commencement speeches

I have just watched two commencement speeches from two famous people, i.e. JK Rowling and Ellen DeGeneres.

It started with a post in Facebook from Mashable about a medley perfomance from a group called 'String Theory' for their graduation ceremony. I watched their show and it made me remembering so many things. Well.., high school have always been like a line between simple life and real life for me (and it seems that the graduation song from Vitamin C will never ever get old).

Anyway, after watching the performance, I looked up again at the article to read the rest and found out that they listed 10 inspiring commencement speeches by celebrities on YouTube. The first one, as usual, is Steve Jobs' (I have watched it before, so I skipped that one). 

And then, JK Rowling comes up and naturally, as a Harry Potter reader, I love her and I watched hers. One might think that it takes too long (around 20 minutes), but I believe that this one is really worth watching (or reading).

A part of her speech, which I particularly fond of:

"So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default."

The second speech that I watched from that list was Ellen's. I love her show (I don't watch it that often, though) and I wondered, how she would do a commencement speech and I found out that she really is the best. I mean, she made it short (only around 10 minutes, but clear concise) and of course, funny.

I especially love her closing words: 

"You're gonna be okay --dum du du du du just dance."

And of course, the behind-the-scenes is also worth a watch:

Watching all these commencement speeches and high school graduation performance, my thoughts are wandering around the time of my high school graduation (because I haven't yet finished my college and don't think that there'll be any graduation ceremony here). I don't remember having heard any such speeches (either I have fully forgotten about it or there's none) and therefore, questioning why hasn't there been any such motivational speeches given.


Anyway, if I can sum it up, all of those speeches talk about reaching our dreams, giving it our best and going till we reach it. Because like said, it's easier to start something than to finish it. 


=)
SVialli
[00.47]
[7 - 17/06/12]

nb: It's been so long since the last time I posted something here, despite the promise I had made to myself. And I still don't know, whether I will start over posting something regularly.