Barstool Graduation Speech

Graduates, graduates who aren’t really graduating but will be receiving a beautiful blank diploma, parents and honored guests,

It is an honor and a privilege to be standing before the Class of 2005 today, to be able to speak to you on your last day as college students, only an hour or so before you all enter the real world. For the past four, five, six or seven years, you have lived a life that is uniquely American. Sure, kids in other countries go off to college and have a great time. But whether it is a university in England or Japan or Germany or North Korea, the students there have not had an experience like you have had here in the good ole US of A.

During the course of your time at college, you have enjoyed a distinctive status within American society. You are a protected class of people, free from preying eyes and unwieldy expectations. Sleep until the early evening…Perfectly acceptable. Punch a hole through a window in a drunken rage…No problem at all. Break into the school cafeteria and steal all the lunch meat, bagels and saltines and store the booty in your underwear drawer…To be expected. Build a bar in your room and make a freshman girl dressed as Roller-Girl from Boogie Nights serve you and your friends drinks…As American as mom and apple pie.

In fact, most of you in attendance here today have committed felonies on a daily basis throughout your time at college. But instead of serving hard time, if you were disciplined at all you received a slap on the wrist from campus police, rather than a pounding in the ass from your cellmate. That will change once you are handed your diploma.

Be warned- no longer will you be able to take mushrooms and wander aimlessly. When you did that here on campus and bumped into someone, they understood what was going on, would freak you out a little and then let you trip in peace. In the real world, tripping in the city can be more problematic. People just aren’t as understanding when you stop in the middle of the sidewalk to have a conversation with the fire hydrant about why it is so pissed off at the mailbox. Remember, the real world isn’t as tolerant as your fellow graduates.

Chances are most of you in attendance have enjoyed a little hanky-panky while here at college. And if you haven’t- you’re a sucker. Only in America, can you be standing next to a full keg of beer, talking to a girl holding a full cup of beer and fully expect the line “Hey, I have some beer in my room...Want some?” to work. Cherish those moments because they never freaking happen again.

I don’t want to embarrass anyone in front of their parents, but all those stories about the ridiculous, perverted things you did while a student here, that you thought would end the day you left college- they don’t. In fact, they get better with age. The special moment you shared with the hockey team that you’re pretty sure no one will bring up at your 10-year reunion because you’ll be a doctor, lawyer, mother or astronaut by then- it’s all anyone will be thinking about when they talk to you. The time your friends burst into your room while you were involved with a young lady, squirted you and her with fire extinguishers, with enough force to knock her to the floor- your friends remember her name and will be whispering it to you on your wedding night.

You see the real world doesn’t erase what happens in college; it only enhances it because you will never again be so good, so on your game. Sure, your life will become more meaningful- you will get a job, get married, have kids and generally give back to society in a positive way. But, with all that meaningful crap comes dreaded responsibility. Think about it- right now, as you sit here, in your tattered rented gowns, you could stand up, go to Mexico and disappear for a week and besides your mother, no one would worry.

Fast forward a few years and now every action is fraught with dangerously somber consequences. Are the girls at your bachelor party really strippers or did your friend screw up and hire hookers? Is the guy at the bar really eyeballing you for a fight or is he just trying to see the bottom-line on ESPN? All of a sudden, you actually face consequences for your impulsive, brain-dead actions. No more waking up in the morning, hoping that you don’t have to chew your arm off or clean up some puke off the floor. Nope, now you wake up hoping that the knock on the door isn’t the police and that your pee doesn’t burn.

Right now, you are balancing on a precipice between the onrushing realities of the adult world and soothing memory of your college life. You are all convinced that the graduating classes that came before you had way more fun than you did. But at the same time, you are horrified by the weak classes below you. You are sure that the school won’t be the same without your smiling faces and inebriated tomfoolery. Be assured that everyone who has ever come before you had the exact same thought. But in a way, you’re right to think that because your time here is unlike any other four year period in the school’s history. What’s wonderful about college is that for a finite amount of time, you had an undeniable impact on a group of people.

You may have been the person leading the campus take-back-the-night march. Or you were part of the group of guys drunkenly heckling the take-back-the-night march.

You may have been the person who showed up for every science for non-science majors’ class. Or you were the guy who showed up only for the midterm, the final and once on the morning after Halloween, still in costume, a detour on your walk of shame.

You may have been the type of student who was outraged that someone could waste four years of learning by drinking and partying incessantly. Or you were the student who realized that nine times out of ten the person who gets hired will be the candidate the rest of the office feels they could have a beer with.

In closing, let me just say that if you have spent your college experience sitting in your room, studying and resisting temptation, you have missed out. I did the exact opposite, like a lot of you here today, and look at me, now, I write for Boston’s preeminent bi-monthly free sports publication. Let that be a lesson to you all.

Jamie Chisholm