Commencement Speech

You are giving a speech before the entire IU graduating class at commencement. Your theme is the future of the graduating class after graduation. Write the first paragraph of your speech. Compose a full paragraph that is meant to be spoken (rather than just read). Somewhere in the paragraph, use a periodic sentence, a running sentence, and a sentence using the plain style. Your instructor will look for all three. Start your blog this way: "If I gave the commencement speech at my graduation, this is how I would start:..."

If I gave the commencement speech at my graduation, this is how I would start:

This is the day. The day which we have dressed up, posed for pictures, fastened our robes, pinned our caps, arranged our tassels, lined up alphabetically, waited patiently--all for this moment. We've spent years working hard on our degrees, but I would first like to reflect a little more on academics. I'd like to reflect on our experience as Hoosiers, from football and basketball games to trying new food on Kirkwood and Fourth Street, to experiencing the arts and interesting speakers at the Auditorium to dancing for the kids of Riley Hospital for 36 hours to the Little 500 and more. Today, we leave with a wealth of new experiences and knowledge afforded to us by Indiana University in the wonderful city of Bloomington.

Encomium with Schemas: Fall

Don't stick schemas together in an artless manner just to get through the assignment (because that won't earn full points). Try to create eloquent language (like Kennedy) that will orchestrate an emotion in your audience with the rhythms of your prose. You're composing a speech as a public figure (or her speech writer), and you're going to write one or two paragraphs of soaring rhetoric as part of an encomium, a speech of praise for a living person or thing (instead of a eulogy, which is praise for the dead).
You must use at least two schemas in your speech fragment. You can praise a great social leader, sports figure, anybody doing great things . . . or a great natural park, an endangered species, a beautiful work of art.
The one condition: It has to be something public (not some private friend or object), some person or thing that many people share (e.g., Yellowstone Park).

As winter approaches with each passing day, we ought to take a moment to appreciate the autumnal beauty around us. It is a time of wearing sweaters in the chilled air, a time of wind-swept leaves, a time of orange and red and yellow.  It grants us timely traditions such as hay rides and dress-up frights. It cools us down after the sweltering summer and warms us into the chills of winter. So, let us give thanks to fall, the intermediate season which generates beautiful landscapes of soft warm colors. Let us enjoy it while it is here and look forward to it every year.