For those of us at work anybody want to give a description of the speech.

I'm not going to play the video, but I have to ask -- what the hell is that terrifying fungus-thumb in the foreground?

Her speech was nice, but typical of the mindset of top 10% of high school students - "I'm oppressed because I'm forced to mindlessly regurgitate facts."

I'll consume information and form opinions on my own time. After being in the system for so long, school is just a means to an end for me.

@1 Public schooling teaches us how to do standardized tests, not acquire knowledge or how to think.

Nine minutes and twenty six seconds?! I'll grow a beard in that amount of time!

My friend was salutorian (I don't care how that's supposed to be spelled) at my old High School. He didn't wear anything under his robes and wore untied work boots. He was high as a kite. He improvised something on the spot that including dissing the pastor who'd started the ceremony with a prayer despite that having been clearly prohibited by the Supreme Court. It was pretty damn cool.

My own prep school graduation was much more boring.

We worked at the same farm that summer, then he went to MIT.

i, for one, enjoyed this and am happy that she is out there.

all I know, is that I was in all sorts of a booze/pill fog when the valedictorian was doing her speech thing, oh and that she was so very preggers enough to be really showing through her gown... no it wasn't Wasilla high, but may as well have been.

If she actually had figured that out sooner, she wouldn't have been valedictorian. Either she figured it out and decided to still play the school game or she didn't figure it out until she started writing her speech. Either way it comes off as disingenuous.

I recently had a chat with one of my professors who's still at my college. I slid in there somehow with my 3.0 HS GPA, and now the average entering GPA is something like 3.9. His point was that fifteen years ago we were both WAY more fun and MUCH better critical thinkers. Pretty much everyone who gets in there now is like this girl: they played the game and got great SAT scores after years in SAT prep classes, and all they care about is what the professor wants, not what they think for themselves.

I'm hoping she'll do the vid for the current earthquake sealing people into the Billionaires Tunnel beneath the Seven Gates of Hades.

CGI for the fiery and then floody win!

@9, your criticism of her as disingenious proves you missed the point that she managed to figure something out before leaving our public education system. By playing the game and becoming valedictorian, while managing to figure out the bullshit of conventional education, she in essence took one for the team. At least one of her classmates, at least one of her former teachers, and at least one classmates family members left that graduation a little more enlightened.
I'll take that light wherever I can get it. People like you, #9, only demand a certain brightness and color of that light.

I quoted Grover Cleveland in my valedictory. My mom has it on VHS somewhere.

but then there was this time that I Had Saturday detention... ohh god it sucked, we all hated each other, I mean WTF, there was that fucking dumb jock, and a stoner and a prissy girl and a nerdy guy and some fucking burnout chick and a stupid vice principle but we all got stoned and then the nerd got all weepy crying and that ruined everything. but at least by the end of the day we knew that you can do anything if ya got a good soundtrack.

but then there was this other time where we just wanted to play drums and crush out on each other, and yeah we worried about college money ,but there were like these preppy dudes who wanted to ruin everything so I just hung out with my friend and never told him/her how i felt, but chased after the preppy people 'cause that always moves the narrative forward but then realized, if I made a dress that was all homemade or if that if I used all my college money for one great date everything would work out just fine and we would accept our blue collar roots and fall in love..

but there was this other time where we were in seattle and we had one date & we had this really great relationship and one of us was really smart and the other was into kickboxing, and we went to a party and he was really polite so we started dating, got it on, but the dad stole some money from some old people and ruined everything and then we went to england.

Oh, Pissy, you're the greatest.

Tingley @ 11: Thanks, that needed saying.

Fnarf @ 16: That depends. The greatest what?

@17part b: boring maladjusted wastrel?

Mine was just "blah blah 9/11" "blah blah new frontier" "blah blah you are the future" "blah blah follow your dreams" "blah blah I fucked the band teacher bareback" blah blah blah.

At the end of this all I could think was "welcome to life, girlie." It's like when little kids complain about doing chores - you're going to be doing chores and listening to authority to rest of your life. Get used to it.

I think that if someone starts to tell you about something "on the Internet" you should walk away with your hands on your ears.

She is right, except well ... for one thing. "slaves to our corporate masters" ... well what jobs?

I have this theory about national health care. I feel that privatizing health care would lead to an explosion of small businesses! I think most people do their shit jobs and take the abuse, not for money or passion, but because their kids need the benefits.

I think the answer to get out of the recession is going to have to be to create our businesses and bring the economy back to the people. Right now, as people, we have these burdens that are bigger than us (mortgages, student loans, families, credit cards, banking fees) and they are distracting to what we need to provide for ourselves. Public school these days does next to nothing to help us out.

I remember my commencement event, and while I have no clue who the valedictorian was, I remember one girl gave a speech about the stats teacher that was *uncomfortably* intimate. When he got on stage to thank her, he appeared to be all too aware that he might be arrested after the ceremony.

Kids, if you really, really love your teacher, please just tell them in a discreet thank-you card (with a nude photo slipped in) instead of subjecting us all of your verbal handjob.

@9--I agree wholeheartedly with your first sentence (but I wouldn't call her disingenuous). The people who want to "figure it out" and ask lots of questions rather than mind-numbingly memorizing things don't get 4.0s. And unfortunately, because of the GPA/SAT/GRE/MCAT system, only the 4.0s wind up in Med School. At which point very few of them have learned or will learn how to think critically. Scary when you think about it.

My HS valedictorian's speech was all about "living life with no regrets." I think she must have said the phrase "no regrets" about 100 times. I think she even got it tattooed. It was cheesy as fuck.

I don't remember my commencement having any speeches by anyone, but that might have something to do with the package my brother had just mailed me from Hawaii. All I remember is unzipping my gown as I walked down the ramp. I was wearing a halter top and hot pants. A friend of mine took a snapshot, which I still have.

And I somehow managed to lose both cap and gown in the field behind Hec Edmundson immediately afterward. I do not remember how.