Over the next month or two, hundreds of college students will address their fellow seniors at graduations nationwide, reenacting what are, in some cases, centuries-old traditions. Those students may be forgiven, then, if their speeches bear some resemblance to each other.
But Terry Schuster isn't looking for forgiveness. Chosen last week as this year's student commencement speaker, the senior will deliver what he thinks is a truly unique address at the May 11 ceremonies in Wallace Wade Stadium. If his hints about the speech's topic and style are any indication, he just may have succeeded.
"It's a story," Schuster said of his second-person narrative. "At graduation, we think it's this very important time to say things to each other, and we want to tell our family members these very important things, and we want to tell our friends these very important things, and parents want to tell us these very important things and graduation speakers want to tell us these very important things.
"But we don't quite make it," he continued, "so we cling onto these graduation one-liners like 'Go out and be somebody' or 'This is the first day of the rest of your life.' This speech is about what those things mean, and it's put into a story."
An English major, Schuster credited two short stories with inspiring him - David Sedaris' "The Youth in Asia" and Tim O'Brien's "How to Tell a True War Story." He said he tried to strike a balance between the two by combining both satire and a serious message. Of all the students who submitted speeches, he was among six who were called back for auditions and two for second auditions.
"The speech is about where your thoughts drift to," the Fort Worth, Texas, native said. "Your parents are here and all the students are gone. It's very weird. It's very weird to talk about college life with your parents there."
Heather Oh, president of the Class of 2003 and a member of the student speaker selection committee, praised what she called the sincerity and thoughtfulness of Schuster's speech.
"I personally didn't want something that I considered to be a cliché graduation speech. And not to say that the other candidates' speeches were cliché, but I think Terry came up with something very original," Oh said.
Schuster will speak before this year's other commencement speaker, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who is currently awaiting the United Nations' role in a post-Iraq war. Schuster said he was tempted to speak to the war or to a more serious topic.
"I wrote a lot of drafts and a lot of really bad ones," he said. "You really want to write something that's pissed off, that speaks to all the marginalized people in the world, or speaks against war, and whenever I sat down and did that, it would be one of those stupid one-liners."
Oh said the committee took into account the graduation as a whole in selecting Schuster. "His speech could be a good balancing force, in the sense that it's very personal and very tailored to the Duke experience," Oh said. "Whereas Kofi will be very global, Terry will be very local."
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.