on Commencement

We give important events in our lives a sense of sanctity.  Without the pomp and circumstance of a graduation ceremony, graduating high school, or college would just be another day like any other.  Now-a-days there are ceremonies for graduating from grade school and middle school.  I wonder if this tends to water down the big ceremonies.

We don ceremonial robes, to help mark the occasion as something separate and special from our regular routine.  Graduation robes at colleges tend to be styled after the clothes of the renaissance, giving a nod to the distant past as if the knowledge itself has traveled down the years, untouched and unscathed, to be delivered upon graduation.

We carry flags, march bands, brandish swords, do elaborate dances, and carry Roman-like standards to help buoy up the ceremony.  We make things and events sacred by layering meaning and important-looking movements onto them.  We invoke God to approve or at least look kindly on the event.

And we make speeches, heavy and meaningful, to give the event a sense of heaviness and meaning.  The Commencement speech is usually delivered by someone with recognized gravitas, celebrity or learning.  The speech itself is meant to spur the graduates on to great accomplishments.  It is a speech to rouse the fires of purpose, to arm the arsenal of the educated minds.  Such a speech should cause a sudden burst of applause, but usually only causes an obligatory and begrudged clapping of hands after it is finally done.

I was thinking to myself, as the Commencement speech was being given at my niece's College graduation.  The speech was so boring and weakly assembled, my mind wandered regularly.  I wondered if the speech was really necessary.  Sure, we must have a Commencement speech, right?  If we didn't have one, it couldn't really be a graduation ceremony.  But if the speech itself is so poorly crafted, doesn't that actually denigrate the ceremony itself, thereby doing the exact opposite of its purpose?  The ceremony suffers with the speech because it must have the speech.

The graduating class from this particular college was very small.  A tiny bit of research could of turned the speech into something more personal, adding a little factoid about each of the graduates.  This would have made the speech more memorable.

I also attended a High School graduation ceremony for over 350 students.  Two speeches were made by students, one by a perky stereotypical blonde cheerleader about school spirit, and a morose speech given by a seemingly morose teenager about overcoming life's obstacles, but in reality seemed to about giving in to depression about those obstacles.  The Commencement speech was given by a man dressed in layered black robes, perhaps the principal.  It was unmemorable.  I would bet money on the fact not a single graduate that day would be able to tell me what the Commencement speech was about, or recite a single line.

The Commencement speech is a throw-away speech.  It is mandatory, but unmemorable.  Can you remember your Commencement speech from your High School or College graduation?

Pomp and circumstance.