So fun thing about this. My HS graduation we had 2 student speakers. One who was valedictorian and all that with honors, and another that was just a pretty average guy. He was very outgoing and most people knew him, and he wasn’t a terrible student, but he wasn’t A++ tier. Because of this, the decision was made he should give his speech first because obviously the more prestigious one would have a better speech I’m sure the adults thought. I honestly don’t know how he got chosen to give a speech other than the fact most people knew him, it was a new thing they were trying out that year to make the speeches resonate with the students more.
Well he knocked it out of the park. He came prepared, he had a big speech written with lots of jokes and chances for him to improv as he went along. The entire theme of his speech was about how mediocrity isn’t a bad thing: It’s the NORMAL. Not everyone is going to soar to great heights after graduation, and that is 100% OK. He looked at himself and basically admitted, “I don’t know why I’m giving this speech, I’m not a perfect student, and I’ve definitely done some things that got me in trouble, but life isn’t about being perfect.” All the students cheered for him whilst the adults were split. You could tell some understood his message and were laughing along with him, but the other half were just, “this is uncouth!” without saying it.
So the high honors student went after him. They were shocked. They had pretty much your standard speech about how to keep pushing on after graduating, but was nervous to even talk about it. Because the speech before them just basically refuted most of what they would say. The adults that wanted the traditional speech looked with even more ire to the student who went before with the speech about mediocrity because how dare he make the high honor student look bad. Some of the teachers invited him back onto the stage so he could help the other student speaker. Together they were able to keep the themes of his previous speech valid while allowing the next speech to still work. They worked together in real time to deliver a decent, albeit cliche, speech that most were expecting.
I don’t know what they did in years after that, as I do not remember my younger brother’s graduation from the same HS, but I think the lesson learned is the speech that resonates with people will be a better idea than giving what folks are expecting.
I hope both speech givers are doing good right now, they’re both very smart and savvy.
