<p>is name dropping necessary?</p>
<p>At S1’s college grad. last month, there were three student speakers, all three went on too long. Each had a soapbox speech about their particular dept. and the importance of it.<br>
The professor who spoke was great. He admitted to being very nervous and because of it decided to let the students speak through him about their college experience. He sent out a Facebook poll asking the students to tell him (in a few sentences) the most important thing they learned in college. He quoted them exactly as they wrote it and used their names. </p>
<p>Some were insightful. Some were hilarious. He wrapped it all up with some short comments of congratulations to all the graduates. Altogether it made for an entertaining speech. S1 said this was his favorite prof. out of all he had in four years. It was easy to see why.</p>
<p>I think a similiar kind of thing could be done on the high school level…a short speech featuring comments from the graduating class wrapped up with a few final thoughts from the speaker. It’s very personal to the members of the class since they can prob. relate to most of the students comments and is entertaining for the audience.</p>
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<p>Sure did! My hometown in the midwest still does this. </p>
<p>As for the speeches, short & funny gets my vote. I also like the idea of having some of the graduates provide funny or thoughtful quotes.</p>
<p>D’s graduation speaker will be a former football player from the local NFL team. This seems to be the most popular choice for the h.s. she attends. Hoping he’s funny.</p>
<p>Our HS invites all students in the top 10 or 20 percent of the class to submit a speech. Four are chosen. I really liked one of the speeches, which was given by a kid who is a political activist, on the importance of being involved in the process. S didn’t like it because he didn’t like the kid and heard it through that filter, but I found the kid later and congratulated him on a great speech. The rest were not memorable. The val, who characteristically would not let the moment go by without drawing attention to himself :rolleyes: , gave a speech that was calculated to tell everyone that “I’m so special” in an ostensibly humorous way.</p>
<p>The principle gave a nice speech in which he mentioned a number of kids by name. Since one of them was my S, I naturally thought it was a great speech! :D</p>
<p>Another gripe showing poor judgement was a girl’s speech last year that ridiculed the intelligence of all of the boys and bragged about how many girl’s were in the Top 10% of the class. Most of the audience could count for themselves and didn’t need her to rub it in. </p>
<p>The Top 10% of this year’s class will be mainly boys and I hope the two boys giving speeches don’t stoop to her level.</p>