Pouya

Maybe it's been yours too.

Though I think graduation speeches are bad for reasons that are really built in and nobody's fault.

When students give them, understandably, they feel like they have to say something about the experience that they just went through being in school.

And unless something very unusual and dramatic happened that year in school with that particular class, those stories all kind of just sound the same.

Then there's a section acknowledging and thanking teachers and parents.

And there should be a section like that.

Like, no question.

Of course there's a section like that.

But that's another section that you can kind of predict how it's going to go from the moment it begins.

And then there's a section, always, about the future and the promise of the journey that we're heading out on today, taking our first steps, the grand adventure the graduates are heading out on, which is really hard to do without falling into a lot of puffy platitudes.

It's just a very difficult kind of speech to make interesting and alive and fun to hear.

And when somebody does a good one, and there are some really great ones out there, it's usually some of the, you know, like Steve Jobs or Michael Lewis, people with surprising lives telling surprising stories from their lives and having surprising thoughts that go with those stories.

It's hard to do well.

And when we get to graduation season, like we are entering right now in May, I don't think I'm the only person who goes to those things dreading the speeches.

In 2012, a guy named Sanford Unger asked me to give the graduation speech at Goucher College in Baltimore.

I knew Sanford Unger.

Sandy had been my boss when I was in my early 20s at NPR on a daily news show called NPR Dateline.

And Sandy was the host.

I was his tape cutter.

It was a tiny staff.