Assume the Worst

 Assume the Worst: The Graduation Speech You'll Never Hear by Carl Hiaasen 39 pp.

This is not the commencement speech you expect to hear. Hiaasen takes all those charming platitudes espoused for a happy, successful life after graduation and turns them on their heads. In essence, those very platitudes that one hears, "Live each day as if it were your last," and "If you set your mind to it, you can be anything you want to be," sound nice but in reality are not realistic. Most of us do our best to plod through life in a job that just manages to support us in the mundane way we've become accustomed. But this book isn't just dream crushing scenarios. It does end with some solid advice on living your life.

In Conclusion, Don't Worry About It

In Conclusion, Don't Worry About It by Lauren Graham, 47 pages

This short book is an expansion of a graduation speech Graham gave to her high school alma mater in 2017. It runs much like you'd expect a graduation speech to go, noting that nobody has it figured out when they graduate from high school, and that as long as you work hard and keep plugging away at whatever you're working on, it'll all be OK in the end. So basically, nothing revolutionary, though I did enjoy the doodle-y illustrations throughout. Unless you're a superfan of Graham, I'd skip this one and instead pick up her novel, Someday, Someday Maybe.

Assume the Worst

Assume the Worst: The Graduation Speech You'll Never Hear by Carl Hiassen, illustrated by Roz Chast, 39 pages

Carl Hiassen assumes that he'll never be asked to give a commencement speech. And if this book is any indication, he's probably right — Assume the Worst is about as far from traditional hopeful, cheerful graduation fodder as you can get.

But you know what else he's probably right about? The stuff he says in this book. Yes, the world is screwed up, but no, you can't fix it all by yourself — but you can make a difference to somebody. And no, you can't be whatever you want (as evidenced by the fact that he's not the next Mickey Mantle) — but you have something you're good at, so do your best to be really good at it. Just because you have a diploma, that doesn't mean you're a genius — but there's a big difference between genius and idiot, so just try not to be the latter.

I loved this, and I wish I'd been so lucky as to have Hiassen speak at one of my commencement ceremonies. But then I would have missed out on Chast's fantastic illustrations. (Unless he did a Powerpoint presentation. Hmm...)