I am the Class Speaker! Now what?

First of all CONGRATULATIONS!!! How awesome is that!!

One idea of the top of my head:

WHAT IS NURSING, REALLY?? this could be funny and profound!

body fluids, confronting humanity at its best and worst (especially the Doctors) hope, faith courage....etc....etc.....etc.....

Hey, good luck, let us know what you come up with!!!

This is my speech from LPN school July 05.

Good evening. Honored guests, faculty, staff, friends and family on behalf of the graduating LPNs I want to thank you all for coming here tonight and helping us celebrate.

Through late night studying to early morning clinicals, I know our sacrifices have not gone unnoticed by our instructors, family and friends and we owe you all a big thanks because without your support we would not be here this evening. We would also like to take this opportunity to apologize for the bad moods, the whining, the complaining and general grumpiness we inflicted on everyone this past year.

Looking back now, I can't believe our nursing course has come to an end. Somehow I just realized in the last few weeks the awesome responsibility we will face when we no longer have our classmates to lean on and our instructors to report to. We have all had to struggle with something in this course. For some it may have been clinicals; for others, pharmacology or nutrition. For me, it was in seeing the harsh realities of the hospital; the elderly and frail, the young and sick, and hearing their stories, most of them sad. Months later I still think about some of our patients and wonder how things turned out for them.

Nurses bear a large burden in our society. We are expected to have extensive skills, vast medical knowledge and above all else, be kind. Nurses are the ones who have the most patient contact and the ones the patients and their families remember the longest. This generation of nurses needs not only skills and knowledge; we also need familiarity with many cultures in order to understand people and provide care holistically. We need to think independently and creatively on the best ways to achieve these goals within our means.

My challenge to this graduating class is to be leaders; to set examples of what a nurse should be: to the community, our patients and coworkers. Becoming leaders won't be easy. It starts with earning respect. We will earn that respect through our work ethic, our positive attitude and our excellent patient care. Being a leader also means being assertive and speaking for the patients who cannot. We have to be their voice and act in their best interest even if that interest is unpopular. It takes courage to voice your opinion, but as General Schwarzkopf said, "The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do, the hard part is doing it."

Another challenge for this graduating class is for us to find work that makes us glad to get up in the morning and continually inspires us to better ourselves. It would be easy for us to disappear into the routine of the day-to-day hard work of being a nurse, but we cannot let that happen. There are too many patients who need our help. We cannot let the current problems of our healthcare system (the too few resources, understaffing and the high level of care required for patients) break our spirit and drag us down. We can't be complacent and accepting of the way things are, because we know there is always a way to improve on patient care. The greatest challenges come from the greatest problems, but if each of us strives to make small changes for the better, the results will be substantial.

For some students this Practical Nursing course is a stepping stone for achieving higher academic goals; for others, becoming an LPN is their goal. Though tonight we are graduating, this is not the end of our learning. The world is too big and changing too fast for us to lie back and relax. Though BCIT has given us a solid foundation on which to base our nursing care, it is up to us to build on it and make the most of ourselves as nurses.

Congratulations to all our LPNs and thank you.

Thank you guys so much for your responses! This is exactly the kind of help I need. I welcome all input as I only have a few short weeks to come up with my own version of something inspirational! Thank you all again! Keep it coming!:wink2:

I was the class speaker at our pinning in 1987. I composed most of my speech while sitting at my graduation just a few hours prior to that. (Can you say "procrastination?")

I addressed the faculty, families, guests and students, and then tanked the faculty (even the ones I didn't like!)

After that I told a few jokes about what RN really stood for (Richard Nixon.....Really Nervous........Real Nurse, etc.), and then tried to tie everything back into the Dean's keynote address "Do we dare to change the universe?" (I said yes, of course. I was young, but not stupid!)

After bidding them all farewell and intoning Joshua 1:9 (did I mention I went to school in the South?), I sat down to a standing ovation, mainly because I brought the whole thing in under 3 minutes and we were all eager to be done with the day!

Relax, crack a joke or two, and try to enjoy yourself. Hey, it's your day too, and you must have something on the ball or they wouldn't have asked you to speak! :wink2: