Fake Valedictorian Speech: Draft 1
Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Excuse me while I reel though the protocol of addressing all the persons in the room.
The distinguished members of academic and administrative boards of the University of the West Indies; a principal I have only seen once; a dean I have only ever heard of in passing and countless other ever so important officials- good afternoon. Good afternoon to the distinguished members of the Guild- a student model of the Jamaican government with disappearing funds, lack of accountability and the like. The Guild, a body, which after countless town hall meetings, managed to invest time, publicity and of course money into every trivial thing but in the same breath, seemed to overlook something as minimal as decent, clean and adequately equipped bathrooms.
To the lady in the Pentecostal length skirts who puts the air conditioning at 19 degrees, a frosty good afternoon to you. A pleasant good afternoon to the parents and guardians of my fellow graduates, parents who have sacrificed their all, parents and guardians who have sworn blind and on countless graves that university life wasn’t THAT stressful, honorary parents who only show up for these momentous points in our lives. We are ever so grateful that you are here.
Most importantly, good afternoon to my fellow graduates: those who have cried with me, complained with me, struggled with me; those who have been able to relate to all the highs and lows of being a student at this lovely institution; those who may never understand the value of flushing a toilet, those who write erotic poetry on bathroom doors and those who have made my university life ever so vibrant, good afternoon. Special good afternoon to honorary group members who have done nothing more than submit their names so they could appear on the cover page of finished group projects, group members who didn’t understand the importance of responding to emails. Thank you ever so much for your support.
A university education is nothing major. It amounts to so much: 1 degree, printed on a flimsy sheet of yellow hued paper, backed by a thin but stiff slab of cardboard all for the low low price of millions of dollars; 2000 sleepless nights; 3 debilitating mental and physiological health conditions; 7 deplorable eating habits and 17 broken relationships per year. This is my legacy. These three years of my life have been marvelous.
Now, as most of us await our student loan payments, which will kick in by January of next year, by which time we may or may not have secured a bottom feeder job which pays the lowest possible 6 digit salary, we will have thought, “Wow, amazing. All that for all of this. Sensational.”
Our lecturers and others from the university will tell us that we got way more than we paid for while the very real fabric of our lives will point out they scammed us for every penny we were worth. The forever contradictory Jamaican society, which just 3 years prior, told us that a first degree was necessary to procure employment, will in an act of duplicity, tell us tomorrow that a first degree is worth nothing.
It is for this worthless but equally important first degree that we are gathered here today- to celebrate the three years of hard work and sacrifice that the generations above us continue to remind us that they worked hard to finance. It is for this degree that we have come out in our best outfits to sit and listen to speeches that are very rarely written with the intent to entertain and to watch countless blurred faces walk across the stage until the one or two we really came to see collect a symbolically empty cylindrical receptacle.