Check It Out: Great graduation speeches impart wisdom, humor

It’s that time of year when pomp and circumstance fills the air. Mortar boards and graduation gowns become June’s coolest fashion statement, and eager young minds look forward to the next chapter of their lives.

Looking back on my own high school graduation, I was eager all right — eager to be done with papers, final exams, and high school life in general.

But I was a little nervous, too, because college was just around the corner, and while I would be attending the local university and wouldn’t have to worry about roommates or homesickness, the world loomed large.

What if I didn’t like college?

Where would life take me?

What kind of person would I be in five, 10, 15 years?

Have you ever wondered what kind of advice you would give if asked to speak at a commencement ceremony? I have no clue as to how I would approach such a task. Offer snippets of wisdom I’ve gained with age? Ha — half the time I don’t feel like I know what I’m doing. Regale the graduates with my autobiography — abridged, of course — then sign off with an overused bromide such as “soar like an eagle” or “your future is bright?”

So, who is included? Well, actress Meryl Streep for one, who spoke to the class of 2003 at the University of New Hampshire. Pulling no punches, she throws out this rhetorical question: “Nobody makes a speech in New Hampshire unless they’re stumping for something, do they?” Since she figures she’ll put her audience to sleep if she makes a political speech, she declares that her speech will be about sexual politics — a topic that should keep everyone awake.

The musician Sting is here, too, giving a surprisingly profound speech about music to the 1994 graduates of the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

And Tom Brokaw, speaking to the 1996 graduating class at Connecticut College, sets the tone of his remarks by saying, “I know what is expected of me. Brevity, most of all. Maybe a little humor. Wisdom, or the appearance of it.”

Lest you think all of the speeches included in this week’s book occurred on East Coast campuses, the writer Sherman Alexie, a Washington state native, shares his thoughts with the University of Washington’s 2003 graduates. His speech is moving and powerful, but he also injects a bit of humor when he talks about going to college to study pediatrics.