First off, I'd like to say thank you for that warm introduction and offer my own warm welcome for the entire class of 20__ and all of the parents and relatives who could make it out here today. Obviously, if you didn't make it here to support your graduate, you don't get any warm welcomes. I'm keeping them.

I'll start off with a question. What are we celebrating today? Is it the achievement we've just made, going four years - and in some cases, five or six - seeing through our college education to its completion and working hard to prepare ourselves for the future? Or are we getting together and giving money to all of these graduates because we know they'll be unemployed for at least six months?

In all seriousness, this question is a crucial one: whether we're here to celebrate the past or the future. And really, I don't see any reason why it can't be both.

The past can be a funny thing. We're all proud of ourselves for having made it through college, but we're also sad to leave some of our friends and favorite professors in order to enter the real world. It's remembering all the good times and the hard times that give us mixed emotions on a day like today. If you're only elated to be done with college, let me tell you: you didn't have enough fun.

That's because the world we're going to enter isn't exactly the same as college. There won't be anymore one-hour classes that occur three days a week. Some of us will have nine-to-five jobs. Some of us will start businesses that eat up all of our time. Some of us will struggle just to find part-time work. Like it or not, the lifestyle we just enjoyed in college has come to an end, and it's now our turns to shape our lifestyle for the future.

But shaping our lifestyle isn't enough; we have to shape the lives of people around us, and for the better. That's part of what college teaches us: that by bettering ourselves, we can better the world. By being a better and more valuable contributor to society than we would have otherwise been, we enhance society. By starting a business, we can employ people who otherwise would not have jobs. By working hard at our job of choice, we can improve a company from the inside and outside and expand what it means to be an American today.

So where does that leave us today? As people standing on the precipice of an uncertain future, with our stronghold coming from within: the confidence of knowing that we can indeed shape our future lives and the lives of those around us. We'll always have parents and mentors to help us along, but now the strength has to come from within. School's out and it's time to get to work. Thank you.