Graduation
Graduation speeches drown in advice. The good ones give one idea and one story, and then get out of the way. Whether you are the graduate speaking to your year or the parent standing up at the family table, Podiumi keeps it to one thread and one landing.
Usual length
2–5 minutes
The shape it takes
- 01Where this started
- 02The hard part
- 03Memories
- 04One idea to keep
- 05Forward
Where these go wrong
- Stacking three pieces of advice instead of one.
- Quoting a famous speech instead of telling your own story.
- Speaking to the faculty instead of to the people graduating.
What to dig out before you start
Two to five of these, written as fragments, is everything the tool needs. Specific beats impressive every single time.
Open the writing room- 01The hardest week of the whole course.
- 02A moment someone helped and did not have to.
- 03What they wanted to be at the start versus now.
- 04A small tradition from these years.
Finished graduation speeches
Bilingual · 4 min
For both halves of the room
Half of this room met her in one language. Half met her in another. This is for both halves.
She failed her second year. She retook it, and she didn't tell us for a month — not out of shame, we think, but because she wanted to be able to say it in the past tense.
Her grandmother watched every recorded lecture with the subtitles on, and understood perhaps a third of it, and was prouder than anyone in the building.
- Half this room, one language.
- Half, another.
- This is for both halves.
- Failed second year.
- Retook it. Told us a month later.
- Wanted the past tense.