vote ended -- even though he knew I had the votes.
After that, we went on as he began to look at the other side of things and do some great things together that he supported like PEPFAR -— which by the way, George W. Bush deserves an overwhelming amount of credit for, by the way, which provided treatment and prevention HIV/AIDS in Africa and around the world, literally saving millions of lives.
So one piece of advice is try to look beyond the caricature of the person with whom you have to work. Resist the temptation to ascribe motive, because you really don’t know -— and it gets in the way of being able to reach a consensus on things that matter to you and to many other people.
Resist the temptation of your generation to let "network" become a verb that saps the personal away, that blinds you to the person right in front of you, blinds you to their hopes, their fears, and their burdens.
Build real relationships -— even with people with whom you vehemently disagree. You’ll not only be happier. You will be more successful.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿6
Now, look, I realize no one ever doubts I mean what I say, the problem occasionally is I say all that I mean. (Laughter.) I have a bad reputation for being straight. Sometimes an inappropriate times. (Laughter.) So here it goes. Let’s get a couple things straight right off the bat: Corvettes are better than Porsches; they're quicker and they corner as well. (Laughter and applause.) And sorry, guys, a cappella is not better than rock and roll. (Laughter and applause.) And your pundits are better than Washington pundits, although I’ve noticed neither has any shame at all. (Laughter and applause.) And all roads lead to Toads? Give me a break. (Laughter and applause.) You ever tried it on Monday night? (Laughter.) Look, it’s tough to end a great men’s basketball and football season. One touchdown away from beating Harvard this year for the first time since 20xx -— so close to something you’ve wanted for eight years. I can only imagine how you feel. (Laughter.) I can only imagine. (Applause.) So close. So close.
But I got to be honest with you, when the invitation came, I was flattered, but it caused a little bit of a problem in my extended family. It forced me to face some hard truths. My son, Beau, the attorney general of Delaware, my daughter, Ashley Biden, runs a nonprofit for criminal justice in the state, they both went to Penn. My two nieces graduated from Harvard, one an all-American. All of them think my being here was a very bad idea. (Laughter.)
毕业典礼英语演讲稿7
Here’s my corollary: "Your mentors may leave you prepared, but they can’t leave you ready."
When Steve got sick, I had hardwired my thinking to the belief that he would get better. I not only thought he would hold on, I was convinced, down to my core, that he’d still be guiding Apple long after I, myself, was gone.
Then, one day, he called me over to his house and told me that it wasn’t going to be that way.
Even then, I was convinced he would stay on as chairman. That he’d step back from the day to day but always be there as a sounding board.
But there was no reason to believe that. I never should have thought it. The facts were all there.
And when he was gone, truly gone, I learned the real, visceral difference between preparation and readiness.
It was the loneliest I’ve ever felt in my life. By an order of magnitude. It was one of those moments where you can be surrounded by people, yet you don’t really see, hear or feel them. But I could sense their expectations.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿8
In all seriousness, the board back then made an inspiring decision to choose Washington. And anyone who thinks this school is in D.C. or near Seattle clearly hasn’t been paying attention.
It seems fitting that an institution named for Washington has played such an important role in presidential elections in recent decades. WashU has hosted a number of nationally televised debates, including the last one you saw in 20xx.
Hosting a presidential debate is an experience that few schools or students get. But I can’t stand here and tell you it provided a great civics lesson. I wish I could.
Instead of focusing on the critical issues facing the country, that debate was more about locker room talk and ‘lock her up.’ Lincoln-Douglas, I think it’s fair to say, it was not.
And that brings me to the topic du jour. It would be easy to blame the candidates or the moderators for the poor quality of that debate. But the problem runs much deeper.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿9
Chancellor Wrighton, members of the Board of Trustees and the Administration, distinguished faculty, Class of 1965, hard-working staff, my fellow honorees, proud and relieved parents, calm and serene grandparents, distracted but secretly pleased siblings, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, graduating students, good morning. I am deeply honored that you have asked me here to say a few words at this momentous occasion, that you might find what I have to say worthy of your attention on so important a day at this remarkable institution.
It had been my intention this morning to parcel out some good advice at the end of theseremarks – the "goodness" of that being of course subjective in the extreme – but then Irealized that this is the land of Mark Twain, and I came to the conclusion that anycommentary today ought to be framed in the sublime shadow of this quote of his: "It's notthat the world is full of fools, it's just that lightening isn't distributed right." … More on Mr.Twain later.
I am in the business of history. It is my job to try to discern some patterns and themes fromthe past to help us interpret our dizzyingly confusing and sometimes dismaying present.Without a knowledge of that past, how can we possibly know where we are and, mostimportant, where we are going? Over the years I've come to understand an important fact, Ithink: that we are not condemned to repeat, as the cliché goes and we are fond of quoting,what we don't remember. That's a clever, even poetic phrase, but not even close to the truth.Nor are there cycles of history, as the academic community periodically promotes. The Bible,Ecclesiastes to be specific, got it right, I think: "What has been will be again. What has beendone will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun."
What that means is that human nature never changes. Or almost never changes. We havecontinually superimposed our complex and contradictory nature over the random course ofhuman events. All of our inherent strengths and weaknesses, our greed and generosity, ourpuritanism and our prurience parade before our eyes, generation after generation aftergeneration. This often gives us the impression that history does repeat itself. It doesn't. Itjust rhymes, Mark Twain is supposed to have said…but he didn't (more on him later).
Over the many years of practicing, I have come to the realization that history is not a fixedthing, a collection of precise dates, facts and events (even cogent commencement quotes)that add up to a quantifiable, certain, confidently known, truth. It is a mysterious andmalleable thing. And each generation rediscovers and re-examines that part of its past thatgives its present, and most important, its future new meaning, new possibilities and new power.
Listen. For most of the forty years I've been making historical documentaries, I have beenhaunted and inspired by a handful of sentences from an extraordinary speech I came acrossearly in my professional life by a neighbor of yours just up the road in Springfield, Illinois. InJanuary of 1838, shortly before his 29th birthday, a tall, thin lawyer, prone to bouts ofdebilitating depression, addressed the Young Men's Lyceum. The topic that day was nationalsecurity. "At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?" he asked his audience. "…Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the Earth and crush us at a blow?"Then he answered his own question: "Never. All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa … couldnot by force take a drink from the Ohio [River] or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of athousand years … If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As anation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." It is a stunning,remarkable statement.
That young man was, of course, Abraham Lincoln, and he would go on to preside over theclosest this country has ever come to near national suicide, our Civil War – fought over themeaning of freedom in America. And yet embedded in his extraordinary, disturbing andprescient words is a fundamental optimism that implicitly acknowledges the geographicalforce-field two mighty oceans and two relatively benign neighbors north and south haveprovided for us since the British burned the White House in the War of 1812.
We have counted on Abraham Lincoln for more than a century and a half to get it right whenthe undertow in the tide of those human events has threatened to overwhelm and capsize us.We always come back to him for the kind of sustaining vision of why we Americans still agree tocohere, why unlike any other country on earth, we are still stitched together by words and, mostimportant, their dangerous progeny, ideas. We return to him for a sense of unity, conscienceand national purpose. To escape what the late historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., said is ourproblem today: "too much pluribus, not enough unum."
It seems to me that Lincoln gave our fragile experiment a conscious shock that enabled it tooutgrow the monumental hypocrisy of slavery inherited at our founding and permitted us all,slave owner as well as slave, to have literally, as he put it at Gettysburg, "a new birth offreedom."
Lincoln's Springfield speech also suggests what is so great and so good about the people whoinhabit this lucky and exquisite country of ours (that's the world you now inherit): our workethic, our restlessness, our innovation and our improvisation, our communities and ourinstitutions of higher learning, our suspicion of power; the fact that we seem resolutelydedicated to parsing the meaning between individual and collective freedom; that we arededicated to understanding what Thomas Jefferson really meant when he wrote thatinscrutable phrase "the pursuit of Happiness."
But ladies and gentlemen, the isolation of those two mighty oceans has also helped toincubate habits and patterns less beneficial to us: our devotion to money and guns; ourcertainty – about everything; our stubborn insistence on our own exceptionalism, blinding usto that which needs repair, our preoccupation with always making the other wrong, at anindividual as well as global level.
And then there is the issue of race, which was foremost on the mind of Lincoln back in 1838. Itis still here with us today. The jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis told me that healing thisquestion of race was what "the kingdom needed in order to be well." Before the enormousstrides in equality achieved in statutes and laws in the 150 years since the Civil War thatLincoln correctly predicted would come are in danger of being undone by our still imperfecthuman nature and by politicians who now insist on a hypocritical color-blindness – after fourcenturies of discrimination. That discrimination now takes on new, sometimes subtler, lessobvious but still malevolent forms today. The chains of slavery have been broken, thank God,and so too has the feudal dependence of sharecroppers as the vengeful Jim Crow era recedes(sort of) into the distant past. But now in places like – but not limited to – your otherneighbors a few miles as the crow flies from here in Ferguson, we see the ghastly remnants ofour great shame emerging still, the shame Lincoln thought would lead to national suicide, ourinability to see beyond the color of someone's skin. It has been with us since our founding.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote that immortal second sentence of the Declaration that begins, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…," he owned more thana hundred human beings. He never saw the contradiction, he never saw the hypocrisy, andmore important never saw fit in his lifetime to free any one of those human beings, ensuring aswe went forward that the young United States – born with such glorious promise – would bebedeviled by race, that it would take a bloody, bloody Civil War to even begin to redress theimbalance.
But the shame continues: prison populations exploding with young black men, young black menkilled almost weekly by policemen, whole communities of color burdened by corruptmunicipalities that resemble more the predatory company store of a supposedly bygone erathan a responsible local government. Our cities and towns and suburbs cannot become modernplantations.
It is unconscionable, as you emerge from this privileged sanctuary, that a few miles fromhere – and nearly everywhere else in America: Baltimore, New York City, North Charleston,Cleveland, Oklahoma, Sanford, Florida, nearly everywhere else – we are still playing out, sadly,an utterly American story, that the same stultifying conditions and sentiments that brought onour Civil War are still on such vivid and unpleasant display. Today, today. There's nothingnew under the sun.
Many years after our Civil War, in 1883, Mark Twain took up writing in earnest a novel he hadstarted and abandoned several times over the last half-dozen years. It would be a different kindof story from his celebrated Tom Sawyer book, told this time in the plain language of hisMissouri boyhood – and it would be his masterpiece.
Set near here, before the Civil War and emancipation, ‘the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' isthe story of two runaways – a white boy, Tom Sawyer's old friend Huck, fleeing civilization, anda black man, Jim, who is running away from slavery. They escape together on a raft goingdown the Mississippi.The novel reaches its moral climax when Huck is faced with a terrible choice. He believes he has committed a grievous sin in helping Jim escape, and he finally writes out a letter, telling Jim's owner where her runaway property can be found. Huck feels good about doing this at first, he says, and marvels at "how close I came to being lost and going to hell."
But then he hesitates, thinking about how kind Jim has been to him during their adventure. "…Somehow," Huck says, "I couldn't seem to strike no place to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I'd see him standing my watch on top of his'n, ‘stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see how glad he was when I come back out of the fog;…and such like times; and would always call me honey…and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was…"
Then, Huck remembers the letter he has written. "I took it up, and held it in my hand," he says. "I was a-trembling because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: ‘All right then, I'll go to hell' – and tore it up."
That may be the finest moment in all of American literature. Ernest Hemingway thought all of American literature began at that moment.
Twain, himself, writing after the Civil War and after the collapse of Reconstruction, a misunderstood period devoted to trying to enforce civil rights, was actually expressing his profound disappointment that racial differences still persisted in America, that racism still festered in this favored land, founded as it was on the most noble principle yet advanced by humankind – that all men are created equal. That civil war had not cleansed our original sin, a sin we continue to confront today, daily, in this supposedly enlightened "post-racial" time.
It is into this disorienting and sometimes disappointing world that you now plummet, I'm afraid, unprotected from the shelter of family and school. You have fresh prospects and real dreams and I wish each and every one of you the very best. But I am drafting you now into a new Union Army that must be committed to preserving the values, the sense of humor, the sense of cohesion that have long been a part of our American nature, too. You have no choice, you've been called up, and it is your difficult, but great and challenging responsibility to help change things and set us right again.
Let me apologize to you in advance on behalf of all the people up here. We broke it, but you've got to fix it. You're joining a movement that must be dedicated above all else – career and personal advancement – to the preservation of this country's most enduring ideals. You have to learn, and then re-teach the rest of us that equality – real equality – is the hallmark and birthright of ALL Americans. Thankfully, you will become a vanguard against a new separatism that seems to have infected our ranks, a vanguard against those forces that, in the name of our great democracy, have managed to diminish it. Then, you can change human nature just a bit, to appeal, as Lincoln also implored us, to appeal to "the better angels of our nature." That's the objective. And I know, I know you can do it.
Ok. Rounding third.
Let me speak directly to the graduating class. (Watch out. Here comes the advice.)
Remember: Black lives matter. All lives matter.
Reject fundamentalism wherever it raises its ugly head. It's not civilized. Choose to live in theBedford Falls of "It's a Wonderful Life," not its oppressive opposite, Pottersville.
Do not descend too deeply into specialism. Educate all of your parts. You will be healthier.
Replace cynicism with its old-fashioned antidote, skepticism.
Don't confuse monetary success with excellence. The poet Robert Penn Warren once warnedme that "careerism is death."
Try not to make the other wrong.
Be curious, not cool.
Remember, insecurity makes liars of us all.
Listen to jazz. A lot, a lot. It is our music.
Read. The book is still the greatest manmade machine of all – not the car, not the TV, not thecomputer or the smartphone.
Do not allow our social media to segregate us into ever smaller tribes and clans, fiercely andsometimes appropriately loyal to our group, but also capable of metastasizing into profounddistrust of the other.
Serve your country. By all means serve your country. But insist that we fight the right wars.Governments always forget that.
Convince your government that the real threat, as Lincoln knew, comes from within.Governments always forget that, too. Do not let your government outsource honesty,transparency or candor. Do not let your government outsource democracy.
Vote. Elect good leaders. When he was nominated in 1936, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than theconsistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference." We alldeserve the former. And insist on it.
Insist that we support science and the arts, especially the arts. They have nothing to do withthe actual defense of the country – they just make our country worth defending.
Be about the "unum," not the "pluribus."
Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means simply, "God in us."
And even though lightning still isn't distributed right, try not to be a fool. It just gets MarkTwain riled up a bit.
And if you ever find yourself in Huck's spot, if you've "got to decide betwixt two things," do theright thing. Don't forget to tear up the letter. He didn't go to hell – and you won't either.
So we come to an end of something today – and for you also a very special beginning. Godspeed to you all.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿10
I would like to leave you now by playing one song. It’s called…it’s called the "Song of the Birds" – Pablo Casals’ favorite folk song from his beloved Catalonia. A love song to nature and humanity, a song about freedom, about the freedom of birds when they take flight, soaring across borders.
And I would like to dedicate this piece to you, Class of 20xx, with, once again, my heartiest uates at universities and colleges around the United States are wrapping up the academic year, preparing to face a new era of life. As part of that tradition, celebrities, politicians, athletes, CEOs and artists are offering a range of life advice in commencement addresses.
Here is the commencement speech by Oprah Winfrey at Colorado College in 20xx.
In it, she tells college graduates in Colorado small steps lead to big accomplishments.
Winfrey quoted black activist Angela Davis, who said: "You have to act as if it were possible to radically change the world. And you have to do it all the time."
Winfrey says change doesn't happen with big breakthroughs so much as day-to-day decisions.
The television personality and philanthropist once gave away a car to everybody in the audience on her show. Winfrey didn't give the college graduates cars but copies of her book, "The Path Made Clear."
She told them to expect failure in life but know that everything will be OK.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿11
I’ve yet to meet anyone who thinks that this world that we live in is?perfect.?
This is not a political statement. It’s equally true of liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. And if you don’t think the world that we live in is perfect, the only way it gets better is if good people work to repair it. Our students, our faculty, our staff and alumni are doing that daily, and it makes me so proud.
This year, I had the privilege to meet, and be moved by, not just one but two of the nation’s preeminent poets – the United States Youth Poet Laureate, our own Amanda Gorman, and the United States Poet Laureate, our own Tracy K. Smith. I’ve also had the chance to marvel at artists who every day breathe life into our campus with their performances and their creative work –it’s amazing to see the talent that is represented on this campus and among our alumni, our faculty, and staff.
And every day, I’ve learned more about the remarkable efforts of our faculty to improve the world:Alison Simmons and Barbara Grosz were [are] making sure that the next generation of computer scientists is prepared to address the ethical questions posed by the development of new digital technologies;
Ali Malkawi and his HouseZero, which is demonstrating the possibilities of ultra-efficient design and new building technology to respond to the threat of climate change;
毕业典礼英语演讲稿12
President Hanlon, faculty, staff, honored guests, parents, students, families and friends—good morning and congratulations to the Dartmouth graduating class of 20xx!
So.
This is weird.
Me giving a speech. In general, I do not like giving speeches. Giving a speech requires standingin front of large groups of people while they look at you and it also requires talking. I can do thestanding part OK. But the you looking and the me talking ... I am not a fan. I get thisoverwhelming feeling of fear. Terror, really. Dry mouth, heart beats superfast, everythinggets a little bit slow motion. Like I might pass out. Or die. Or poop my pants or something. Imean, don’t worry. I’m not going to pass out or die or poop my pants. Mainly because just bytelling you that it could happen, I have somehow neutralized it as an option. Like as if saying itout loud casts some kind of spell where now it cannot possibly happen now. Vomit. I couldvomit. See. Vomiting is now also off the table. Neutralized it. We’re good.
Anyway, the point is. I do not like to give speeches. I’m a writer. I’m a TV writer. I like to writestuff for other people to say. I actually contemplated bringing Ellen Pompeo or KerryWashington here to say my speech for me ... but my lawyer pointed out that when you dragsomeone across state lines against their will, the FBI comes looking for you, so...
I don’t like giving speeches, in general, because of the fear and terror. But this speech? Thisspeech, I really did not want to give.
A Dartmouth Commencement speech? Dry mouth. Heart beats so, so fast. Everything in slowmotion. Pass out, die, poop.
Look, it would be fine if this were, 20 years ago. If it were back in the day when I graduatedfrom Dartmouth. Twenty-three years ago, I was sitting right where you are now. And I waslistening to Elizabeth Dole speak. And she was great. She was calm and she was confident. Itwas just ... different. It felt like she was just talking to a group of people. Like a fireside chatwith friends. Just Liddy Dole and like 9,000 of her closest friends. Because it was 20 years ago.And she was just talking to a group of people.
Now? Twenty years later? This is no fireside chat. It’s not just you and me. This speech is filmedand streamed and tweeted and uploaded. NPR has like, a whole site dedicated toCommencement speeches. A whole site just about commencement speeches. There are sitesthat rate them and mock them and dissect them. It’s weird. And stressful. And kind ofvicious if you’re an introvert perfectionist writer who hates speaking in public in the firstplace.
When President Hanlon called me—and by the way, I would like to thank President Hanlon forasking me way back in January, thus giving me a full six months of terror and panic to enjoy.When President Hanlon called me, I almost said no. Almost.
Dry mouth. Heart beats so, so fast. Everything in slow motion. Pass out, die, poop.
But I’m here. I am gonna do it. I’m doing it. You know why?
Because I like a challenge. And because this year I made myself a promise that I was going todo the stuff that terrifies me. And because, 20-plus years ago when I was trudging uphill fromthe River Cluster through all that snow to get to the Hop for play rehearsal, I never imaginedthat I would one day be standing here, at the Old Pine lectern. Staring out at all of you. Aboutto throw down on some wisdom in the Dartmouth Commencement address.
So, you know, yeah. Moments.
Also, I’m here because I really, really wanted some EBAs.
OK.
I want to say right now that every single time someone asked me what I was going to talkabout in this speech, I would boldly and confidently tell them that I had all kinds wisdom toshare. I was lying. I feel wildly unqualified to give you advice. There is no wisdom here. So allI can do is talk about some stuff that could maybe be useful to you, from one Dartmouth gradto another. Some stuff that won’t ever show up in a Meredith Grey voiceover or a Papa Popemonologue. Some stuff I probably shouldn’t be telling you here now because of the uploadingand the streaming and the tweeting. But I am going to pretend that it is 20 years ago. Thatit’s just you and me. That we’re having a fireside chat. Screw the outside world and what theythink. I’ve already said "poop" like five times already anyway ... things are getting real up inhere.
OK, wait. Before I talk to you. I want to talk to your parents. Because the other thing about itbeing 20 years later is that I’m a mother now. So I know some things, some very differentthings. I have three girls. I’ve been to the show. You don’t know what that means, but yourparents do. You think this day is all about you. But your parents ... the people who raised you... the people who endured you ... they potty trained you, they taught you to read, theysurvived you as a teenager, they have suffered 21 years and not once did they kill you. This day... you call it your graduation day. But this day is not about you. This is their day. This is theday they take back their lives, this is the day they earn their freedom. This day is theirIndependence Day. So, parents, I salute you. And as I have an eight-month-old, I hope to joinyour ranks of freedom in 20 years!
OK. So here comes the real deal part of the speech, or you might call it, Some Random StuffSome Random Alum Who Runs a TV Show Thinks I Should Know Before I Graduate:
You ready?
When people give these kinds of speeches, they usually tell you all kinds of wise and heartfeltthings. They have wisdom to impart. They have lessons to share. They tell you: Follow yourdreams. Listen to your spirit. Change the world. Make your mark. Find your inner voice andmake it sing. Embrace failure. Dream. Dream and dream big. As a matter of fact, dream anddon’t stop dreaming until all of your dreams come true.
I think that’s crap.
I think a lot of people dream. And while they are busy dreaming, the really happy people, thereally successful people, the really interesting, engaged, powerful people, are busy doing.
The dreamers. They stare at the sky and they make plans and they hope and they talk about itendlessly. And they start a lot of sentences with "I want to be ..." or "I wish."
"I want to be a writer." "I wish I could travel around the world."
And they dream of it. The buttoned-up ones meet for cocktails and they brag about theirdreams, and the hippie ones have vision boards and they meditate about their dreams. Maybeyou write in journals about your dreams or discuss it endlessly with your best friend or yourgirlfriend or your mother. And it feels really good. You’re talking about it, and you’re planningit. Kind of. You are blue-skying your life. And that is what everyone says you should be doing.Right? I mean, that’s what Oprah and Bill Gates did to get successful, right?
No.
Dreams are lovely. But they are just dreams. Fleeting, ephemeral, pretty. But dreams do notcome true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hardwork that creates change.
So, Lesson One, I guess is: Ditch the dream and be a doer, not a dreamer. Maybe you knowexactly what it is you dream of being, or maybe you’re paralyzed because you have no idea whatyour passion is. The truth is, it doesn’t matter. You don’t have to know. You just have to keepmoving forward. You just have to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity, stayingopen to trying something new. It doesn’t have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfectlife. Perfect is boring and dreams are not real. Just ... do. So you think, "I wish I could travel."Great. Sell your crappy car, buy a ticket to Bangkok, and go. Right now. I’m serious.
You want to be a writer? A writer is someone who writes every day, so start writing. You don’thave a job? Get one. Any job. Don’t sit at home waiting for the magical opportunity. Who areyou? Prince William? No. Get a job. Go to work. Do something until you can do something else.
I did not dream of being a TV writer. Never, not once when I was here in the hallowed halls ofthe Ivy League, did I say to myself, "Self, I want to write TV."
You know what I wanted to be? I wanted to be Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison. Thatwas my dream. I blue sky’ed it like crazy. I dreamed and dreamed. And while I was dreaming, Iwas living in my sister’s basement. Dreamers often end up living in the basements of relatives,FYI. Anyway, there I was in that basement, and I was dreaming of being Nobel Prize-winningauthor Toni Morrison. And guess what? I couldn’t be Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison,because Toni Morrison already had that job and she wasn’t interested in giving it up. So oneday I was sitting in that basement and I read an article that said—it was in The New YorkTimes—and it said it was harder to get into USC Film School than it was to get into HarvardLaw School. And I thought I could dream about being Toni Morrison, or I could do.
At film school, I discovered an entirely new way of telling stories. A way that suited me. A waythat brought me joy. A way that flipped this switch in my brain and changed the way I saw theworld. Years later, I had dinner with Toni Morrison. All she wanted to talk about was Grey’sAnatomy. That never would have happened if I hadn’t stopped dreaming of becoming her andgotten busy becoming myself.
Lesson Two. Lesson two is that tomorrow is going to be the worst day ever for you.
When I graduated from Dartmouth that day in 1991, when I was sitting right where you areand I was staring up at Elizabeth Dole speaking, I will admit that I have no idea what she wassaying. Couldn’t even listen to her. Not because I was overwhelmed or emotional or any ofthat. But because I had a serious hangover. Like, an epic painful hangover because (and here iswhere I apologize to President Hanlon because I know that you are trying to build a better andmore responsible Dartmouth and I applaud you and I admire you and it is very necessary) butI was really freaking drunk the night before. And the reason I’d been so drunk the night before,the reason I’d done upside down margarita shots at Bones Gate was because I knew that aftergraduation, I was going to take off my cap and gown, my parents were going to pack my stuffin the car and I was going to go home and probably never come back to Hanover again. Andeven if I did come back, it wouldn’t matter because it wouldn’t be the same because I didn’tlive here anymore.
On my graduation day, I was grieving.
My friends were celebrating. They were partying. They were excited. So happy. No more school,no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks. And I was like, are you freaking kidding me? Youget all the fro-yo you want here! The gym is free. The apartments in Manhattan are smallerthan my suite in North Mass. Who cared if there was no place to get my hair done? All myfriends are here. I have a theatre company here. I was grieving. I knew enough about how theworld works, enough about how adulthood plays out, to be grieving.
Here’s where I am going to embarrass myself and make you all feel maybe a little bit betterabout yourselves. I literally lay down on the floor of my dorm room and cried while my motherpacked up my room. I refused to help her. Like, hell no I won’t go. I nonviolent-protestedleaving here. Like, went limp like a protestor, only without the chanting—it was really pathetic.If none of you lie down on a dirty hardwood floor and cry today while your mommy packs upyour dorm room, you are already starting your careers out ahead of me. You are winning.
But here’s the thing. The thing I really felt like I knew was that the real world sucks. And it isscary. College is awesome. You’re special here. You’re in the Ivy League, you are at the pinnacleof your life’s goals at this point—your entire life up until now has been about getting into somegreat college and then graduating from that college. And now, today, you have done it. Themoment you get out of college, you think you are going to take the world by storm. All doorswill be opened to you. It’s going to be laughter and diamonds and soirees left and right.
What really happens is that, to the rest of the world, you are now at the bottom of the heap.Maybe you’re an intern, possibly a low-paid assistant. And it is awful. The real world, it suckedso badly for me. I felt like a loser all of the time. And more than a loser? I felt lost.
Which brings me to clarify lesson number two.
Tomorrow is going to be the worst day ever for you. But don’t be an asshole.
Here’s the thing. Yes, it is hard out there. But hard is relative. I come from a middle-classfamily, my parents are academics, I was born after the civil rights movement, I was a toddlerduring the women’s movement, I live in the United States of America, all of which means I’mallowed to own my freedom, my rights, my voice, and my uterus; and I went to Dartmouth andI earned an Ivy League degree.
The lint in my navel that accumulated while I gazed at it as I suffered from feeling lost abouthow hard it was to not feel special after graduation ... that navel lint was embarrassed for me.
Elsewhere in the world, girls are harmed simply because they want to get an education. Slaverystill exists. Children still die from malnutrition. In this country, we lose more people tohandgun violence than any other nation in the world. Sexual assault against women inAmerica is pervasive and disturbing and continues at an alarming rate.
So yes, tomorrow may suck for you—as it did for me. But as you stare at the lint in your navel,have some perspective. We are incredibly lucky. We have been given a gift. An incredibleeducation has been placed before us. We ate all the fro-yo we could get our hands on. Weskied. We had EBAs at 1 a.m. We built bonfires and got frostbite and had all the free treadmills.We beer-ponged our asses off. Now it’s time to pay it forward.
Find a cause you love. It’s OK to pick just one. You are going to need to spend a lot of time outin the real world trying to figure out how to stop feeling like a lost loser, so one cause is good.Devote some time every week to it.
Oh. And while we are discussing this, let me say a thing. A hashtag is not helping. #yesallwomen#takebackthenight#notallmen#bringbackourgirls#StopPretendingHashtagsAreTheSameAsDoingSomething
Hashtags are very pretty on Twitter. I love them. I will hashtag myself into next week. But ahashtag is not a movement. A hashtag does not make you Dr. King. A hashtag does notchange anything. It’s a hashtag. It’s you, sitting on your butt, typing on your computer andthen going back to binge-watching your favorite show. I do it all the time. For me, it’s Game ofThrones.
Volunteer some hours. Focus on something outside yourself. Devote a slice of your energiestowards making the world suck less every week. Some people suggest doing this will increaseyour sense of well-being. Some say it’s good karma. I say that it will allow you to rememberthat, whether you are a legacy or the first in your family to go to college, the air you arebreathing right now is rare air. Appreciate it. Don’t be an asshole.
Lesson number three.
So you’re out there, and you’re giving back and you’re doing, and it’s working. And life is good.You are making it. You’re a success. And it’s exciting and it’s great. At least it is for me. I lovemy life. I have three TV shows at work and I have three daughters at home. And it’s allamazing, and I am truly happy. And people are constantly asking me, how do you do it?
And usually, they have this sort of admiring and amazed tone.
Shonda, how do you do it all?
Like I’m full of magical magic and special wisdom-ness or something.
How do you do it all?
And I usually just smile and say like, "I’m really organized." Or if I’m feeling slightly kindly, Isay, "I have a lot of help."
And those things are true. But they also are not true.
And this is the thing that I really want to say. To all of you. Not just to the women out there.Although this will matter to you women a great deal as you enter the work force and try tofigure out how to juggle work and family. But it will also matter to the men, who I thinkincreasingly are also trying to figure out how to juggle work and family. And frankly, if youaren’t trying to figure it out, men of Dartmouth, you should be. Fatherhood is being redefinedat a lightning-fast rate. You do not want to be a dinosaur.
So women and men of Dartmouth: As you try to figure out the impossible task of jugglingwork and family and you hear over and over and over again that you just need a lot of help oryou just need to be organized or you just need to try just a little bit harder ... as a verysuccessful woman, a single mother of three, who constantly gets asked the question "How doyou do it all?" For once I am going to answer that question with 100 percent honesty here foryou now. Because it’s just us. Because it’s our fireside chat. Because somebody has to tell youthe truth.
Shonda, how do you do it all?
The answer is this: I don’t.
Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainlymeans I am failing in another area of my life.
If I am killing it on a Scandal script for work, I am probably missing bath and story time athome. If I am at home sewing my kids’ Halloween costumes, I’m probably blowing off a rewriteI was supposed to turn in. If I am accepting a prestigious award, I am missing my baby’s firstswim lesson. If I am at my daughter’s debut in her school musical, I am missing Sandra Oh’slast scene ever being filmed at Grey’s Anatomy. If I am succeeding at one, I am inevitablyfailing at the other. That is the tradeoff. That is the Faustian bargain one makes with the devilthat comes with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother. You never feela hundred percent OK; you never get your sea legs; you are always a little nauseous.Something is always lost.
Something is always missing.
And yet. I want my daughters to see me and know me as a woman who works. I want thatexample set for them. I like how proud they are when they come to my offices and know thatthey come to Shondaland. There is a land and it is named after their mother. In their world,mothers run companies. In their world, mothers own Thursday nights. In their world, motherswork. And I am a better mother for it. The woman I am because I get to run Shondaland,because I get write all day, because I get to spend my days making things up, that woman is abetter person—and a better mother. Because that woman is happy. That woman is fulfilled.That woman is whole. I wouldn’t want them to know the me who didn’t get to do this all daylong. I wouldn’t want them to know the me who wasn’t doing.
Lesson Number Three is that anyone who tells you they are doing it all perfectly is a liar.
OK.
I fear I’ve scared you or been a little bit bleak, and that was not my intention. It is my hopethat you run out of here, excited, leaning forward, into the wind, ready to take the world bystorm. That would be so very fabulous. For you to do what everyone expects of you. For you tojust go be exactly the picture of hardcore Dartmouth awesome.
My point, I think, is that it is OK if you don’t. My point is that it can be scary to graduate. Thatyou can lie on the hardwood floor of your dorm room and cry while your mom packs up yourstuff. That you can have an impossible dream to be Toni Morrison that you have to let go of.That every day you can feel like you might be failing at work or at your home life. That the realworld is hard.
And yet, you can still wake up every single morning and go, "I have three amazing kids and Ihave created work I am proud of, and I absolutely love my life and I would not trade it foranyone else’s life ever."
You can still wake up one day and find yourself living a life you never even imagined dreamingof.
My dreams did not come true. But I worked really hard. And I ended up building an empire outof my imagination. So my dreams? Can suck it.
You can wake up one day and find that you are interesting and powerful and engaged. You canwake up one day and find that you are a doer.
You can be sitting right where you are now. Looking up at me. Probably—hopefully, I pray foryou—hung over. And then 20 years from now, you can wake up and find yourself in the HanoverInn full of fear and terror because you are going to give the Commencement speech. Drymouth. Heart beats so, so fast. Everything in slow motion. Pass out, die, poop.
Which one of you will it be? Which member of the 20xx class is going to find themselvesstanding up here? Because I checked and it is pretty rare for an alum to speak here. It’s prettymuch just me and Robert Frost and Mr. Rogers, which is crazy awesome.
Which one of you is going to make it up here? I really hope that it’s one of you. Seriously.
When it happens, you’ll know what this feels like.
Dry mouth. Heart beats so, so fast. Everything moves in slow motion.
Graduates, every single one of you, be proud of your accomplishments. Make good on yourdiplomas.
You are no longer students. You are no longer works in progress. You are now citizens of thereal world. You have a responsibility to become a person worthy of joining and contributing tosociety. Because who you are today ... that’s who you are.
So be brave.
Be amazing.
Be worthy.
And every single time you get a chance?
Stand up in front of people.
Let them see you. Speak. Be heard.
Go ahead and have the dry mouth.
Let your heart beat so, so fast.
Watch everything move in slow motion.
So what?
You what?
You pass out, you die, you poop?
No.
And this is really the only lesson you’ll ever need to know...
You take it in.
You breathe this rare air.
You feel alive.
You be yourself.
You truly finally always be yourself.
Thank you. Good luck.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿13
For your generation, there’s an incredible amount of pressure on all of you to succeed, particularly now that you have accomplished so much. You’re whole generation faces this pressure. I see it in my grandchildren who are honors students at other Ivy universities right now. You race to do what others think is right in high school. You raced through the bloodsport of college admissions. You raced through Yale for the next big thing. And all along, some of you compare yourself to the success of your peers on Facebook, Linked-In, Twitter.
Today, some of you may have found that you slipped into the self-referential bubble that validates certain choices. And the bubble expands once you leave this campus, the pressures and anxiousness, as well -- take this job, make that much money, live in this place, hang out with people like you, take no real risks and have no real impact, while getting paid for the false sense of both.
But resist that temptation to rationalize what others view is the right choice for you -— instead of what you feel in your gut is the right choice —- that’s your North Star. Trust it. Follow it. You're an incredible group of young women and men. And that's not hyperbole. You're an incredible group.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿14
Two weeks ago, I was in Spain. I made a pilgrimage to visit the home of one my great heroes, the Catalan cellist Pablo Casals. He was 97 years old when I was a freshman in college. He had lived through World War I, the Spanish Civil War, World War II.
I was so lucky to have played for him when I was 7 years old. He said I was talented. His advice to me then: Make sure you have time to play baseball.
And I’ll let you imagine how that might have worked out.
But in reality, that wise counsel, "to make time for baseball," was a profound reflection of the philosophy that motivated his life. Casals always thought of himself as a human being first, as a musician second, and only then a cellist. It’s a philosophy that I’ve held close to my heart for most of my own life.
Now, I had always known Casals as a great advocate for human dignity. But standing in his home two weeks ago, I understood what it meant for him to live that philosophy, what it meant for him to be a human being first. I began to understand just a few of the thousands of actions he took every day, every month. Each was in the service of his fellow human beings.
I saw letters of protest he wrote to newspapers from London to Tokyo. I saw meticulous, handwritten accounts of his enormous financial contributions to countless refugees fleeing the carnage of the Spanish Civil War – evidence of a powerful, humanistic life.
毕业典礼英语演讲稿15
Distinguished leaders, parents and dear students,
Good morning! I am so excited to stand here, as a representative of the whole G12 students’ parents to make a brief speech to show our greatest honor and respect to the school leaders and teachers who work for our sons and daughters in the past three years. Thank you for your hard work.
Frankly, we were hesitant about our choice at first, but today we beam with happiness. Now all of our children have received the admission letters and scholarship from Canada, the USA, the Switzerland and many other countries. Thank you for your great education!
At the same time, as their parents, we hope every future university student will work even harder and become the backbone of our nation after graduation from university. Last, I wish SCCSC a brighter future and with students all over the world! Thank you all!
尊敬的各位领导，老师，家长，亲爱的同学们：
大家上午好!此时，我真的是心潮澎湃，激动万分，因为我有幸站在这里，代表深圳南山中加学校全体高三毕业生的家长发言。在此，请允许我代表全体家长，向三年来为我们的孩子付出艰辛努力，给与我们孩子最好教育的学校领导和老师致以最衷心的感谢和深深的敬意!谢谢你们!
回顾三年的历程，我们每一位家长都经历了当初选择时的犹豫 和今天收获时的喜悦。在各位领导和老师的辛勤培养下，中加学校的`孩子们都顺利地收到了加拿大等国外大学的录取通知书，并且许多同学还得到了国外大学的入学奖学金，这使我们每一位家长都感到自豪与欣慰。今天的喜悦是各级领导重视关心及学校各位老师辛勤劳动和培养教育的结果!谢谢你们!
同时，作为家长，我们期望每一个中加学子今后要勤奋笃学，修身养性，厚德载物，以便长大之后成为国之栋梁，人之俊杰，了却天下父母望子成龙的一片苦心。最后，祝中加学校桃李满天下，基业更长青!谢谢大家!
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