This is a modular project about writing for a specific audience. It can be modified to replace other writing tasks at the end of the school year. It can be used as enrichment, too — personally and in terms of your final profile.
The default assignment is to write a commencement address for your high school graduating class. Additional options are listed after the flipped lecture and default directions.
Conscious and Alive in the Adult World
Let’s talk about writing a commencement address for your graduating class. One of the best models for this kind of speech is David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Kenyon College address, which is beloved and celebrated for its message:
[The capital-T Truth] is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness: awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: “This is water. This is water…”
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really is the job of a lifetime. And it commences now.
This is the kind of speech that teaches itself to you: As you read it, you’ll understand why it has had such cultural longevity. It’s powerful, and its message resonates more now than ever.
That said, I can’t give you David Foster Wallace without carefully noting the kind of person he actually was. His writing deserves all the praise it gets; the man has a much more complicated legacy.
I could avoid this issue by picking another commencement speech, since there are hundreds of examples, including ones by women that are just as inspiring. Watch this one by Meryl Streep, for instance, or watch this one by Kerry Washington. We could also do what Wallace himself often does and push the debate to the footnotes — arguing in a separate space about separating the art from the artist.
However, I want to take an opportunity to address my own teaching of David Foster Wallace, which has used essays like this and this — paragons of the form that help students become better writers. And that’s the problem: He is one of the best essayists for teaching the skills and traits that matter. That first hyperlink leads to an article, “Consider the Lobster,” that is transformatively focused on empathy; the second, to an essay on grammar and the English language that still informs many of my beliefs about writing. Another exemplar is this essay on Roger Federer, which is one of the best essays on mastery and skill that you will ever read.
If you push through those essays, you’ll improve as a thinker and writer just by reading them. Exposure to great writing does that. It’s why Hunter S. Thompson copied an entire novel: To spend time with this kind of genius is an education itself.
However, there is danger in the way we romanticize authors like this:
This is why “This Is Water” is so complicated. It will change how you experience your day-to-day life, and the lessons in the speech aren’t ever going to be articulated better than Wallace articulated them; you should, however, also learn about Wallace’s history of abuse and the dangerous nature of the pedestal he’s been placed on. In addition to Megan Garber’s essay, there are other powerful reckonings out there, like this one, that we should make part of studying Wallace.
Default Task: Commencement Speech
This is another exercise in the universal writing process, especially the use of a clear audience and occasion to shape a meaningful, interesting response. It’s another river:
Find a surprising and insightful approach to a commencement address. Consider the context: Graduating means moving out of a relatively closed and predictable system and into a world that world doesn’t function like a high school does. It’s a different kind of weird.
The best speeches find a way to talk about that transition with insight, humor, and encouragement. Setting aside the person who gave it, “This Is Water” is one of the best of the best. Use it to inspire your own.
The speech itself has limitations in terms of content and length, because it must emulate the parameters of the speeches given at graduations. It can’t be two minutes long, and it shouldn’t last a half-hour. You must also be aware of the decorum expected of you, if you were to give the actual speech.
Of course, you do not have to give the actual speech. The extent to which the work is shared is up to each individual. That also means that you could share it widely — you might even record yourself reading the speech, edit it in the style of social media videos, and then share it.
Other Options: Letters & Speeches
The goal of these tasks is to push you into the writing process with a focus on audience. Like the commencement address, these all also invite you to share your writing in different ways.
For any letter you write, one of your first considerations is whether to write by hand, to type and print your work, to record yourself reading it — to decide, in other words, the look and delivery of your writing.
You can also take to Google to find models, especially recent ones, worth emulating. Search for open letters that correspond to each of the options below.
Option #1: Open Letter to the Graduating Class
Follow the directions for the commencement address, but shape the speech as an open letter. That invites a discussion about what it means to publish and share your work, which is central to the writing process and the creative space.
Here is a 2022 model that also includes a letter to the writer’s future self:
Option #2: Letter to Your Younger Self
This letter can also be an open letter that is written with the intention of being published and shared on social media. Examples and directions can be loaded here: https://tinyurl.com/letter-younger-self.
Option #3: Letter to Your Future Self
Follow the directions for Option #2, replacing your younger self with an imagined version of yourself in the future. This can be expanded into a kind of time capsule. You can use sites like FutureMe to send the letter into the future, where you will eventually receive it.
Option #4: Letter to a Teacher of Your Younger Self
Select a teacher you had when you were younger, and then write an letter to them. You can use the brainstorming from Option #2 to frame this writing, but the universal writing process will be more useful: https://tinyurl.com/sisyphus-writes.
Keep in mind that an open version of this letter could be shared widely, and that’s the sort of positivity that benefits everyone.
In fact, you might look at all of these options as invitations to engage with the larger community. Workshop your ideas, ask questions here and in class, and see if there are other, equally viable ways to get at the spirit of this assignment. Look for the authentic audience all around us.
Option #5: Letter to the Eighth Graders
This was added as its own assignment in 2023, as part of a Senior Fair organized by the Guidance Department. The prompt is part of a unit on the “collective good” and The Bean Trees, which you can read in full here:
- Original Prompt: https://tinyurl.com/collective-good-03-let
Here is an excerpt:
Picture yourself when you were in eighth grade. If you can, find an actual picture of you from that time. Now write a letter inspired by that version of you and your journey since then. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, make that your goal: a thousand words. The closer you push the letter toward a thousand words, the more likely you are to find the “river” you need.
[This is] a more general letter to the current eighth graders. They would benefit from your story. This may seem clichéd, but it’s one of those powerful clichés: You have been on a journey, and you have insight that could help someone like you. You can even use your writing to highlight “the importance of seeing ourselves as part of something larger” as we continue the year.
So give advice, discuss your life, and reflect on what’s to come. Be as funny or as serious as you like. Be as vulnerable as you like. You can choose any approach, as long as you choose deliberately and can explain your process. The metacognitive and reflective steps will matter most for your profile.