AS SEEN ON TV
Much ado about commencement speeches
I once thought giving commencement speeches was a task for old people. Really old, as in people-in-their-60’s-old, or those who have retired with their millions or perhaps those who have singularly achieved (in their respective fields) what 10,000 people could not possibly attain collectively in their lifetime.
I also thought commencement speeches were boring and must be kept well under 1 minute like a TV commercial. And I once thought commencement speakers just hold up an already dragging graduation ceremony which usually runs like judgment day.
As we know, it has happened that graduates with surnames starting with the letter “A” have sometimes gone home to bed already while graduates with surname “Z” are still making their way up the stage for that blank, rolled up bond paper—- which is to be a proxy “official receipt” for investing in an education.
Yes, such long graduation ceremonies do exist in the country’s diploma mills. And it doesn’t help that the commencement speaker rambles on for hours while the audience wildly fans itself to fend off the heat, the mosquitoes and their growing impatience.
That’s why when I got invited to be the commencement speaker of my alma mater, Angelicum Iloilo last month, my initial reaction was: “OH NO!”
Have I become one of those old people addressing a crowd who’s pretending to listen while suppressing a yawn?
Have I turned into one of those who read a kilometric oration of several pages as though it were an election “meeting de avance” and torture the audience with his life story and his words of wisdom too big for dictionary space?
For someone like me who once graduated in high school; who was once a teenager who dreaded old people speaking on stage; who in my time wanted to get commencement speeches over and done with and get on with graduation ball (a.k.a. disco); giving a commencement speech now is pay back time— like Karma.
And it would be the kids’ turn to clobber me mentally as they took note of my physical flaws or my sedating speech, and scorn me for turning them cross-eyed from boredom. In someone’s youthful imagination, I can grow antlers or whiskers, or get flattened by an anvil falling from the sky ala Wile Coyote. Being commencement speaker, I run that risk.
And it didn’t help that someone advised me to “scold” my young audience, give them a mouthful as kids these days need verbal spanking to jolt them back to reality from their youthful madness. Nope. The last thing I’d want is to create a situation worthy of a Bantay Bata 163 investigation.
My biggest challenge was content. To effectively address 68 (high school and elementary) graduating students, I have to keep them engaged, entertained and enlightened all under 10 minutes—- a death-defying feat their parents are struggling to do in the last 16 years.
So I decided to talk about my Angelicum experience with the help of a Powerpoint presentation. Thanks to technology, commencement speakers now get help from slide shows that “take away attention from thy self”.
A little mention about my mischievous Angelicum past (for engagement), a brief note on crushes (for entertainment) and bullets on one’s lifetime journey of pursuing what makes him happy (for enlightenment).
No rotten eggs hurled at me, no yawning. Most of them seemed to be listening, and reacted well to punch lines. There were nods of agreement and alas, there was applause. I SURVIVED!
My sincerest thanks to ASIL Rector Fr Rafael Lusuegro O.P., Miss Cathy, Miss Marilyn, and the rest of the Angelicum Iloilo community for the opportunity, trust and encouragement.
And to the Angelicum YS 11 batch 85 which I am just a spokesman for: I think we pretty much conveyed to our younger Angelicum brothers and sisters—- our collective thoughts about life’s exciting journey—- from a batch that took the same road a quarter of a century earlier.
Congratulations to all of us.
* * * *
The difference between plagiarism and decency is a quote.
PLDT tycoon Manny Pangilinan’s speech writers should have quoted JK Rowling, Oprah Winfrey or Conan O’Brien when they showered Pangilinan’s speech with meat and eloquence when he spoke before graduates at a commencement exercise in the Ateneo De Manila University.
Lifting quotes from speeches of famous people can be tempting for any speech writer but he must bear in mind that just as it is easy to hunt down and copy the world’s best speeches with the aid of Google, getting busted on stolen writing can also happen at the click of the mouse.
To make matters worse, social networking sites Facebook and Twitter also helped promote Pangilinan’s “source of personal embarrassment” swiftly and efficiently. And once it’s out there, there’s very little damage control one can do except for a public apology which Pangilinan promptly offered.
I admire him for taking full responsibility for his commencement address mishap. Laying the blame on his speech writers would not have achieved redemption anyway.
Meantime, budding writers must remember that there is barely a new idea in this world. It’s just that some people are better at expressing old ideas than others. If you come across a well-expressed idea in someone else’s speech and incorporating this into your own becomes irresistible, JUST QUOTE.
Give credit to the one who said it first, and make your written word, an honest writer’s work!
