High school graduation ceremonies are quite a bit different this year. Zoom ceremonies. Socially-distant ceremonies at drive-in movie theaters. Graduation parades. Some have been postponed until brighter days in the fall (hopefully), and some quietly cancelled. The bad news is that several million high school graduates aren’t getting the pomp and circumstance they were expecting this year. The good news is that there are a lot fewer bad and boring graduation speeches to sit through.

But not all graduation speeches are bad and boring, and if there’s a year when graduates could use a little inspiration, motivation, and wisdom this is certainly it. So if you need a good speech, here are a few good ones to choose from.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Wellesley College, 2015.

Admiral William H. McRaven, University of Texas, 2014.

Charlie Day, Merrimack College, 2014.

If those don’t have the particular advice you need right now, though, I think it’s a great exercise to write—or at least think about—making your own graduation speech, the perfect one for you. It helps you condense what you’ve learned and what you think is important into a few paragraphs. (Underclassmen: it also helps you think about strong application essay topics.) If you’re willing to give this a shot, here are the ingredients to a good graduation speech.

You need a main idea, a big idea. This is the part of your speech that is supposed to inspire and encourage. If you could give one piece of advice about life to an audience, what would it be?

For example, at Virginia Tech Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg spoke about resilience, about building up your own resilience and fostering it in others around us.

A controversial graduation speaker choice, the Dalai Lama, talked at U.C. San Diego about the connection between inner peace and world peace.

So that's the main part of your assignment. Think about what sort of wisdom you'd want to pass on. It doesn't need to be original (and probably can't be), but it needs to be heart-felt.

You're also going to need some bits of medium or smaller-sized wisdom. Something that fits well into a list. These aren't the Big Inspirational Ideas as much as the Important Habits that help lead to the big ideas.

At Dartmouth, CNN's Jake Tapper started out with "the quick and easy stuff," reminding the audience that they could go back and find it on YouTube later:

"Always write thank-you notes. Be a big tipper. Always split Aces and Eights. Floss. Call your folks. Invest in a good mattress. Shine your shoes. Don’t tweet, post, Instagram, or email anything you wouldn’t feel comfortable seeing on the front page of The New York Times. Be nice to seniors. Be nice to children. Remember birthdays. Never miss an opportunity to charge an electronic device. Use two-step verification. Shake it off. Shake it off. Stretch before exercising. Stretch after exercising. Exercise. Never play keno. Never drink airplane coffee. Never pay $200 for a pair of jeans. Never wear jean shorts. And no one has ever had fun on a paddleboat."

At Tulane, Helen Mirren kept her Big Inspirational Idea to just one sentence--“Whether you’re in the French Quarter or the Oval Office, no good can ever come from tweeting at 3 a.m.”--and spent most of her time explaining "Helen's Top 5 Rules for a Happy Life" and a list of do's and don'ts.

The third thing you'll want for your graduation speech is to do something memorable. Think about what your talents are, and think about what you do that is funny, and think about what your vulnerabilities are. And then put them together. Will Ferrell broke out into song. Ron Chernow did the opening rap from Hamilton at Lafayette. (Chernow is a professor over 70 years old and not much of a rapper, but he wrote the book Hamilton is based on, so he can get away with it. )

That's all you need: a big inspirational main idea, some smaller pieces of practical advice, and something that will stand out. So...why am I asking you to do this? Because I want you to follow your own advice. On most days there's a gap between what we think of as the most important things and what we treat as the most important. There’s a gap between the habits we would encourage others to adopt and the habits we actually practice. There’s a gap between the way we want people to remember us and what we actually do. Some days those gaps are tiny and we feel great; some days they’re huge. Occasionally reminding yourself about your higher ideals and tried-and-tested rules can help keep those gaps as small as possible, as often as possible.

If you’re graduating high school this year, congratulations! I wish you the best. If you’re still in high school and looking forward to graduation within the next few years. Hang in there, and know that your own graduation will probably be better than this year’s.

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Read these related posts: Best graduation speeches, Run before the bell.
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Photo by Zoe Herring.