Most students don't get to deliver speeches at graduations, and I was one of them. After hearing several such speeches over the years and reading of numerous others, I've often wondered how I would do it differently (though not necessarily better).

I think the subject of my graduation speech would be graduation speeches.

Here goes.

Another year of graduations — and graduation speeches — is here. We won't be winning any creativity awards for our speeches, though we do our best to add some perspective to these rites of passage.

And most of us won't be getting into any trouble with our speeches, like the senior girl in New York City, who used the occasion to criticize school administrators and trustees for aging classrooms and teachers for being lackadaisical.

When it was time to pass out the diplomas, officials decided to withhold the young lady's as punishment for speaking her mind. Wrong move. She, her family and some trustees were outraged and demanded — and got — an apology and a special ceremony where she received her diploma.

We interrupt this speech with a major announcement from New York. President Bush's job approval rating has fallen to the lowest level of his presidency, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found a growing opposition to the Iraq war, and that people were increasingly concerned that the invasion might bolster the threat of domestic terrorist attacks.

On the other hand, most high school graduation speeches sound so alike you'd think we were just picking them from a book. Do we really dream up those mushy references ourselves? I mean, how many ways can you say life's path is riddled with roses, but also thorns, which, fortunately, our families and teachers have prepared us to avoid or squash?

This year is no different, with valedictorians and class presidents in the area talking about high school as an investment that has yet to come to fruition, or how we must consider how to fill the blank pages that are their lives.

We interrupt this speech with a major announcement from Washington. Vice President Dick Cheney was overheard using the f-word on the Senate floor during a heated discussion with Sen. Patrick Leahy.

According to aides, the discussion between the two became more heated when it turned to Halliburton, the vice president's former company that was awarded billions of dollars in no-bid contracts in Iraq. Finally, Cheney said to Leahy, "Go f--- yourself."

Most of us have been pressured to decide on life's path by the time we graduate from high school. Our highly competitive economy requires an early preparation and a focused motivation for the best jobs, we are told.

Those who check the "undecided" box are in a small minority as we enter the final teenage years — years that often are the most intense and creative for establishing a personal identity.

This year's Class of 2004 entered high school a year before 9/11. It was an event that "changed forever" life as we knew it in the United States. But I wonder today about youth's lack of reference to that colossal tragedy and the wars that have followed.

We interrupt this speech with a major announcement from Washington. Michael Moore's record-breaking documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11," which is an indictment of President Bush's leadership and his decision to invade Iraq after the 2001 terrorist attacks, took in $23.9 million to become the first documentary to debut as Hollywood's top weekend film.

We all know that by the time we finish high school our pages are far from blank. Have our school years been so isolated that we've gone through the motions as elections were commandeered, wars have been waged, soldiers killed and civil rights legislated away?

Do this year's high school graduates realize there is a possibility that in two years we could be drafted?

Life as others knew it, at least, has changed and we are going into that world. It is time is get our heads out of the sand. College doesn't automatically mean we'll be aware of what's going on. I know some college students and they couldn't name the vice president.

It's up to us to use our heads — and hearts — to understand where we want to go in the world. This is America; anybody can grow up to be president — and do better than those guys in charge now.

There. But, you know, if it weren't for all those interruptions, I might have missed the point.

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Cary Brunswick is managing editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at (607) 432-1000, ext. 217, or cary@thedailystar.com.