graduation speech

Wow! Aside from a couple minor grammatical & punctuation changes, this is amazing!!! Wish you could have spoken at my graduation a year ago--it brings back all those memories, and it was exactly the way you described. Especially the part about recognizing that if you weren't laughing, you were going to cry. And the sleep-deprived, slightly hallucinating students. This "speech" sounds like it's from your heart and should inspire everyone who hears it, and bring back some fond (and maybe not-so-fond) memories of your nursing program and all its accompanying joys and stresses.

Congratulations on graduating! You've answered the call to a noble profession and a life of service and ministry. Speak well at graduation and then go and serve with all of your heart.

P.S. I still giggle every time I hear, say or write "SOB", especially when it's "SOB at rest". :wink2: I'm curious about the heart pumping oatmeal thing...

thank you! yeah, this is my personal "practice from" copy.

the heart/oatmeal is a joke we all repeat - one of our teachers said. at the time it just seemed like such an odd thing to say, it became our standing joke...

again, thanks. all of a sudden I was worried it had nothing to do with anything, even though it does. when my classmates asked me to speak told me to be funny since I'm pretty sarcastic and snarky all the time, but whenever you try to be funny you sound stupid, so I thought instead of trying to be funny I would talk about the joy laughter has brought to us during our program.

An inside joke is always good. I tend to be pretty irreverent and sarcastic, if not always snarky (I LOVE that word!). It's gotten me through marriage, divorce, remarriage, parenting, nursing school and some pretty scary, yucky, sad situations at work. Life is sacred, but it's too short and far too surreal not to be irreverent! Keep that part of you alive. When you work too many nights in a row with too little sleep and all of your patients are poopy, vomiting and acting like princesses, it will keep you sane.

Was a wonderful speech!

Just curious, how did the speech go?