My commencement speech

Every year we get the same, cliche graduation speech...

Four years ago we came to PHS as young/goofy/ignorant/foolish/whatever freshmen. Now we're leaving as seniors who think we know everything.

We've made friends, and we'll keep some of them.

There were good time (insert in-joke here) including that time in the cafeteria/stairwell/hallway/classroom when (insert friend's name) did (insert embarrassing event here).

We have a lot more to learn from here.

It's not a problem that is, by any means, unique to Princeton, but it's something that drives me nuts every year. I at least respect when our valedictorians try to step off into uncharted territory and give something original. Sometimes it works brilliantly, and sometimes - like when one student brought up his annotated works of Shakespeare (or some other ye olde englishe authore) book out of which he continually quoted) it makes for a painful and mind-numbing ten minutes.

Personally, I think that we shouldn't reserve the graduation speech for the valedictorian every year. The skills that lead to a #1 class ranking are rarely the same skills that make for a dynamic speech writer or speaker.

We have an award-winning speech program and a number of impressive poets who would likely all give better, more engaging speeches that might actually entertain or inspire the crowd. It would be an easy enough process to have a few staff members audition speakers in the week or so leading up to graduation. Heck, we could even record the audition speeches and broadcast them on cable after the ceremony itself or include them on the grad DVD that we sell each year.

The best graduation speeches are rarely, if ever, a simple recap of the speaker's four years at the school - high school or university. They are a charge to go forward and accomplish something, a challenge to rise above the easy possibilities of the next step in life, an emotional recalling of the journey to get to the brink of that next step.

To that end, I offer up my commence speech for PHS's class of 2009.

Thank you, Mister Huynh for that introduction. Your dry wit will be missed.

Let me open with a simple and heart-felt congratulations and thank you to the families of these graduate candidates whom were are here to celebrate today. The congratulations is because you have raised - or helped raise - nearly four hundred of the finest young men and women that I have been privileged to know. The thank you is because you entrusted us, the Princeton City School District, with your most cherished possessions - your children - and allowed us to have a hand in helping you raise them. We thank you for that opportunity and are thrilled to have been able to work with you on our common goal of leading these young people to this night and beyond.

To that, I would add a second congratulations, this one to the graduates-to-be themselves. Many of you have reached this day only after impressive effort and dedication, completing homework with bleary eyes after getting home from late night play practices, studying for tests into the wee hours after a grueling soccer practice, finishing assignments in the morning after late night hours at work, sometimes managing to stop texting long enough to take the occasional quiz or perform the occasional lab experiment.

And now - be warned - I am finished with the platitudes. From here on out, I offer you no compliments whatsoever.

Because those of you sitting on the folding chairs before me

have

accomplished

nothing.

You are somewhere around eighteen years old, and you have earned a high school diploma that will be awarded to you in a few minutes, and yet if your life were to end right now, we would be able to write nothing more on your tombstone than Here lies a young man who had potential to do great things.

You are at this point still an unformed blob of what you might some day become.

Until you actually become that something - or allow yourself to stay a blob of driftless, formless nothing - you are made fully and entirely of raw potential, one of the most useless and prevalent substances in the world.

In a few minutes, when you are asked to shift your tassels from left to right, you will be readying yourself to take your next step toward choosing whether to develop your potential or to remain a formless blog. For many of you, that next step will be to head to a university to continue your schooling, continuing to shape yourself. For others, you are looking for just another year or two of schooling to ready yourself for the job force. Others of you are going directly into the work force, ready to shape yourself in the crucible of 'real life'.

No matter where your steps from Princeton lead you, I challenge you to do more than survive, do more than earn enough money to support yourself, do more than remain that shapeless blob, cycling between days at work and evening in front of the television.

I warn you that it is exceedingly easy to slip into such a routine, finding yourself living day by day, getting up, going to work, finishing the day, heading home to flop onto the couch before sliding into bed and beginning the entire routine again. I tell you this because I was there, teaching, heading home, teaching again. Were I to have disappeared right then, I my tombstone would certainly have read that I had that potential to do great things and instead I had only done some good things.

I had no plan, no goal, no thoughts that I needed to do more with myself than continue in that work-relax-sleep-work again cycle for another twenty five years sliding toward retirement before my career had even barely begun.

At the time, I had no idea that there was more to accomplish, that there was something missing from what would become my legacy. It was entirely by accident that I stumbled into a leadership position with Princeton's Pasta for Pennies campaign, something that I can safely say is my greatest accomplishment, the difference between me having potential and actually having an accomplishment worthy of carving upon my headstone.

My challenge to you is to find that accomplishment for yourself.

For some of you, that might mean actively searching out a cause, but for many of you, this will simply mean being open to the opportunities that come your way, as Pasta for Pennies did to me. If you aren't actively searching for your legacy, you will need to be open and willing to give of yourself, to throw yourself into charities and help out programs in need, and eventually to decide what your great accomplishment will be - setting up a recycling program at your university, tutoring children in need, raising the next generation to be good people, somehow making the world better for your presence.

We - your family; your neighbors; your teachers, counselors, principals; the Board of Education - have dedicated these past dozen years to readying each of you to step beyond Princeton. Now we need you to do the rest of the work and shape yourself the rest of the way.

We have handed you the potential, readied you to finish the job but you are the one who has to make sure that no one can ever carve on that you had nothing but that potential.

So go forth and realize your potential, graduates.

Thank you.