Speaker 1: Commencement Speeches for the Class of twenty twenty is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio. Class of twenty twenty, Parents, faculty, rising graduates,
Speaker 1: Welcome to commencement. You made it. This year is a
Speaker 1: little different, a difficult time to graduate because the traditional
Speaker 1: graduation day has been put on hold. So we're bringing
Speaker 1: it to you wherever you are, because this is still
Speaker 1: your day, your moment. And now put your hands together.
Speaker 1: It's time to be inspired. This year's commencement speaker the
Speaker 1: one and only Bobby Bones. Hello to the Class of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. My name is Bobby Bones. I am on
Speaker 1: your radio every day with my show, The Bobby Bones
Speaker 1: Show on iHeartRadio, on your TV on American Idol. I
Speaker 1: want a dancing show, which is even more crazy. I'm
Speaker 1: also on your bookshelf or your kindle. Got a couple
Speaker 1: of New York Times best selling books there. And you
Speaker 1: know I didn't make the last part. I have a promise,
Speaker 1: but I don't want those things to paint a picture
Speaker 1: that I was some cool guy with a degree from
Speaker 1: a fancy college who could have been whatever he wanted.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a kid from a really small town
Speaker 1: in Arkansas Mountain Pine, Arkansas, population seven hundred and seventy two.
Speaker 1: Who knew that if you ever wanted to be something
Speaker 1: in this world and achieve his dreams, that he'd have
Speaker 1: to put in real hard work. He didn't have advantages.
Speaker 1: By the way I'm saying, he that's me. Feel a
Speaker 1: little weird to say that, but you get it that
Speaker 1: I would have to fail time and time again, and
Speaker 1: then I have to get used to being rejected all
Speaker 1: along the way. And someday, someday, after all these years
Speaker 1: and years of hard work and determination, this person me
Speaker 1: would be ridiculed by his peers and be dubbed an
Speaker 1: overnight success, which is crazy. But as I sit here
Speaker 1: before you today, I'm in my isolated studio, tucked away
Speaker 1: in a corner upstairs at my house. I'm quarantine with
Speaker 1: a girlfriend who is ten times more attractive than me.
Speaker 1: And that's me on a good day. That can be
Speaker 1: you one day. But if that's your thing, whether you're
Speaker 1: a girls or the guys, or dressing up like furry animals,
Speaker 1: you know, rubbing together, whatever your thing is, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna judge you. But if you want it, you can
Speaker 1: do it. Because it's a crazy world. We're living in
Speaker 1: right now, no doubt about it. The coronavirus pandemic is happening,
Speaker 1: and it feels like the last time I left my house,
Speaker 1: Erkle was still on TV, because that's been that long.
Speaker 1: By the way, for those of you too young to
Speaker 1: remember Ercle, he was the lovable nerd in the nineties
Speaker 1: TV show Family Matters. For those of you too young
Speaker 1: to remember what a TV is, it was that big
Speaker 1: black box that your mom and dad would angle all
Speaker 1: the furniture in your living room towards. And I know
Speaker 1: you're probably all gotten really gonna make a TikTok dancing
Speaker 1: videos with your cat, but are also sad. I thought
Speaker 1: I'm missing your graduation ceremonies and that stinks, like I
Speaker 1: hate that for you, and I wanted to share with
Speaker 1: you guys a little bit of my story so you
Speaker 1: feel less alone, because I hate that you can't do
Speaker 1: what is a big part in all of our lives,
Speaker 1: which is going through graduation. But you're gonna be stronger
Speaker 1: because of it. I promise you that everyone who has
Speaker 1: ever walked to stage before you had to overcome obstacles
Speaker 1: to get where they are and achieve their goals and
Speaker 1: maybe their obstacles didn't come in the form of a
Speaker 1: global pandemic. But I believe there is some beauty in
Speaker 1: dealing with wrenches thrown in your gears. You probably heard
Speaker 1: the phrases that tough times never last. How people do right.
Speaker 1: I mean that's true now more than ever. As we
Speaker 1: kind of wait for the world to get back to
Speaker 1: normal or whatever normal may look like, you guys will
Speaker 1: be the ones navigating that road, and you can choose
Speaker 1: to go into it one or two ways, feeling like
Speaker 1: life isn't fair because you don't have it easy like
Speaker 1: those before you, or you can take it in stride
Speaker 1: to realize that if you can get ahead of this
Speaker 1: and come out on top, that you'll come out stronger
Speaker 1: than anyone in history. You're gonna learn so much. Now
Speaker 1: you get to write your own story. They may cancel
Speaker 1: your graduation, they may cancel every event till the end
Speaker 1: of the year, but they can't cancel your dream. They
Speaker 1: can't cancel you make yourself essential. If you look back
Speaker 1: in history, you can find people before you who at
Speaker 1: one time we're dubbed as being non essential. Walt Disney
Speaker 1: was labeled uns by the Kansas City Star According to
Speaker 1: his editor, he was fired because he quote lacked imagination
Speaker 1: and had no good ideas. Walt freaking Disney Steve jobs.
Speaker 1: He was labeled unessential by Apple. He was fired by
Speaker 1: the company he founded after one of his Apple products
Speaker 1: was deemed a failure. In the eighties, Oprah Winfrey unessential
Speaker 1: by a TV station in Baltimore. Seven and a half
Speaker 1: months into her reporting job there, she was fired and
Speaker 1: reportedly told by a producer that she was unfit for
Speaker 1: television news. You're talking about three of the biggest successes
Speaker 1: in American history. All were told as you're not good enough,
Speaker 1: it's not for you. At one point in every successful
Speaker 1: person's career, and probably more than that, they were labeled unessential.
Speaker 1: Every person you look to and admire for achieving their
Speaker 1: goals has felt so many times along the way. And
Speaker 1: that's what I'm here to talk about. They too were
Speaker 1: threatened to being canceled, but they didn't let us stop them.
Speaker 1: They made themselves be undeniable. They made their dreams and
Speaker 1: their worth essential to them, and then made it essential
Speaker 1: to everyone else Tooma for years has been fight, grind repeat,
Speaker 1: And if you've ever heard that before, I would I
Speaker 1: would suspect you haven't because I'm not famous like Hillary
Speaker 1: Clinton or Oprah or anybody else is doing. You know
Speaker 1: one of these talks, fight, grind, repeat, it's easy. The
Speaker 1: fight is seeing something that you want to do and
Speaker 1: knowing you want to do it and having the passion
Speaker 1: to do it. That's just a fight and getting started.
Speaker 1: That is the fight. The grind is the everyday routine.
Speaker 1: It's the consistency tunnel that is not comfortable because every
Speaker 1: day it doesn't feel like you're getting ahead. Some days
Speaker 1: it feels like you're losing a step. It's discipline, and
Speaker 1: the repeat is resilience because you're probably not gonna make
Speaker 1: it the first time or the forty second time, or
Speaker 1: in my case, a nine hundred and thirty seventh time,
Speaker 1: but being able to bounce back and do it again.
Speaker 1: That's the repeat. That's the fight, the grind, and the
Speaker 1: repeat until you get it. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 1: a job, could be a family, it could be helping,
Speaker 1: it could be work. I wanted to be on the
Speaker 1: radio and TV my whole life. I knew that since
Speaker 1: I was a kid, and it wasn't The people in
Speaker 1: my hometown ever me from achieving that dream. They just
Speaker 1: didn't know that dream could ever be accomplished because no
Speaker 1: one they had ever seen had to achieve a dream
Speaker 1: like that. It wasn't a reality. Kids like me didn't
Speaker 1: have that option of someday having a big, fancy pants
Speaker 1: career like I have now. The struggle daily just to
Speaker 1: get food on the table. Most people in my hometown
Speaker 1: worked at the sawmill. The struggle was just to have
Speaker 1: food on the table. So it wasn't that they didn't
Speaker 1: want a dream. Was there was no room for a
Speaker 1: dream because you just had to get food and had
Speaker 1: to make sure the bills were paid. Even for me,
Speaker 1: I was the first person to ever graduate from high
Speaker 1: school my family. The thought of someday graduating high school
Speaker 1: and going into college was never really in the cards,
Speaker 1: the thought of it. But I knew if I ever
Speaker 1: wanted to get my dream job, I would have to
Speaker 1: do just that. So that's why I made doing well
Speaker 1: in school such a priority. It was my way out
Speaker 1: of a small town that was divided by railroad track
Speaker 1: Still to this day, I had to worked the system.
Speaker 1: I had to study hard, had to get good grades
Speaker 1: on my ASATs and acts. I had to land the
Speaker 1: jobs that were cleaning the radio station, convinced the people
Speaker 1: at the same radio station that a dorkey white guy
Speaker 1: with badglasses could actually to get on the air. Like
Speaker 1: all of these really small steps happen way early. By
Speaker 1: the way, I'm sta really small steps today. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the really non glamorous things that you're going to
Speaker 1: do that makes all the difference in the world. I've
Speaker 1: been on the radio for over twenty years now. I
Speaker 1: have the biggest country music radio show in America, biggest
Speaker 1: one they've ever had. I'll be honest with you, but
Speaker 1: I've only ever been able to get to the place
Speaker 1: where I am now because of all the really small
Speaker 1: steps I've taken, all the adversity that I have been
Speaker 1: through and learned from, and the chaos that I've been
Speaker 1: able to navigate along the way. Basically, it's my tool belt.
Speaker 1: I've used them as tools to craft my own dream.
Speaker 1: I have learned, and I'm not kidding you that the
Speaker 1: world is bendable. You can create the world you want
Speaker 1: to live in, but it does take work. But again,
Speaker 1: you can create the world you want to live in.
Speaker 1: You can decide what you want to do, you can
Speaker 1: set those terms, and you can go do it if
Speaker 1: you want it bad enough. You don't just wake up
Speaker 1: one day and decide I'm gonna run a marathon. You
Speaker 1: kill yourself trying. But what you can do is wake
Speaker 1: up one day and go, I want to run a marathon,
Speaker 1: and then decide to take a walk, and that walk
Speaker 1: leads to a job, and that job works unto a run.
Speaker 1: Before you know it, freaking finish line of the marathon's happening. Now.
Speaker 1: It doesn't come quick, it doesn't come easy. But if
Speaker 1: it's what you really want, there is no doubt that
Speaker 1: you can do it. But you don't get to that
Speaker 1: finish line without shedding some butt sweat and some tears
Speaker 1: from all parts of your body along the way. And
Speaker 1: but sweat is not cute. I don't know. My girlfriend's
Speaker 1: a guy a nice little butt sweat. Listen, No one
Speaker 1: likes talk about their butt sweat. No one puts that
Speaker 1: on Instagram, and I haven't mean that in a non
Speaker 1: funny way. Nobody puts the hard work on Instagram. Really,
Speaker 1: social media is a trophy case. So stop looking at
Speaker 1: other social media accounts going, man, they got it all
Speaker 1: figured out. I'm gonna tell you. The more they're flexing
Speaker 1: the less they got. In reality, the hardest working people
Speaker 1: I know that have great jobs and great careers and
Speaker 1: smart thinking and big plans, they don't post that stuff
Speaker 1: that much. So stop looking at social media as basically
Speaker 1: a trophy case of all the things that haven't haven't
Speaker 1: gone your way or their way in life. You crying
Speaker 1: in a pilot, dirty laundry after not landing that job
Speaker 1: you want to last Tuesday does not look good in
Speaker 1: a post, so don't post that either. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if you have the Alcavia filter or not, or
Speaker 1: the hmming Way filter, whatever all those filters are. But listen,
Speaker 1: that's what dreams are built on, right It's the stuff
Speaker 1: people don't see, much like all the anxieties you're feeling
Speaker 1: right now because you're graduating, you're going out into the
Speaker 1: real world and you don't know what the craft's about
Speaker 1: to happen. You wouldn't known anyway, I'll be honest with it.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't know what's gonna happen in the world anyway,
Speaker 1: and you'd have been like, what do I do? But
Speaker 1: on top of that, freaking Corona is here? Are you
Speaker 1: kidding me? Actually? I'm excited for you, because with any
Speaker 1: struggle comes so much learning. You know. For me, I
Speaker 1: went through a lot of crap to get where I
Speaker 1: am today, and I used to look back and go, huh,
Speaker 1: I feel sorry for that food stamp kid who's a
Speaker 1: little shorter than everybody else, a little poorer than everybody else,
Speaker 1: less athletic than the other guys who didn't have a mom,
Speaker 1: who's an addict, whose dad left. I felt sorry for
Speaker 1: that kid. That's me, right But now I look back
Speaker 1: and I'm so happy that I had that struggle because
Speaker 1: now I'll go back to the tool belt. I have
Speaker 1: the freaking tools. I have them. I have all the tools.
Speaker 1: There's nothing in life right now that's gonna hit me
Speaker 1: that I can't take. You know why, because I've already
Speaker 1: been through it and going through hard times. As sucky
Speaker 1: as it seems, sometimes it's actually a really good place
Speaker 1: for you to be because you're learning, you're acquiring those tools.
Speaker 1: So it's are you willing to go and sit through
Speaker 1: all the hard stuff to get what you want? Most
Speaker 1: people aren't, I'll be honest with you. Most people aren't.
Speaker 1: Most people say they want it, and then when it
Speaker 1: comes down to really wanting it, most people want to
Speaker 1: run a marathon. I mean, I like run a marathon.
Speaker 1: I haven't put in the work for that, because that's
Speaker 1: crazy talk. Most people want to run a marathon and
Speaker 1: they're like one day, but they don't ever put in
Speaker 1: the time. I've done a couple of triath lines. You
Speaker 1: know what, it comes to work. Most people want to
Speaker 1: be I have a big fans pants radio show, talk
Speaker 1: to millions of people every day, be on TV, write books.
Speaker 1: But it's all the stuff that you don't see that
Speaker 1: actually make that happen. It's the tiny decisions every single
Speaker 1: day when no one is watching you. It's not an
Speaker 1: Instagram post, it's life. And if you're willing to do that,
Speaker 1: you could be whatever you want. And I'm excited that
Speaker 1: you have a struggle right now because you're going to
Speaker 1: be smarter and stronger because of it. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're listening to these other ones. I haven't heard
Speaker 1: any other speeches that celebrities way richer and cooler than
Speaker 1: me are giving. And they may say they feel completely
Speaker 1: bad for you and life stinks, And I must say,
Speaker 1: you're just lifting weights right now, basically getting stronger for later.
Speaker 1: You're just training for later, I know you can do it.
Speaker 1: You know you can do it. That's the stuff. Dreams
Speaker 1: are built on, all of your accomplishments, all of your success,
Speaker 1: It's all built on stuff that people won't see. Remember
Speaker 1: that there should be a voice in your head right
Speaker 1: now and talking to you, because yeah, a lie going on,
Speaker 1: and it may say to you, am I good enough
Speaker 1: to make it? Will there even be a place for
Speaker 1: my crazy dreams once this is all said and done.
Speaker 1: That voice is the test because if you're starting a
Speaker 1: question and go, I don't know, maybe that's not for you.
Speaker 1: But if you hear that and you go, yeah, of
Speaker 1: course there is, that's what you're supposed to do. You
Speaker 1: found it. That's it. This is all just a test,
Speaker 1: a test started once your life got flipped upside down.
Speaker 1: And I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you how it became the prince of a
Speaker 1: town called bell Air. That's another nineties TV show. I
Speaker 1: didn't mean all that stuff before that. I'm not here
Speaker 1: to deny the fact that it doesn't suck right now.
Speaker 1: But it's the world we're living in now. You either
Speaker 1: run with it or you run away from it. That's it.
Speaker 1: It's okay to be upset that you're missing out. I'm
Speaker 1: getting to walk across the stage and everybody clapping, all
Speaker 1: your family and friends. You should be sad about that.
Speaker 1: Take a minute and be sad. That's okay. And although
Speaker 1: it may feel like all your hard work will be
Speaker 1: for nothing without that moment, I'm here to tell you
Speaker 1: you're gonna be fine. You're gonna be glowing. Ten years
Speaker 1: from now, you'll look back and realize you were the
Speaker 1: first in history to celebrate your graduation virtually. That makes
Speaker 1: you special, if anything else. And did you really want
Speaker 1: to sit in some smelly old jim crammed in an
Speaker 1: uncomfortable chair, faking enthusiasm for all these random people you
Speaker 1: don't even know. Probably not. It's way too long anyway,
Speaker 1: I'll be honest with you. Make the most of this moment.
Speaker 1: You'll regret it if you don't. I know. It may
Speaker 1: feel like you've been cheeted out of a senior year
Speaker 1: as you saw the class that graduated before you get
Speaker 1: all the fun things for your high schoolers. Maybe you've
Speaker 1: missed out on a senior trip or prom or the
Speaker 1: shot at that crush to probably never go out with
Speaker 1: you anyway, for you college kids, maybe you didn't get
Speaker 1: to finish out that internship that you'd invested so much
Speaker 1: time into. Sometimes we need a storm. There are times
Speaker 1: in my life when a storm has led me to
Speaker 1: a better place, given me a reset, shrunk my head.
Speaker 1: Storms can be great. Maybe not right in the middle
Speaker 1: of the high winds, I'm pelting right into the storm,
Speaker 1: but when it blows over, you really appreciate the view. So,
Speaker 1: if anything, this has given you a head start to
Speaker 1: finding out that one life isn't always fair. But the
Speaker 1: good thing is you can learn from it and move
Speaker 1: on to the next phase and be stronger because of it.
Speaker 1: The end of high school, you get to going to
Speaker 1: college with a fresh start. No one will remember the
Speaker 1: nickname the mean kids gave you in school, you know,
Speaker 1: t Bone from that time you're short, split wide open
Speaker 1: while wrestling another dude. That's me. No one remembered. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess they kind of. You get it. The end
Speaker 1: of college. Hey, you're in the real world now I'm
Speaker 1: talking to you. It may look a little different right now,
Speaker 1: So come on in, grab a face mask, sanitize your hands,
Speaker 1: take the world by storm, even if you have to
Speaker 1: stand six feet away from your new boss. Class of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, I'm here to tell you are capable of
Speaker 1: anything that you set your mind too. You are entering
Speaker 1: the next chapter of your life in a world that
Speaker 1: may seem a little more scary and a little more uncertain.
Speaker 1: This hasn't been the most traditional commencement speech, but we're
Speaker 1: living in untraditional times. Go out, set a new precedent,
Speaker 1: be the new standard. Don't let anyone deem you unessential.
Speaker 1: You don't deem yourself unessential. When you think I don't
Speaker 1: know if I can make it, I did. Look at
Speaker 1: me crazy. I shouldn't be here. We shouldn't be anywhere.
Speaker 1: We're only where we choose to be in work to
Speaker 1: get So. With that being said, I'm proud of you. Congratulations.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm talking about. Let's get going. Congratulations, Class
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty. Ooh, here goes nothing. You can find
Speaker 1: deflection of incredible commencement addresses from all your favorite speakers.
Speaker 1: If a commencement podcast on Iheartradi or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts,