Graduation Speech

[I LURV QUACKERS]

So, I'm writing a graduation speech. The theme I was working on used to be time, but tonight I completely erased everything and started writing again with a new theme. The beauty of life. It's something that just hit me a while ago and that I've been completely stunned by for some time now, so I figured it would result in a more powerful speech.

Here's what I have from that so far:

When I look out at all of you, I see so much more than what there is. Because even as I stand up here ready to continue my life—ready to greet my future—I can't help but think about the past. I see all of your faces, and with them I see all these memories. And though I can't claim to remember every second, I cherish every moment. Every single moment: the good and the bad. You see, I cherish all these moments because the one thing that amazes me most about them is their beauty. Every moment is beautiful. This moment is beautiful. There is something wonderful about thinking that each and every one of you is here in this place at this time. We've all travelled completely different paths, but here we are. Here we all are, sharing this one moment. And throughout the past four years now, I'm happy to say I've been able to share many moments with all of you. The fun and the mundane, the successes and the failures. All the growth we've had... and all the times we've been too scared to grow. Each moment in this life is precious. From the highest peaks on the tallest mountains of emotion to the deepest trenches in the lowest valleys, every moment is beautiful. I will take every moment from these past four years with me. And it is my most sincere hope that each of you, each in your own way, can do the same.

Cheesy, sure. It's a graduation speech. But, hey, because it's a speech, I realize that text does it no real justice. So here's a quick recording (complete with slightly hoarse voice, shitty noise removal, and some spots of me wandering into a way too whimsical voice that I just can't stop doing) of the reading that I'm working with so far: beauty.mp3 (alternatively, go to drop.io/cojawfee and click the filename for a web player)

I plan to continue into talking about the future and keeping every moment important.

C&C is much needed, both on the content and my reading thereof.

[Sarpedon]

Sal/Val or something else?

[I LURV QUACKERS]

No, that's silly. Anyone can submit a speech, I just happen to be doing so. Also, I semi-finished, here is the transcript of my speech thusfar:

When I look out at all of you, I see so much more than what there is. Because even as I stand up here ready to continue my life—ready to greet my future—I can't help… but think about the past. I see all of your faces, and with them I see all these memories. And though I can't claim to remember every second, I cherish every moment. Every single moment: the good and the bad. You see, I cherish all these moments because the one thing that amazes me most about them is their beauty. Every moment is beautiful. This moment is beautiful. There is something wonderful about thinking that each and every one of you is here in this place at this time. We've all traveled completely different paths, but here we are. Here we all are, sharing this one moment. And throughout the past four years now, I'm happy to say I've been able to share many moments with all of you. The fun and the mundane, the successes and the failures. All the growth we've had... and all the times we've been too scared to grow. Each moment in this life is precious. From the highest peaks on the tallest mountains of emotion to the deepest trenches in the lowest valleys, every moment is beautiful. I will take every moment from these past four years with me. And it is my most sincere hope that each of you, each in your own way, can do the same.

Because this ceremony is a celebration of what is to come. We're supposed to be saying, “Well… that's done. Now on to the real world.” And to an extent, that's true. High school was the last obstacle between us and our own lives. But take something from that. Appreciate the fact that you met that obstacle, and you overcame it. Appreciate the fact that, while you were busy working through those tough times, you were able to share all of the good times… with all of these wonderful people. Friends or not, you shared something with each and every one of these people in here. At the very least, we're all right here right now. We've traveled different paths, but here we are. Here we all are, sharing this one moment. And we will continue, with this moment as a part of us. We will continue on into that “real world” and get the chance to experience many more moments with many more people. Different moments and—though I hope to have more time with all of you—different people. That… is why you must take the time now—take the time to gather up all of these amazing moments we've had… take the time to appreciate them for what they are: beautiful.

Except that I need to add about a minute and a half, still. The second paragraph isn't as long as it seems, apparently. But once again, any C&C would be appreciated. My teacher says that I need to add specific examples, but I feel like I purposefully shied away from those because I think they are cheesy and alienating. Yeah, anecdotes can include a few people, but there's always going to be someone in the back thinking, "Yeah, but I didn't have any of those experiences."

[DC]

I agree on the anecdotes, but they're unfortunately necessary I think.

[I LURV QUACKERS]

Thanks for all the suggestions, here's what should be my final draft:

Beautiful

by Bryan Lewis

When I look out at all of you, I see so much more than what there is. Because even as I stand up here ready to continue my life—ready to greet my future—I can't help… but think about the past. I see all of your faces, and with them I see all these memories. And though I can't claim to remember every second, I cherish every moment. Every single moment: the good and the bad. You see, I cherish all of these moments... because the one thing that amazes me most about them is their beauty. Every moment is beautiful. This moment is beautiful. There is something wonderful about thinking that each and every one of you is here in this place at this time. We've all traveled completely different paths, but here we are. Here we all are, sharing this one moment. And throughout the past four years now, I'm happy to say I've been able to share many moments with all of you. The fun and the mundane: before class, after class, and everywhere in between. The successes and the failures: in all the sports and activities I was proud to be a part of, and the ones I was even happier just to support. All the growth we've had... and all the times we've been too scared to grow. Each moment in this life is precious. From the highest peaks on the tallest mountains of emotion to the deepest trenches in the lowest valleys, every moment is beautiful. I will take every moment from these past four years with me. And it is my most sincere hope that each of you, each in your own way, can do the same.

Because this ceremony is a celebration of what is to come. We're supposed to be saying, “Well… that's done. Now on to the real world.” And to an extent, that's true. High school was the last obstacle between us and what we will make of our own lives. But take something from that. Appreciate the fact that you met that obstacle, and you overcame it. Appreciate the fact that, while you were busy working through those tough times, you were able to share all of the good times… with all of these wonderful people. Friends or not, you shared something with each and every one of these people in here. At the very least, we're all right here right now. We've traveled different paths, but here we are. Here we all are, sharing this one moment. And we must continue, with this moment and the countless others as a part of us. We must continue on into that “real world” and get the chance to experience many more moments with many more people. In education, in work, in friendship, in love. In life. Ahead of us we have an infinite number of brand new, different moments and—though I hope to have more time with all of you—different people. That is why you must take the time now—take the time to look around at all these people you are sharing this moment with... take the time to gather up all of these amazing moments we've had… take the time to appreciate them for what they are: beautiful.

Thank you.

No stupid anecdotes, though I somewhat fleshed the list of "moments" out with some hyper-general examples that I don't think stop it too terribly from being all-inclusive.

Now that I'm pretty done and probably handing this in tomorrow, what do you guys think of this just as a piece of writing? Good/bad. The biggest thing I was focusing on while writing this was keeping an even tone throughout and sticking to a single theme. I feel like I succeeded for the tone, but I might have stumbled with the theme. That's mostly because when I rewrote it from its original theme, there were a few key lines that I couldn't stop myself from reinserting. Not very professional, but I really liked those lines.

Specifically, how well do these lines flow in a smaller context, and how well do they fit into the speech as a whole:

• "And though I can't claim to remember every second, I cherish every moment."
• "From the highest peaks on the tallest mountains of emotion to the deepest trenches in the lowest valleys, every moment is beautiful."
• "I will take every moment from these past four years with me. And it is my most sincere hope that each of you, each in your own way, can do the same."

Additionally randomly, what do you think of the repetition of these sentences in both paragraphs: "We've all traveled completely different paths, but here we are. Here we all are, sharing this one moment." Is it too obvious that I am calling back to the first paragraph, or maybe not obvious enough? Is it oddly-placed to have what are essentially the most central parts of two paragraphs echo eachother? It's not something I've exactly seen before, so I'd love an objective opinion as to whether it is interesting, awkward, or just OK.

So yeah. All that.

[Star]

"From the highest peaks on the tallest mountains of emotion to the deepest trenches in the lowest valleys, every moment is beautiful."

This is awkward in terms of parallelism, metaphor, and syntax. If you're going to say "of emotion" in the first part, you need to do something similar in the second. Valleys don't really have trenches and as they're sort of the same thing the double metaphor is really unnecessary- try to use more specific images. You also have five prepositional phrases in a row. That needs to change.

You might just want to get rid of the sentence, now that I think about it.

Also, your 'hyper-general anecdotes' are more or less fodder, and they read like it, too. The "now" in the twelfth sentence should be cut. Two-thirds of the way in I grew really sick of the word 'moment.' Be careful with ellipses- if that's where you plan to pause, they all seem pretty awkward. Your use of the colon in the first paragraph is flawed: the colon should be used when two ideas are connected and the second explains the first.

Sorry for the harshness of the comments, it's a bit late and I've had a long day. Hope it helps!

[I LURV QUACKERS]

Not harsh at all, and absolutely helpful.

As I mentioned, that sentence is something that I've basically just been copying, pasting, and ignoring since it first weaseled its way in. And it is horrible. How about if I replace this:

"Each moment in this life is precious. From the highest peaks on the tallest mountains of emotion to the deepest trenches in the lowest valleys, every moment is beautiful."

with

"Whether on the peaks of bliss or in the valleys of despair, we must take every instant as precious."

Better? Or would it still improve it just to throw it out altogether?

My hyper-general anecdotes are fodder. But as I mentioned, I feel like another student not particularly in-the-know to my experiences could at least be ignorant to them rather than averse to real specifics. That "now" works better off paper, it's a speech mannerism that I decided to specifically include.

I'll take into account the over-use of "moment." Obviously it's a pretty key word, but hearing from an objective source that it gets tiring points to a problem. Do you have any suggestions for specific places where I could replace it, and with what? Looking at it, I might change "Here we all are, sharing this one moment" to "Here we all are, sharing this one point in time" or "Here we all are, together in this one point in time." Though the second is a bit overwrought, in my opinion.

I feel that the pauses work. There wasn't really a definite method to my decision of pauses to ellipsize on paper, I just threw them in whenever I noticed my self pausing in different places on different read-throughs. As said, I feel like I chose correctly. However, as an actor decidedly more professional than I, you have an opinion that I would value more than most on my readings. I think I'll re-record a final draft reading and upload it, mostly for your comments.

Speaking of things I feel work, I see no problem with the ellipses. Having fun or being bored. Where? In and out of class. Succeeding and failing. When? In stuff I've been involved in, and in stuff I've cheered on. Maybe you just didn't read it like that. Please clarify if it's still a problem.

[Star]

Colons connect two independent clauses, so each idea needs to be a complete sentence by itself. That's all.

The new sentence is much better; however, the idiom to "take an instant as precious" is a little bit awkward. I've never heard those words used like that before. Maybe put in 'appreciate' or a similar word instead of 'take'?

And yeah, it would help to hear a recording of the speech. Just in terms of how it reads on paper (because I'm assuming they only choose a few speeches to actually be read at graduation), the parts you put in ellipses seemed out of place. Instead of creating some sort of dramatic reversal or interesting revelation, they seem only to break up continuous thoughts (excepting the one at the end of the first paragraph- that's definitely appropriate). 

[I LURV QUACKERS]

Bah, grammar. 'Tis a speech, not a dissertation. I read it differently with the colons, as it helps remind me at a glance that they are related. They could be separate but aren't.

Alright, I could see your point. How about "hold onto every instant as precious"? It seems to make more sense to hold on to something precious rather than to take it.

I'll get a recording later tonight. I'm too amped on sleep to sleep anyway.