At graduation every year, students are chosen by their class to make a speech. This year seniors Izzy D’Alecy and Ben Van Hoek were both given the honor to read the speeches that close the book on their high school careers — but first they had to come up with ideas and actually write the speech.
“I knew that I wanted it to be funny, but I also wanted to actually give some inspirational pieces of advice. So I tried to have a good mix of it, but there was definitely a lot of editing, rough drafts, and reading it over while timing myself in order to get it how I wanted,” D’Alecy said.
While brainstorming, D’Alecy thought about the graduation speeches she’d heard in her life and how she didn’t want it to be cliche and boring, while Van Hoek chose to focus more on memories shared by the class of 2026.
“I went around to the class, talked to a ton of people and asked them about common memories we had. Then I formulated some talking points I wanted to hit on, and then I connected it all for my rough draft and had Mrs. Yee revise [it],” Van Hoek said.
Both of them had to write and revise their speeches, which had to be about 5-10 minutes long and recognize the audience, nothing they say can be overly controversial, and had to be approved by admin. Then, they had to practice speaking to make sure they delivered it the way they wanted.
“I recited it, talked to a lot of people, read it for my cat, read for my other cat, read to my fish, if I had a dog I’d read it to my dog. I read it to a lot of people,” Van Hoek said.
As Van Hoek describes how he practiced to prepare for his speech, in which he focused on shared memories of the class of 2026, D’Alecy reveals some of the advice she chose to offer to her fellow graduates.
”I talk about [how] there’s multiple pathways after high school, you don’t have to go to college necessarily, but no matter what you do, just focus on becoming a better person every day, and not taking the little moments for granted,” D’Alecy said.
Van Hoek is already following D’Alcey’s advice to not take things for granted, and describes why he values the opportunity given by his peers to speak at graduation.
“I wouldn’t call myself an exceptionally strong public speaker, and so I appreciated the opportunity to improve on my public speaking at a stage with enough of an audience that the majority of people won’t ever get an opportunity to speak to that many people,” Van Hoek said.
Both D’Alcey and Van Hoek agree that being chosen to make a speech at their graduation is a wonderful privilege, and are excited for the opportunity to send their class off into the next chapters of their lives.
“I think that I’m always gonna wish that it could be better, but I feel like I’m not gonna be nervous, because I don’t think there’s anything to really be embarrassed about, because it’s an honor to be doing this…I’m sort of looking forward to it,” D’Alecy said.
