Rejected grad speech

My fellow students, distinguished faculty and adorable grandmothers. Here we are. We finally did it. The journey from brainless nobodies to brainless somebodies is complete. Hard work, determination and Adderall have prepared us for our new lives as unemployed college graduates. It begins today. Here. Now. With me.

It truly is an honor to be delivering this speech. I remember being a freshman and looking at the seniors and thinking, ‘Wow, I will never be that pompous.’ But look at me now. Look at me now.

I am aware that many graduation speeches use metaphors to jazz up their speeches. This speech will follow that same formula. Unfortunately, there is a massive problem. Every year, there are thousands of graduation speeches and I’m guessing over 90 percent use metaphors. This means that if I want to be original—which I do—I need to really dig deep and obscure for a unique metaphor. I am willing to make this sacrifice for originality.

(CLEAR THROAT DRAMATICALLY.)

As we head out into this crazy blue ball that we call Earth, we are going to have a lot of challenges, but if we try to live like a wet cardboard box full of shoes, life will be good, my friends. Life will be good.

You see ladies and gentlemen, we are the wet cardboard boxes (MAKE LARGE SWEEPING ARM GESTURE). Before we came to Drake, we were just sitting in our garages gathering dust and attracting squirrels. There was a little wet line around the bottom where we had absorbed too much water (and occasionally squirrel urine). We had been there sitting idly, waiting for our moment to be useful. You see, our garage was our safety net. It was our mother’s overprotective arms, shielding us from the real world and PG-13 movies. But there came a time for us to grow up and leave our garage.

When Drake sent us our acceptance letters, we suddenly became a wet cardboard box with wings—hypothetical wings. We could finally be set free. So we left our mother’s warm embrace and we came to Des Moines, Iowa. Here we began to get our boxes filled with shoes. Shoes represent knowledge and experiences. We lived like kings freshman year. We could stay up late and watch as many PG-13 movies as we wanted. Life was good and our boxes got filled with all kinds of shoes. There were red shoes, which represent our writing skills, and pink shoes with sequins, representing our experimentation with sexuality. Truly every shoe was available here at Drake and it was up to us to gather them and put them in our box.

Thankfully, we didn’t have to do it alone. There were Brannock foot-measuring devices, telling us which shoes fit and which shoes matched our favorite slacks. These devices are our professors and friends. Professors and friends do different jobs and help us in their own way. Professors guide us by telling us what classes to take and explaining difficult concepts. Our friends help us choose the best beer and laugh when we fall down a flight of stairs. The bonds we made with our Brannock foot-measuring devices will last a lifetime.

Finally, we became seniors, and our shoe collection was quite large. There was not enough room in our boxes for many more shoes and what room was left was being filled by Avatar quotes and John Stamos trivia.

(PAUSE AND GET CHOKED UP “GLENN BECK STYLE.” WAIT FOR AUDIENCE STANDING OVATION. THEN CONTINUE.)

We all reach a breaking point: the point where we put in one shoe too many. Our boxes begin to tear from the water and squirrel urine soaked in the bottom. All of our shoes fall out of our boxes and we go insane. There is nothing inside of our heads except meaningless graduation speeches and awkward metaphors. There are also semicolons, even though we can’t remember what they are for.

That is what we celebrate today. Our acceptance of defeat; leaving here realizing that really there is no such thing as knowledge and we are just meaningless pieces of skin and stuff (or cardboard). But there is a bright side; we have our Brannock foot-measuring devices, and whether you are a 9 ½ or a 10, a lady’s size 4 or a children’s size 6, you have a foot—or at least socks. God bless America and God bless Otis Brannock, the inventor of the Brannock foot-measuring device.

(WAIT FOR SECOND OVATION AND HIGH-FIVE PRESIDENT DAVID MAXWELL AS YOU STREAK ACROSS THE STAGE NAKED.)

Barlow is a senior broadcast news major and can be contacted at joseph.barlow@drake.edu.