4 Ways to Structure a Graduation Speech

How to Write a Great Commencement Speech

After reading and scanning through scores of graduation speeches, four patterns emerged among the best of these speeches. The hope is that by having a framework for how to organize your speech, it will be a little bit easier for you to write it. I will provide you with helpful examples. It’s important to not get discouraged when you read these speeches. Do not put yourself down. Believe you were asked to do the speech for a reason. Moreover, for every great speech here, there are literally thousands of others that were instantly forgotten less they were so bad or boring that people could not forget them even if this is all they wanted to. Lastly, simply the fact that you are online doing your research and are reading these tips on how to write a speech tells me you’re on to something good.

In this category are the speeches that have anywhere between two to five themes and the speaker introduces them early on. Most of the speech is divided equally among the chosen themes and stories are used to make the message stick. (Read more about the power of stories in the story section).

Steve Job’s famous 2005 Stanford commencement speech is one of the best examples. No further than his first paragraph he states :

Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories. The first story is about connecting the dots.

Another straight forward sample graduation speech of this type, and equally famous, is Harry Potter’s author, J.K. Rowlings’ 2008 Harvard University commencement speech. Here is how she skillfully introduces her two messages:

I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this. I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

I understand, you might not quite be one of the most famous CEO’s or author on this planet. Fear not! One of the best speeches, is given by a teacher. Mark Lewis, Professor of Clinical Psychology gave a fantastic commencement speech at University of Texas. After so many year this speech remain truly a gem meant to inspire generations to come. Here is how professor Lewis starts his main part of the address:

I want to tell you three true stories this evening. Together they make a point that I consider one of the great secrets of life and I hope you’ll remember these stories, because I promise you that you’ll need them at some time or another.

A fabulous speech and a good example for this category that uses examples from the real world other than his own personal experiences. I consider this to be especially helpful as inspiration for the valedictory speakers who are probably the same age as the graduates and hence have had less personal experiences to use in their speeches. But not necessarily. Back to Lewis’s speech, he is a great storyteller. He also managed to produce some of the best lines that became one of my favorite graduation quotes:

The person who you’re with most in life is yourself and if you don’t like yourself you’re always with somebody you don’t like.

So simple, so true, and so beautifully put into words.

But let’s return to the more common scenario of speeches with personal stories as speakers reflect back on their own lives and try to highlight the experiences and stories that shaped them. Another great one, also in top ten, is from director and movie producer (Airplane) Jerry Zucker given at University of Wisconsin in 2003. He not only shared great advice but also managed to be funny — a much welcomed bonus if you can pulled it off. Everybody likes a joke or two and you might be surprised, but given that the occasion is festive and the audience is in such a happy celebratory mood, the jokes take off easier than you might otherwise think. Don’t be afraid to try a couple unless you’ve known all your life you never pulled a joke in which case you might want to lighten up. Just kidding.

Let’s review a few more examples. TV host, Professor and Author Melissa Harris-Perry at Wellesley College in 2012 has an interesting one as she adds a twist to her themes. She phrases the message in unconventional terms.

I’ve got three things I want to ask you to be as you move forward, and I think these might be kind of counterintuitive, particularly coming from a political progressive who is unashamedly feminist, concerned with racial and economic and environmental justice, but here are the three things I’m going to ask of you: Be ignorant. Be silent.Be thick.
This inverting techniques reinforces the stories in that it tells you something contrary to the general believe and consequently it draws you in by awakening your curiosity.

Most recently, the mezzosoprano Joyce Didonato shared a moving and truly inspirational graduation speech at Juilliard School in 2014 imparting with the graduates “four little observations”.

This type of graduation speech allows the speaker to share a larger number of ideas and tips with the audience. The themes themselves are not announced at the beginning. The authors only mention how many pieces of such advice they will give. You can pick this category if you feel that a longer list works better for you, for example if you find yourself having a hard time narrowing down the advice to just less than five ideas. Moreover, with a longer list but shorter time to support the advice, it is perfectly fine to alternate between personal examples and anecdotes. A recent favorite of mine in this category is the speech given in 2013 by Australian musician and comedian Tim Minchin at University of Western Australia. The speech is funny, passionate and inspirational and contains “Nine Life Lessons”.

Another speech I loved for years, ever since I discovered it, was given at Wheaton College back in 2000 by yet another non celebrity, in case you were worried about that. Author and art historian John Walsh proves that fame is not what matters after all. His speech eloquently shares his 8 things that he wished he has been told at his commencement and the advice stands as relevant today as it was over a decade ago.

The 2014 commencement season had one great speech that uses this format: the outstanding and very popular speech by Admiral McRaven at University of Texas at Austin. He shares with the graduates the ten lessons he learned from basic SEALS training hoping that they will be of value to them as they move forward in life.

The speakers in this case have chosen to open up more than in any other type of graduation speeches. The audience will learn quite a lot about their personal lives and experiences as the transcript reads like a mini memoir. While similar to the first category in that the speakers share a handful of lessons learned, these speeches read like one life’s story in 12 minutes. Moreover, the advice is not clearly stated at the beginning. The speakers might start their stories by talking about they way they were brought up or jump to the time right after finishing school, and gradually highlight what they learned along the way. The whole speech is one glued together narrative as opposed to a few snapshot stories from different times in the speaker’s life.

I have chosen three great commencements speeches to illustrate this category and will add more as I can. Movie producer Michael Uslan, the originator of the Batman series gave one of these addresses at University of Indiana in 2006 and made it in the Top 10 Speeches list.

In 2013, music producer and entrepreneur Jimmy Iovine swept me away with his advice and the way he could open up in his graduation address at University of Southern California. Also from 2013, comes the speech by actor and comedian of The Office fame, Ed Helms. His talk to graduates at Knox College has the story since he was 8 years old and along the way shares this outstanding advice:

Don’t be afraid of fear. Because it sharpens you, it challenges you, it makes you stronger; and when you run away from fear, you also run away from the opportunity to be your best possible self. — Ed Helms

Game of Thrones actor Peter Dinklage opens up and shares with the audience his path to becoming a successful actor in the 2012 commencement address at Bennington College.

One of the advantages of focusing on your life story is that you will do less reading of the speech since it is much easier to recall the details of our own life and the speech appears less scripted.

Last but not least we have the speech that focuses in its entirety in driving home one main theme. In my opinion, this type is the hardest to pull together to create one outstanding commencement address. But hard as it can be, it does seem to pay off. Short of any scientific evidence, it appears that these speeches are the most likely to help the speaker land a book publishing contract. At least this is what happened in recent years with the speeches I will highlight here.

First, there was David Foster Wallace’s speech, going by the title :”This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life” first published in book form by Little, Brown and Company in 2009. The iconic speech was given at Kenyon College in 2005 one year before I started this website. I remember I printed it out, highlighted it, and pulled out my office desk from time to time to be reminded of the importance of paying attention to what is. Granted, from a brilliant author, we heard a brilliant speech.

Another amazing speech, by another best selling author was famously reprinted in The New York Times. George Saunders’s convocation speech at Kenyon College has all the ingredients to stand the test of time. With outstanding insight and beautifully crafted sentences he inspires us all to “”Err in the direction on kindness”. An expanded version of the speech was released in the spring of 2014 by Random House.

Type in Google “You Are Not Special” and you’ll be flooded with links to the speech that went viral in 2012 with the same title by David McCullough Jr. , a high school teacher. The speech, given at Wellesley High School graduation ceremony is likely the best high school commencement speech ever. The book based on the speech was released in 2014 by HarperCollins Publishers. The speaker, son and namesake of the famous historian, tells the graduates :

The great and curious truth of the human experience is that selflessness is the best thing you can do for yourself.”

Originally published at medium.com on March 26, 2017.