As school ends (and my teaching career), I feel like the seniors do in a lot of ways. Found this HST passage the other day and it made me feel pretty good about what I'm doing.
Anyway, the seniors select a member of their class to make a speech at graduation. The following is the outline from this years speaker. If you read anything, be sure to read the last paragraph. THIS is the only part of this job I ever really liked............
this is my spiyatch:
perhaps at first I will express some trepidation over the fact that I have been selected to give this speech since I do not feel that I can accurately reflect the experiences of the senior class as a whole
everyone will expect this self-doubt to be rooted in the fact that I will not be attending college in the fall; imagine their shock, then, when instead I MAKE SEVERAL HUMOROUS REFERENCES TO THINGS WHICH HAVE HAPPENED THROUGHOUT THE YEAR!!! HUMOROUS THINGS!!!
(sample: “my arms are long and weird-shaped and so I have to pay full price for all of my soda-colas or something” (THE IMPLICATION BEING THAT I AM NOT GOOD AT STEALING FROM THE VENDING MACHINERY) (they will probably not all be as shameful and embarrassing to the school as this) (or perhaps yes))
having thus established my credibility as a lovable rake, I will bust out some mad Vladimir Nabokov quoteage (it’s actually a pretty good quote about FAITH, which is going to be a Major Theme of my speech) (not faith in the religious sense) (this would make more sense if you saw the quote, which is about how “true faith does not demand a precise picture of what awaits us, but simply contents itself with vague notions that things will be better someday”; Vlad uses the example of a kid moving into a new house far away from his old one, but TRUST ME, the actual quote is pretty funny)
… whereupon I will proceed to dispense a variety of humor, advice, and humorous advice, playing upon the central theme as though it were a piccolo or some other easy-to-play instrument. being that I am, first and foremost, a man of the people, you need not worry about whether or not my humor will be appreciated by all, as this seems pretty much inevitable. however, in the unlikely event that people do not laugh and/or are offended, my suicide will be swift and honorable. I hope this assurance puts to rest any nagging concerns you may have as to the appropriateness of my speech’s content. we’re cool, right?
the last word of my speech will be “stables”, or perhaps “alone”.
