Random thoughts on graduation addresses

In the last couple of weeks, I've heard more than my share of speeches given by graduates and invited guests. As a person who loves to critique, let me offer some "do's" and "don'ts" for future graduation speakers.

Let's start with the "do's."

• You are not the president of the United States giving the State of the Union address, so be mindful of your audience and keep it short. Five minutes will feel like 50 minutes to an audience sitting on wooden bleachers in a high school gym sitting oddly with their neck cocked to see who's speaking. And some in the audience came an hour early to save seats, so remember these brave souls and keep your remarks short. The big event is seeing their loved one receive a diploma...everything else is secondary, including your speech.
• If you must quote someone, stick with Dr. Seuss, Yogi Berra or Will Rogers. This is not the occasion to quote Malcom X, Adolf Hitler, Chairman Mao or some other controversial historical figure.
• Remember that speeches can also entertain, not just bore people. The story to remember is that a speech should be like a mini-skirt...short enough to entice, but just long enough to cover the essentials. 
• Also try to remember who spoke or what they said at your graduation. You can't...so keep this in mind when you decide to give your "earth-shattering" dissertation. Be humble and be one of us. 
• Speak to communicate, not to impress. Your audience will simply find you arrogant if you choose words they don't understand or concepts that are too abstract. 
• If you feel compelled to offer advice to the audience, make sure it's something that can be universally agreed upon, like the old axiom "As you sow, so shall you reap." Leave the New Age philosophy for a coffee house talk on a college campus. 

I know, many of my "do's" sound like "don'ts....but there are also some obvious, plain old "don'ts". 

• Don't talk about issues that are controversial. No need to espouse the evils of global warming because half of your audience doesn't believe it's a problem. If you don't believe me, look at the national polls by George Gallup and others.
• Don't dabble in cliches, such as the "free speech." That's where the college president asks you if you believe in free speech. You say you do and the college president asks if you will speak at the commencement exercise and give a free speech. It was funny once upon a time, but it's now been done to death. 
• Don't offend people in your audience by using language that 30 years ago was questionable but today is deemed offensive. An example is describing a conference on your campus as a "powwow" between the muckety-mucks of your college and other institutions of higher learning. And this example is really one of the tamer ones I've heard. Come on people, this is now 2010. 
• If you are 18 years old and you are the class valedictorian, resist the temptation to tell all the parents and grandparents in the audience about the "keys to success" or the "meaning of life." At 18, you don't have the credentials and you won't be taken seriously. 
• And my last one goes back a few years to when one of my wife's sisters was graduating. The speaker was a retired superintendent in Glendive, Montana, who urged the students to move on to new learning opportunities. Unfortunately, in doing so, he insulted half the audience. He started about by saying that students might want to be teachers, a noble profession, and they could attend Eastern Montana College  as he had done. If they wanted to pursue an engineering degree, why there was always Montana State University or they could attend the University of Montana and seek a degree in geology or business. If they didn't feel they were up to college quite yet, then there was still the military who would train them to be soldiers. And if they didn't have they acumen for being a soldier, there was always "Harvard on the Hill." Now "Harvard on the Hill" was the colloquialism for Dawson Community College, a two-year school, perhaps best known for its rodeo teams. But still, I wondered how many people in the audience had either attended DCC as a full-time student or went to a night class to learn about computers or had a relative as a DCC alumnus. 

So there you have it. Keep it short, don't insult the audience and entertain them for five minutes. The best you can probably hope for is to not be remembered. If you do a terrible job, you will be remembered, but for all the wrong reasons.