A: Good morning. How are you? Its been great, hasnt it?

Ive been blown away by the whole thing. In fact,

Im leaving.
B: For a long time, there was me, and my body. Me was composed of stories, of cravings, of strivings, of
desires of the future. Me was trying not to be an outcome of my violent past, but the separation that had
already occurred between me and my body was a pretty significant outcome. Me was always trying to
become something, somebody. Me only existed in the trying. My body was often in the way.
C: Sadly, in the next 18 minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive will be dead from the
food that they eat.
D: Okay, now I dont want to alarm anybody in this room, but its just come to my attention that the person
to your right is a liar. (Laughter) Also, the person to your left is a liar. Also the person sitting in your very
seats is a liar. Were all liars. What Im going to do today is Im going to show you what the research says
about why were all liars, how you can become a liespotter and why you might want to go the extra mile
and go from liespotting to truth seeking, and ultimately to trust building.
E: Imagine a big explosion as you climb through 3,000 ft. Imagine a plane full of smoke. Imagine an engine
going clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack. It sounds scary. Well I had a unique seat that day. I was
sitting in 1D.
How do you explain when things dont go as we assume? Or better, how do you explain when others are
able to achieve things that seem to defy all of the assumptions? For example: Why is Apple so innovative?
Year after year, after year, after year, theyre more innovative than all their competition. And yet, theyre
just a computer company. Theyre just like everyone else. They have the same access to the same talent,
the same agencies, the same consultants, the same media. Then why is it that they seem to have
something different? Why is it that Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights Movement? He wasnt the only
man who suffered in a pre-civil rights America. And he certainly wasnt the only great orator of the day.
Why him? And why is it that the Wright brothers were able to figure out control-powered, manned flight
when there were certainly other teams who were better qualified, better funded, and they didnt achieve
powered man flight, and the Wright brothers beat them to it. Theres something else at play here.
This is really a two hour presentation I give to high school students, cut down to three minutes. And it all
started one day on a plane, on my way to TED, seven years ago. And in the seat next to me was a high
school student, a teenager, and she came from a really poor family. And she wanted to make something of
her life, and she asked me a simple little question. She said, What leads to success? And I felt really
badly, because I couldnt give her a good answer. So I get off the plane, and I come to TED. And I think,
jeez, Im in the middle of a room of successful people! So why dont I ask them what helped them
succeed, and pass it on to kids?
Imagine Would it interest/amaze/surprise/shock you to know..

Remember the good old days?

Mark Twain once said, Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. Well, that
may be what Twain believed, but Im here to show you how you can get the most out of today! Or for a
presentation on workplace civility:You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can
with a kind word alone. Thats what Al Capone said, but its funny that nowadays we cant even get a
kind word.
How many of you have ever considered plastic surgery? What is the most embarrassing thing your
kids have ever said out loud? Keep in mind that youre not looking for people to actually answer you; you
simply want to get their brains working. Accompany your questions with one hand raised in the air and
the audience will be cued that youre interested in a showing of hands, not verbal responses.
Imagine yourself in Tahiti, sitting on a beautiful, secluded beach, a gentle breeze blowing.
In the time it takes for me to speak to you tonight, twenty men will be diagnosed with colon cancer.
Im only going to speak to you for one hour this morning. During this hour together, someone, somewhere
in America, is going to be badly injured in a house fire. By the time you begin lunch this afternoon,
someone, somewhere in America will die in a house fire. By dinner, another person will die. By the time

you go to sleep, another person will die. As you sleep tonight, two more people will die. Im here today
because I want to prevent that from happening. And im going to need your help.
Our most esteemed administrators and teachers, dear parents, beloved friends, ladies and gentlemen, a
pleasant morning to you. It is a great privilege for me to be standing here in front of you, on behalf of the
batch, to express the happiness that we feel in our hearts today. They say, People only remember the first
and forget the rest but I believe that these three years have been a journey and we will take many
memories with us.
We do not need an award or a medal just to prove that we have something special within us. All of us are
blessed with talents and are worth congratulating, and this is what this day is all about. How many times
have we imagined what this day to be like? I have to say, I have thought about this day so many times I
could have memorized every imagined scene. But not even the best of my imagined scenes could
compare to the real scene I am greeted with right now.
Three years my dear batch mates, let me remind you that it took us all three years to finally get the
diploma we have been working so hard for. Who would have thought that our then nervous thirteen or
fourteen year old selves would survive the roller coaster ride of middle school and would be here listening
to this speech? We have come a long way in our journey indeed.
Now that we have passed the challenges of middle school, its time for us to move on to a bigger fight
high school.
The lessons we have learned in class will surely help us get through that next stage, but we also need to
remember that all those formulas, poemseverything we have memorizedthey are not the only things
that will help us through. We also need to retain the things we have learned other than the academic stuff.
Gaining the courage to stand in front of the class when we can barely work the nerve to talk to the person
next to us; having the dedication to complete all our math homework when the only thing we actually
know about it is the fact that we have to solve itthose are but some of the things that we have learned
about ourselves that go beyond our text books. Those are the things that we will need not only in high
school but even after that.
And there is yet another thing we all need to remember; it is a lesson that I have learned through the
years. Learn to appreciate others. Remember that we cannot stand on our own.
Of course we solve problems by ourselves, answer our tests individually, and go through our everyday
lives on our own, but one cannot deny how important the people around us are. Our parents, friends,
teachers, administrators, even the bus driver and the lady who serves us our lunch all of them have
played a vital role in helping us be where we are now. Most especially, God has made it possible to see
through all the challenges and come out of them stronger and better. For all those blessings, I, along with
entire batch am sincerely grateful to all of you.
Once again, congratulations, we deserve to give ourselves one huge round of applause!

Friends, professors, administrators, and parents, welcome. We are graduating.

Can you believe it? Four years ago, most of us walked into these halls as nervous as we were the first day
of school. We were the freshmen, the low men on the totem pole. Now, those same four years later, were
leaving the school behind to a whole new crop of people, most of whom were just as nervous as we were
when we arrived.
It has been a long four years and a short for years. Long because of all the drama and bad homework, the
boring readings and early-morning extra credit projects, and all the other little pratfalls that hit us in high
school. Short because of the lifelong friendships, the lasting memories, and the truly interesting and
amazing things we learned between the occasional bits of drudgery.
Good or bad, long or short, I will always remember this place. While Im thrilled to be our valedictorian, I
cant say Ive spent as many hours as some of us have between these halls: Our teachers, of course,
spend an inhuman amount of time here, and many students do as well. Most of them even do it of their
own choosing. I came by to get a book I forgot last night around 8 p.m. and found Rachel Earl, student

head of the graduation planning committee, still here putting crepe paper on chairs and laying out
programs in each and every seat. Thats dedication.
It takes that kind of teamwork to survive anywhere in life, Ive found. I know my experience is limited, but
every problem Ive overcome has been because someone has been there to help me. My support net
ranged (and still ranges) from my parents to my friends to my teachers, depending on the kind of trouble
Ive had and its severity.
This isnt to say Ive been a troublemakerI only got sent to the office twice, and one of those times was a
misunderstandingbut even for me, a relatively quiet student, a lot of help has been needed to get me
through at times. This is where our high school truly excels, I think.
Whats next? I will be going to college, as will many of my classmates. More of us yet will go to various
branches of the armed forces to help keep our country safe home and abroad. Others may get right to
work, or even take a year or more off to decide what they want to do. Leaving high school is such a brutal
transition, as Principal Davis put it, that I dont know what the world has in store for any of us.
I do know how Ill deal with those life events, though: by using the skills and info Ive picked up here. It all
comes down to help, and Ive got plenty of people to thank for that: parents, of course, teachers, friends...
I guess that means the biggest thing I learned in high school is to lean on others when needed.
Theres another, more important, side to that idea as well, and its the one piece of advice Id like to give
you as we get ready to cross this stage for the last time: Make sure youre around when other people need
someone to lean on. Theyll thank you for it. Heck, one of them might even mention you in his
valedictorian speech.
Congratulations, Class of 2013! We did it!