Ben Gail Salutatorian Speech

now commencement is about the students commencement is about the students and what they have to say it's about them it's for them and we grown-ups just try to keep things moving along and get out of the way the first order of business today is to make the salutatory address and our salutatorians this year chosen by vote of his classmates is Ben Gay Wow this is just like my dreams except than my dreams I'm usually naked thank you so much for having me it's an honor and a pleasure to be speaking today you know I never really knew what a salutatorian was until I became one so I looked it up and what if salutatorian does is they salute everyone they kind of get things off to a start you know they kick off the ceremony now that's a very specific duty because you're really just giving the introduction you know getting people ready you're you're like an appetizer or you're like a trailer before a movie or you know these kids might know it as pre-gaming and to those in the audience who don't know what pre-gaming is so when you play a game of chutes and ladders before playing a game of Scattergories kind of to get you ready you know and so I didn't really know what a salutatorian speech should look like so I did what I do whenever I'm struggling with an English paper or a history paper and that is I went on the internet to find examples and I found some examples I found things titled best salutatorian speech and I read them and they were pretty bad because they were formulaic you know it was always the same thing it was always we did it guys thank you mom thank you Dad thank you Jesus stuff like that and so I knew I was gonna have to do it on my own and so I examined the different approaches I could take with it that could be big and profound and say something like it took the earth 4.54 billion years to make us so that we can make this moment in time but that would be ridiculous because as we all know the earth is only 6,000 years old now I could try telling a bunch of inside jokes like check this out bum caps would but uh though they alienate the audience we don't want that so I realized that with most of the things that I've written I just start from the beginning I just start writing and see where it goes so I started from the beginning ninth grade when I was a new student here and ninth grade by the way according to colleges is the year you were born because nothing that you did before that matters and so I was a new student in ninth grade and right off of that I wanted to make a name for myself you know I wanted to be somebody I'm just gonna take this off because it's it's slipping off my big head and and so I decided that I would be a jock and I'm going to athletics and so I signed up for cross-country and I tried it out and the thing with cross-country is you're never really going anywhere it's just all about running and there's no destination so I was always having kind of an existential crisis when I was running like what am i doing what am I doing this why am I doing this to myself and another thing with cross-country to warm up you do warm-up laps which is just running and for the training you do more laps which is just running and to cool down you do cool down laps which is more running and that's not my idea of cooling down my idea of cooling down is collapsing vomiting in a trash can and then eating an otter pop not necessarily in that order and so what I'm saying is I quit after a day and I decided instead I would try and be a genius you know I'll get straight A's and online classes and and one day I would be writing furiously on a blackboard you know trying to figure out how many licks it really takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop or whatever and I realized that in order to get to that point I had a study and work hard and give up video games and I wasn't willing to do that so I comfortably became a slightly below average student and at harvard-westlake the thing is the average is just way up here so that's okay I'm fine with that and finally I thought if I can't be a job and I can't be a nerd I'll just be one of those cool guys you know like like a high school Casanova and that's cool guys everyone will see you in the hallway they'll be like wow then I want to be cool like bad guy cool guy right thing was I was tall and I was very thin and when you combine those two you get gangly and also I very soft features and you don't get many ladies with a name like baby-faced then so that was out and I had a bit of a crisis and I didn't know who I was I didn't know where my place was but a little into the year during math class when I wasn't paying attention because you know numbers I started drawing comics little funny things that I'd showed my friends and I remember they were very vulgar very gross because I found out that if you're just really gross with your humor people are going to laugh anyway just cuz they get a little uncomfortable but though you'll get the uncomfortable laugh kind you just say that but I'll take it and so I would watch the clock waiting for class to end and the teacher of always say alright everyone you know we're about done here you test then you really slip in me with you whatever and I would leave and I'll go to my friends and I would show them my comics and they would laugh and I loved it and that was my favorite part of the day showing them what I had made watching them laugh and so in a few years that love of entertaining people and connecting with them would lead me to pursuing student government and theater and that's what I came to love and that's what I came to be known for and I finally found my place my niche my niche I'm I'm EJ I think that's a philosopher but the reason I'm telling you all of this and the reason I've been talking so much about myself is one I like to talk about myself and two I feel like I've kind of underwent the same journey a lot of people have you know such a big part of high school is finding where you fit in and being recognized for who you are and we all want validation and everything we do and for some of us it's an added bonus to accompany the fruits of hard work and for others it's a driving force but whatever stake you have in getting your own time in the Sun when it happens it's intoxicating and it's a message to all those people who repeat phrases like you can't do it and you're not good enough and then I love you like a brother nothing more but we did do it and we are good enough because we graduated when we survived harvard bad word that the administration won't let me stay in west lake we survived harvard beat your ass with a textbook west leg we not only made it through the social challenges of high school but we made it through the academics of a college prep school and we made it through the loss of classmates who are now going to carry with us as we travel through the world and with every senior who comes up here and gets the name red no that man carries with it a story just like mine of someone making that name their own and we've made our marks and we've made identities for ourselves that we're going to be able to hold on to because we're starting from the beginning in college we're going to start from the beginning after college we'll be out in the world and again we're going to start from the beginning but what makes it easier is that we know who we are and we've helped each other uncover where we fit in because every single one of us does fit in somewhere even if it sometimes doesn't feel like we do and so to every person in the audience every mother father brother sister cardboard cutout face crazy uncle cousin who just got his art degree and it's just crashing at your house for a while when you see your students get your diploma I hope you're half as proud of them as I am to have them as a peer and to identify myself as a graduate of the class of 2013 thank you very much Thank You Ben I love you like a grandfather

Channel: Ben Gail

Views: 10,727

Rating: 4.9679999 out of 5

Keywords: Salutatorian (Field Of Study), Harvard-Westlake, Handsome

Id: cnjCZUaJc50

Length: 10min 12sec (612 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 18 2013