Advice is usually given out throughout the course of our lives, however, when departing university, the best advice is given in preparation for adulthood. Mary Schmich’s ‘Wear Sunscreen’ (1997) and David Foster Wallace’s ‘This is Water’ (2009) are both unconventional commencement speeches which as a result have caused these speeches to gain great popularity. Despite these similarities, they both have different ways of presenting their non-traditional advice. Schmich conveys multiple points of life advice in a very concise way, whereas Wallace focus’ on the importance of the paying attention and learning how to think. This comparison of ‘Wear Sunscreen’ and ‘This is Water’, shows that audiences can have very positive reactions by bending a speech…show more content… Schmich begins her speech stating ‘If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it…’ she continues on by saying that this may be the only reliable piece of information given in this speech, as all other advice has only been gained from her ‘own meandering experience’. Using non sequiturs, Schmich moves from point to point, with phrases such as ‘Do one thing every day that scares you; Sing; Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts; don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours; Floss…’ These non sequiturs enable Schmich to communicate her purpose of being able to inform her audience of her many differing ideas of how to live a good life while also engaging the audience in a modern-day…show more content… In this speech, he uses the example of grocery shopping after work and its annoyances, but then spins the situation on its head to demonstrate how we should think. He starts by saying ‘you get up in the morning, go to your challenging job, and you work hard for nine or ten hours, and at the end of the day you're tired, and you're stressed out’. This establishes an emotional connection with the audience, as many adult’s experience this at some stage in their lives. Wallace resumes talking about the grocery scenario and how as humans, our ‘default-setting’ is the belief that the world is centred around oneself and everyone is ‘just in my way’. He concludes by saying ‘The only thing that's Capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it.’ This links back to Wallace’s purpose of learning how to think as he implies that to get the most out of life, you have to view things from different perspectives. It is clear that in these ways, both speakers use their own life experiences to make for a more relatable and exciting speech.
Both Schmich and Wallace use rhetorical devices as integral parts of their speeches. Schmich uses a comparison of a complex emotion to a simple task in order to demonstrate how ineffective worrying is. She says ‘Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra
