OT? Graduatin' Season. Who had the Worst Commencement Speaker?
My graduation speaker at UM was the creator of the Cathy comic strip, Cathy Guisewite. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathy_Guisewite
I wasn't going to go regardless of the speaker, but she really sealed the deal.
Who can beat that?
Went to Northwestern (grew up a huge Michigan fan, needed a journalism school not in East Lansing), so this might not count, but I graduated in 2003, and instead of Bill Clinton, who pulled out a month in advance, we got...
Wendy Chamberlin!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Chamberlin
Who, you might ask? Excellent question! She was the ambassador to Pakistan during 9/11, having been on the job for two months, and then quit in June, because it was too hard. Which was one of her main messages: when things are really hard, it's OK to quit and go home.
Also, she introduced her speech as "Wendy's words of wisdom... DOT COM! Hahahaha."
http://dailynorthwestern.com/2003/06/25/archive-manual/learning-to-serv…
Seriously. It's in the article about it.
WORST
Diplomat vs http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mann/cathy-battling-family-cir_b_250…?
Dream on.
Atleast you didn't have to suffer John McCain. Although Henry Lennix for SoComm commencement was fantastic.
My girlfriend, now wife, graduated NU in 2005. Not political, John McCain gave an absolutely awful speech. It was the start of his hard right-turn in advance of the 2008 elections, so it was uber-political and way over the top to the point where I'd be very surprised if he actually believed much of what he said.
To balance the politics, I think Granholm's speech before Obama in 2010 was worse, again uber-political, but since she wasn't the main speaker, it was at least much shorter.
My brother had David Davis, the founder of Automobile Magazine. It was an okay speech, but pretty low end for Michigan.
In high school, the mayor was speaker and he spent the entire speech detailing the negotiations with the Detroit Lions to build their practice facility in town and ensuring us that AP would get the tax revenue. I left inspired--if that boob could become mayor of a 28K person city, I knew I could become much more successful with little effort. I was right.
I was part of the graduation class that heard David Davis speak (2004) and I thought he was fantastic. No one had heard of this guy and he came out being pretty funny and not condescending at all. While he did talk about his experiences (the man lost half his face in a race car accident!), he did point on the key fact that we should live our lives and take other calculated risks while we can. Heck, he even called out a graduate by name because of his angry Michigan Daily letter to the editor griping how Michigan State got Condoleeza Rice as its speaker and Michigan got a no-namer guy. And he ended the speech with the "If you want God to laugh, tell him your plans for the future" quote. He got a long, loud ovation for that speech, so I think it was pretty darn good.
Now the student speaker that year on the other hand was awful. My friends and I were rolling our eyes and tuning her out after about the first three minutes. All she did was talk about discovering herself and had zero message for her fellow graduates.
My one brother had Bill Clinton in 2007 and he was fantastic. My father is not his biggest fan but admitted it was a pretty darn good speech and liked what he had to say.
They got the address of the facility to be in Allen Park, but most of the land is on Dearborn property...so they get the tax revenue. All Allen Park got was the pub.
I graduated in 2004 with David E. Davis, Jr. as the speaker. Who, you ask? Exactly.
Turns out, he was an awesome, awesome speaker. I can still quote a few lines from the speech. Plus, he looked like Santa Clause http://www.ur.umich.edu/0304/May10_04/26.shtml and made fun of the fact that we didn't think he should be the graduation speaker (quoting--and agreeing with--a Michigan Daily letter to the editor complaining about him).
Tim Allen?
He never pulls out.
It's really cool to see how many people enjoyed David E. as their speaker. He was a really great/interesting guy (and family friend). I'll make sure to send word to his wife; I'm sure she'll get a kick out of the no-name guy being so appreciated.
who spoke at my commencement, so i googled it.
turns out it was james duderstadt -- president of the university. i guess they couldn't even get anyone to come speak. maybe that's why i didn't bother going, though i don't really remember.
he was a leader in implementing some pretty significant policies with impact well beyond michigan. point was he was somebody who lived in ann arbor and reported to work every day at u-m; and although compelling, wasn't exactly the headline fodder that the commencement-speaker arms race seems to demand.
was an awesome guy...played football at Yale, VERY athletics oriented. We had our own weight room in the track building and he'd stop in on Sunday mornings and work out while we were there, very nice guy.
As to commencement speakers, I had the pleasure of listening to Cazzie Russel... I think my dad was more wowed than I was, don't really recall much of what he said but then again it was 20 years ago...
Back to Yale athletics. People in the Athletic Department hated him.
He wrote another really interesting book: Nuclear Reactor Analysis.
Worth having on your bookshelf. Worth reading if you're a nuclear engineer...
I went and it was nothing special. He talked about Rumeal Robinson, which was fun except that I'd heard him say the same thing a week or so before.
I guess it's a tradition that in his (or her) first year the president gives the speech (Bollinger did in 1997 and I assume Coleman did in 2002 or 2003).
It's a Michigan tradition that the University President is the commencement speaker for their first spring commencement. That was my year, too. Don't remember a thing he said.
Anyone who wants to hear a good commencement speech should YouTube the David Foster Wallace at Kenyon or Will Ferrel at Harvard.
Just gonna link it here and save everyone some effort. The speach at Kenyon was one of the greatest speeches I've ever heard, commencement or not. It should really just be played at every graduation.
I can't remember who spoke. He was an old engineer and spent half an hour discussing the size of a man's slide rule. It was quite phallic. Needless to say, it was not the best commencement speech.
This wasn't a bad speech, but a surprising a choice. I attended a graduation at Michigan Tech many years ago and the speaker was Rosa Parks. The vast majority of the graduates were engineers and the composition of the audience was beyond vanilla white. Seemed like a nice lady and she gave a decent speech, but I never would have guessed the speaker beforehand to say the least. Not much civil rights activity occurred in Houghton, MI.
Yeah, I had Cathy Guisewhite as well for my commencement (I'm also class of 95) She wasn't bad, but considering that MSU had Bill Clinton that year (political leanings aside, a more accomplished public figure than the creator of 'Cathy').... chyeah.
Guisewite was 94.
My sister graduated the year the Xerox guy was the speaker. Biggest applause of an otherwise dull speech was when he revealed he helped invent spellcheck.
Then Bo got an honorary degree, went to the podium, and turned that guy into a footnote.
Speaker was Larry Page (Google Founder) and he was awesome. Really an influential person in the world and a UM grad. Even though he was geeky and naturally not a great speaker, he had great things to say and was very easy to pay attention to.
Now I am lined up to graduate when there is a new governor (maybe), and political leanings aside, that would be less than memorable. Usually new governors speak at Michigan Commencements in their first year in office.
When one goose is shot down two other geese follow it to earth to nurse it to health.
High School Dean Guy would like to let you know that leaders are also followers.
Political Columnist George Will. Had not heard of him then, still have no idea who he is now. (shrugs)
He's a Cubs fan. I guess you didn't catch the Ken Burns documentary Baseball, or watch much Sunday morning TV in the last 30 years, or ever read Newsweek or a newspaper.
You've really never even heard of George Will?
being a commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps?
Entertaining enough?
Behoove one to show some awareness of politics and such?
This makes me feel like I dodged a bullet with Sanjay Gupta (I mean, I thought he did a fine job, but some of these sound terrible).
Then again, given how drunk I was, I could have probably had a good time w/ pretty much anyone.
Bit confused here. I graduated in 95 (highlight was clearly Juwan coming back to graduate), and I don't remember Guisewite. Our speaker was Marian Wright Edelman.
Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke at mine. Whether she was the worst or not depends on your political affiliation I suppose.
I was there for Hillary in '93. Politics aside, she was pretty bad. Maybe not the worst, but not good. As a teacher, I hear a couple graduation speeches a year at least. Most of them are better than the banal tripe that Hillary offered that day, and almost all of them are delivered with more energy and sincerity. I really felt like she didn't want to be there.
I never heard her speech. I graduated from the College of Engineering, so I skipped the general commencement and attended the engineering commencement which was in Crisler that afternoon.
I imagine her husband's speech was great, even though their politics mirror each other, because he's an engaging speaker. She wasn't bad bad, like Cathy stuff, but just something you'd expect from a student speech rather than a big time public figure. The person was memorable; the speech was forgettable.
At my undergrad Purdue, I had Martin Jischke. Who is he? Well he is the former Purdue University president. All I remember that it was the most boring speech I have had to sit through. He is perhaps the worst school president in our universities history. He is remembered for being all about dollars and cents and screwing the students over. Although I have heard horrible things about the current school president Mitch Daniels from a friend who is an associate professor at the university.
We graduated the same year...