Kenyon Commencement Speech Summary

David McCullough, in his Wellesley High School Commencement Address, utilizes imagery to convey to his audience that each individual possesses the same common potential. While addressing the graduating class of 2012, McCullough makes a point to emphasize how unexceptional the students are. By bringing to light the fact that the students are all wearing the same “ceremonial costume…shapeless, uniform, one-size-fits-all” (McCullough 1), he illustrates the conformity of the crowd. By depicting the cap and gown, McCullough demonstrates that each student at the ceremony are at the same level. This indicates that the members of the audience are all capable of achieving just as much as the one sitting next to them. McCullough also gives the students

Congratulations! You are invited to join the founding National English Honor Society at Chancellor High School for the 2016-2017 school year.

The function of a commencement speech is to reflect on thee experience, but not to be overtly boring. Sedaris does just that, he makes a very relatable speech and mixes in some humor. “We worshipped a God named Sashatiba, who had five eyes, including one right here, on the adam’s apple.” (311) and then he goes on to talk about bad grades, pressure of parents, drugs all the things you could face. “The answer of course was life. What the hag chose not to fortell- and what we, in our certainty could not have fathomed-is that stuff comes up.” (314) It can be inferred that by ‘stuff’ Sedaris simply means obstacles. You never really know where you’re going. You can only think.

On June 4, 2003, world-wide known comedian, Will Ferrell delivered a very influential and amusing speech to the Harvard graduating Class of 2003. Ferrell expressed this graduating speech with something new and unique. He doesn’t present his speech like any other class day speaker; he is very inspirational and wants the students to see how different their life is going to be once they leave this graduation ceremony. Ferrell compellingly employs a very lighthearted tone, which includes humor, and pathos to effectively gain the audience’s attention and successfully tell students about the “real world”.

Walking into graduation, every graduate expects to hear the same speech with little variance about reaching an important milestone in life but still having many more milestones. Paul Hawken delivered a different message with his commencement address, You Are Brilliant and the Earth Is Hiring. His message was filled with hope for the future since people are working together to build a better world for all.

The speech “You’re Not Special” was given by David McCullough Jr., a teacher at Wellesley High School, at their 2012 commencement ceremony. The audience he spoke to was not only the graduating class, but the parents of those students, and teacher or administrators of that school. He gave a commemorative speech.

During the era of A Streetcar named desire (1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949), money and social status had power over peoples lives. In that sense, people were labeled for what they had. And the fast that money had power over the characters lives in both books, it showed that their world revolved around it. It also had so much power in the sense that both of the books ended in a negative note. So, i believe that Death Of a Salesman by Authur Miller and A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams connected in a sense that money created problems between the characters.

This artifact is a rhetorical analysis about a commencement speech from Steve Jobs to the Stanford graduating class of 2005. The commencement speech was broken down into his three stories. I used these three stories to summarize his overall message which is to follow your passion in life using anecdotes, pathos, and ethos.

Reading the commencement speech “This is Water”, written and delivered by David Foster Wallace to students and their families at Kenyon College was nothing like what I was expecting it to be. I can imagine the listeners that were present were just as shocked as I was when they finally grasped the message he was presenting to them that day. Normally when someone delivers a commencement speech to students graduating, it's more along the lines of “be all that you can be” or “You can do it” with emphasis on the word “you.” No one really tells you to think of others first at that point in your lives. However, Wallace did just that. He told the students that if everyone would be honest with themselves and others they would admit to being self-centered egotistical jerks. He said we were born thinking that way but the good news is we can reprogram ourselves by changing our perspective on others and being empathetic to other people’s situations and feelings. Wallace also

Some people in elementary school knew they wanted to be doctors. Classmates of mine in middle school expressed their desires to become teachers. And yet for freshman year me, I had no idea what my future would hold—and I was terrified. I had done decently academically, managed to swim without drowning, and could muster a couple songs on the violin. But in a larger sense, it often felt like I was going through the motions, living another day just to do so. I had no real passion, and as cliché as it sounds, my own perception of my success was determined by my grades.

The hardships that are exposed in Fitzgerald's exquisitely crafted novel, "The Great Gatsby", are detrimental in the comprehension of why Gatsby is so great. Coming from a poverty-stricken family, Gatsby is able to climb to the apical growing point of his social standing that could ever be achieved in the 1920s, and continued to have a devouring hunger for success. It is Gatsby's sheer ambition and optimism that makes Gatsby a remarkable individual, one who exemplifies the title of this book - a great man.

This speech was made for the class of 2014. By that year, Ed Helms was well known for his work on The Daily Show, The Office and The Hangover (trilogy) films. His major success it was The Hangover but in his speech he used a lot of examples of one of his character in The Office because it was someone related to Cornell University. He also was awareness that it was a graduation with a lot of young people and because he is a comedian he did a lot of jokes to try to engaged the audience with the ideas that he wanted to share with them. And finally, in his speech, he also applied pathos which is the emotional quality of the speech or text that makes it persuasive to the audience. Because he used the context, he appealed to the emotional by talking about the feeling that most of the students feels when they finally finish college, which is insecurity about what is going to be their life out of the campus. So, Ed Helms said: “Many times in life, college graduation for example, we don’t have a clear goal were overwhelmed by all the options or were scared. We don’t know enough to succeed at the thing we want, doesn’t matter be a fool and work hard at whatever is right in front of you”. He could connect with the students by talking about the feelings that everyone had in a graduation

Hidden Intellectualism, by Graff is about the English professor who discusses the ideas of intellectualism which is sometimes misunderstood to society. He focuses his main concern on the way teens view having intelligence in a negative way. He continues with his own life as an example of hidden intelligence. Graff noticed he was gifted while engaging into a conversation with one of his teammates. Mr.Graff, explains that it is important to teach the reader intellectualism, and by doing that you could possibly bringing the youth into the general studies. Kids make it easier to talk about sports and music.

“ ‘If you want her to come, you have to raise the money to get her here.’ Nice try, but that didn’t stop them. The next day, a student brought in an extra Sparkletts water jug and set it in the middle of the classroom… A couple of days later the bottom of the jug was filled with coins and a few loose dollar bills”(82). This backs up the idea of students making progress and showing how far they have come since freshman year. Finally, in the end of the novel, students share their feelings about graduation through their journal entries. One student tells his story of being the first to graduate high school and continue onto college, proving that dreams can be achieved, and new paths can be created. He says, “Historians say history repeats itself, but in my case I have managed to break the cycle because I 'm going to graduate from high school and go to college, an opportunity my parents never had”(205). This really emphasizes the theme of the entire book, which is that change is possible, and the sky 's the limit. Once a hoodlum, this young man has matured into a true student, being the first in his family to even graduate, plus he will go on to college

In the speech “Steve Jobs Commencement Address to Stanford University, Class of 2005”, Apple CEO Steve Jobs provides his audience with personal experiences and the rough periods he went through in his early years before founding apple that helped him succeed. With the use of his stories Jobs creates a character that prevails through obstacles and manages to achieve his goals, which inspires his audience to look up to him and show that failure is sometimes necessary to succeed.