Predicting Your Future Based on Advice From 15 Celebrity Commencement Addresses

If Steve Carell says it, it must be helpful!

By 
May 21, 2013
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What do you really need in a commencement address? First, you need a speaker who will impress for her/his success. The audience should be in awe of this person's accomplishments, should hang on their every word. The speaker should offer sound advice that can be put into practice by the eager young people in attendance. It should be so full of inspiration, everyone should want to take notes.

When you a university can't make that happen, though, they'll hire an actor. What's Steve Carell up to? Does he have some time to spare to tell jokes to Ivy Leaguers, make 'em all feel confident and at ease with the prestige of their new degrees? You betcha.

Not all commencement addresses are dull, hollow things that fail to fulfill the aforementioned criteria. Some of them are quite nice, really. Now, let's see what happens when you put those words into practice?

Let's predict your future based on advice from 15 celebrity commencement addresses.

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Bono at University of Pennsylvania, 2004

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Key advice: "Sing the melody line you hear in your own head."
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: You'll end up being voluntarily homeless on Haight Street in San Francisco, where you'll also play bongos in a drum circle. 

Steve Jobs at Stanford University, 2005

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Key advice: "You are already naked, there is no reason to not follow your heart." 
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: You'll convince yourself that your one-night stand is the person you're supposed to marry. 

Jon Stewart at the College of William and Mary, 2004

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Key advice: "I was not exceptional here, and I am not now. I was mediocre here, and I'm not saying aim low—not everyone can wander around in an alcoholic haze and then at 40 decide to become president."
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: You'll end up working for a manufacturing company in your small town, where the highlight of your life will be getting the word "Supervisor" engraved under your name plate.

David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College, 2005

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Key advice: "The real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over."
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How your life's going to go if you follow it: You'll wake up one morning and really get the appeal of footnotes.

J.K. Rowling at Harvard University, 2008

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Key advice: "Rock bottom became the solid foundation at which I built my life.... We don't need magic to transform our world. We carry all the power we need inside ourselves already. We have the power to imagine better."
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: When the power company shuts off the lights, you will stick your damp finger in a light socket. Your neighbors will call about the stink days later.

Oprah at Stanford University, 2008

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Key advice: "If it doesn't feel right, don't do it. That's the lesson. And that lesson alone will save you, my friends, a lot of grief. Even doubt means don't. This is what I've learned. There are many times when you don't know what to do. When you don't know what to do, get still, get very still, until you do know what to do."
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: Your friends will drop acid and you'll hang out in the park to watch, feeling full of regret. Then you'll go back to work on Monday and none of it will have mattered.

Ellen DeGeneres at Tulane University, 2009

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Key advice: "Life is like one huge Mardi Gras, but instead of your boobs, show people your brain and if they like what they see, you'll have more beads then you know what to do with and you'll be drunk most of the time."
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: The landlord won't accept your damn beads as next month's rent, but he will tell you to dry the fuck out and get a job, you sicko exhibitionist lush.

Denzel Washington at University of Pennsylvania, 2011

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Key advice: "I don't want to fall back on anything, except my faith. I want to fall forward. I figure this way at least I'll see what I'm about to hit."
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: You'll chip a tooth running into the sliding-glass door at your friend's apartment.

Conan O'Brien at Dartmouth University, 2011

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Key advice: "Wearing colorful Converse high tops under your graduation robe is a good way to tell your classmates, 'This is just the first of many horrible decisions you plan to make for the rest of your life.'"
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: At 40, you'll find yourself tan and with a beer gut on a swingers' cruise to Mexico with your third wife.

Amy Poehler at Harvard University, 2011

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Key advice: "Every single thing you see in movies in real...Even though as a class you're all smart, you are still allowed to say 'I don't know.' Even though you are in high demand, you're still allowed to say, 'Let me get back to you.' This will come in handy when your parents ask when do you plan on moving out of their basement, and you answer, 'I don't know. Let me get back to you.'"
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: A cabbie will attack you for idling too long in the back of the cab, trying to figure out where in Brooklyn you need to go. You'll make bank off the settlement.

Andy Samberg at Harvard University, 2012

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Key advice: "In the end, I feel I am only truly qualified to give you three simple tips on how to suceed in life. One: Cut a hole in a box. Two: Put your junk in said box. Three: Make her or him open the box. And that's the way you do it."
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: You'll end sharing a prison cell with another sexual harasser. He will call you Sharon, and you will like it. 

Steve Carell at Princeton Universtiy, 2012

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Key advice: "Only use a 'That's what she said' joke if you absolutely can't resist. Never try and explain a 'That's what she said' joke to your parents."
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: You'll end up getting fired from the Hot Dog on a Stick at your local mall's food court.

Jane Lynch at Smith College, 2012

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Key advice: "Let life surprise you. Don't have a plan, plans are for wussies."
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: You'll end up as a broke 35-year-old man picking up women at a dodgy bar, using this that line as an excuse for why you're still living at your parents' house. 


Bill Clinton at Howard University, 2013

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Key advice: "And when you leave here, I want you to never to forget for the rest of your life, in the good times and bad, that we live in an interdependent world and we've got to pull it together, which means to be a good citizen you've got to do something sometime for someone else because they are just like you are."
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: Run-on sentences are going to be a massive problem for you. But your downstairs neighbor will help you write your cover letters, so it's all good.

Stephen Colbert at University of Virginia, 2013

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Key advice: "Decide now to choose the hard path that leads to the life and the world that you want, and don't worry if we don't approve of your choices."
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How your life is going to go if you follow it: You'll end up pulling double shifts as a waiter in Katsuya in Hollywood, paying off loans and hoping the next person you serve is Harvey Weinstein.

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