Commencement Speech

Hello class. As you may know, my name is Alex Robinson. No, I am not related to any other Robinson in this room. I wrote this speech and bring it in front of you today because I will fail, I mean because it is important to do so. I am not going to give to you one story, but instead several stories, because as I read the rubric, I connected to that option rather quickly. Here we go.

Each story may or may not have some personal connection to myself in some way, but they are all meant to teach you a valuable lesson, so just sit tight and listen. The first story comes from a soldier named Geophrie. Now, this one is fictional, yet the basis could have really happened. All names have been changed, or are just completely made up.

Geophrie is on the battlefield, fighting for his country. He and his squadron make a push into a building when a grenade is thrown at their feet. The soldiers scramble, avoid the explosion and successfully take the building.

Another soldier, a different squadron, is in a firefight. The enemy is pinning them down, and the soldier starts to receive fire. He fights back even when being attacked, and perseveres, winning the fight.

Here is another story. This one is a little personal, as I experienced it. Now imagine, it is late at night, windows down for a nice cool breeze to blow into the car as you drive. The scent of the summer night flowing into your nose, the croaking of frogs hitting your ear. A little faster than you should be going, but not by much. Suddenly, into your lights, you see an opossum. You jump on the brakes and stop just before hitting it. The opossum disappears just beneath your windshield, and it falls out of view. 5 seconds later, in hopes you didn’t hit it, you reverse to see any damage. You back up 10, 20 feet, and the opossum is gone. You never saw it run away on either side of the road. You decide it was a ghost opossum and keep on driving.

Here is another one. Now, this is completely fictional, and no animals nor humans were harmed in the writing of this story. So one day, this man, was recently divorced and quite sad. He decided to drown his sorrows in ice cream. Josephario, as he was, went down to his local corner store to buy some rocky road ice cream, when suddenly, a mountain lion, black as the night, and as big as a Peel P50, (google it), jumped out in front of him. The mountain lion was determined to not let him get his ice cream. The two fought, and Jo, victorious, got his ice cream, went home, and cried.

Okay, 1 story left. There once was a woman. She had a very nice life. Good friends and family, but one day, she didn’t feel too hot. She felt sick to her stomach so she decided the best course of action was to check into the hospital. In she went, got a checkup, and found out she had ovarian cancer. This woman, having found such a horrible thing, went on with treatments, and eventually, she fought off entirely. The woman had beaten her ovarian cancer. She now lives happily, still living on. I have changed a fair bit of what had originally happened, but the general purpose of the story is the same.

Now you might be asking yourself, how do these all tie in? Well, in each case, life threw something at someone, and after a second, to minutes, or even years, the person came through it and continued onward, they overcame life’s challenges.

To give some life advice that I doubt I am qualified for but am still going to say. As we grow into adults, we will become more independent, but that doesn’t mean we need to be alone. We need to be like the Avengers. Alone, we are strong, but together, there is no challenge, not even a purple meanie with the powers of a rainbow, that can stop us. Work with those around you and you can go anywhere. Wow, that sounded cheesy. Lastly, a quote from my father that he found on Facebook “Remember, the sheep worries its whole life about the wolf, but in the end, it is the shepherd that kills it.”  Apparently that’s some big anti-government quote. Thank you all for listening, and I wish you all the best of luck in your future.

“graduation” by Sean MacEntee is licensed under CC BY 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/?ref=openverse.