High School Graduation Speech#

Here is my very snarky high school graduation speech for your enjoyment:

Hello ladies and gentlemen. Over the last few days I have been a bum. I am no longer attending high school, I haven’t graduated, and I live in my parents’ basement. The bum life has given me the great opportunity to think about this speech and what to say.

As I was pondering how to address you today, I performed a statistical analysis of the audience. There are three hundred eleven students graduating tonight. Each of you received at least six graduation tickets, so we will assume that there is an average of seven people here today for each of the three hundred eleven graduates. That means there are approximately two thousand one hundred and seventy seven of you listening to me right now. I am going to break you down into five age groups: under fifteen, fifteen to twenty four, twenty five to fifty four, fifty five to sixty five, and over sixty five years old. According to the CIA, the respective percentages of the US population to these age groups are nineteen percent, thirteen percent, thirty nine percent, thirteen percent, and sixteen percent. We will assume this distribution is accurate to the population present today. The CIA also provided average salaries for each of these age groups, except for the zero to fifteen group. We will assume they make an average of zero dollars per hour. Considering these average salaries and the age breakdown of my audience, I can determine how much time and money is being sacrificed to hear my speech today. The average person in this audience makes about twenty three dollars per hour, with a standard deviation of twelve dollars and sixty seven cents. That means that the general population of this audience generates close to fifty thousand dollars each hour. Since my speech is supposed to be three to four minutes long, and as we all know, time is money, you guys are spending somewhere between two thousand five hundred and three thousand four hundred dollars to hear me speak today. Thank you for donating your time and money to such a good cause. That brings me to my main point: put all your time, energy, and money into something valuable to society.

Class of 2018: You are all incredibly powerful individuals and have enormous potential to impact the world. In our midst are future politicians. Go become president! We have scientists. Go cure cancer! We have astronauts. Go to Mars! We have engineers. Go build skyscrapers! We have athletes. Go win the Olympics! We have generals. Go win wars! We have inventors. Go create time machines! We have teachers. Go make the next generation great! We have surgeons. Go save lives! We have future moms and dads. Go change diapers! We will all become something incredible if we give it all we have. So please invest yourselves deeply into something positive and beneficial to mankind, because I know, and you know, that we will change the world.

As my buddy Abe Lincoln once said, “Whatever you are, be a good one.” Thank you.