Let’s face facts here. Graduations are a bore.
It doesn’t matter who is speaking at the graduation, it’s always dull for the students graduating and only halfway interesting to the people attending.
Graduation speakers tend to say the most cliche phrases about beginning new phases of your lives, blah, blah, blah, you are the leaders of the future, blah blah. Those speeches all start to resemble classroom lectures after a while, which invariable leads graduates to wonder if they are even really leaving school at all.
Although the administration strictly forbids it, most graduates are on their cell phones chatting with friends and family during most of the ceremony anyway. Many people wander around outside until the graduate they came to see’s name is even close to being announced.
The whole process is slow and even with MTSU’s split graduation, it’s not going to be any less boring. There will just be two ceremonies to sit through.
Any attempt to make ceremonies less tedious is usually denied by the administration. Air horns are prohibited, clapping after each student is frowned upon and allowing the graduates to leave after their name is called is denied as well. And yet, this stuff happens during every graduation.
Since we’re trying to make things shorter anyway by having two graduations, here’s a tip: skip to the chase and make the speeches short and sweet.
No one remembers 20 years later what the speaker said during his or her graduation, and sometimes people can’t even remember who did the speaking.
For a lot of MTSU students, parents and family had to drive or fly a long distance to watch this ceremony. So why not make it as short as possible and just call the names and then let people go eat?
The whole point is to bring people together to celebrate a graduation, but the ceremony is a simply a ritual that is dull and should be rushed through as quickly as possible.
One final thought: graduates want money, not inspirational books about graduating, the Dr. Seuss book, Oh, the Places You’ll Go, or pen sets.
If you want to make a graduation better, hand the student a twenty dollar bill and buy him or her a drink. They deserved it.
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