Pouya

It turns out it was the right move.

And then I also got to tell them about the day my grandma Frida met Adolf Hitler back in 1932.

And so I'm saying all this because with graduation season upon us, I'm going to play the speech for you right now.

And so just to set the scene, this was a sunny day in 2012.

It's outdoors.

The theme of the graduation that year was transcending boundaries.

So that was a phrase that was being repeated now and then during the day.

That's the kind of day this was.

Okay, here's the speech.

Graduate parents, faculty, guests, President Unger.

I'm honored to be asked to be your commencement speaker.

I still oppose on principle the idea of any commencement speech.

I believe that it is a doomed form, cloying and impossible.

Commencement speakers give stock advice which is then promptly ignored.

The central mission of the commencement speech is in itself ridiculous to inspire at a moment which needs no inspiration

Look at yourselves at this moment.

Something incredible is happening to you right now.

The whole world is opening to you.

You guys have been in school your entire lives, and you have completed something difficult that took persistence and willfulness.

Probably you questioned yourselves again and again, and now you're off to face the world and do everything you have been dreaming.