Best Advice for 2025 Graduates From 10 Commencement Speakers

“You do have a great future ahead of you, no matter how smart and capable ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Llama get,” author and tech journalist Steven Levy told graduates at the Temple University College of Liberal Arts on May 7.

“And here is the reason: You have something that no computer can ever have. It’s a superpower, and every one of you has it in abundance,” he said, according to Wired.

“The lords of AI are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to make their models think like accomplished humans. You have just spent four years at Temple University learning to think as accomplished humans. The difference is immeasurable,” he said.

“Everything you have learned in the liberal arts — the humanities — depends on that connection. You bring your superpower to it.”

“When you find the thing that you want to do, I really want to highly recommend — just friggin’ go for it,” Jennifer Coolidge, the star of HBO’s White Lotus, told graduates at Emerson College on May 12.

“You really have to psych yourself up into bleeding absurd possibilities, and you have to believe that they are not absurd because there’s nothing foolish or accidental about expecting things that are unattainable for yourself.”

Everyone’s favorite Muppet shared “a little advice — if you’re willing to listen to a frog” at the University of Maryland’s commencement ceremony on May 22.

“Rather than jumping over someone to get what you want, consider reaching out your hand and taking the leap side by side. Because life is better when we leap together.”

“You’re about to enter the incredibly competitive job market, so I can understand why you believe that life is a zero-sum game, that there’s only so much opportunity to go around,” actor Elizabeth Banks told graduates of the University of Pennsylvania on May 19.

“And if one person takes a bigger slice, everyone else has to make a smaller slice, and the total size of the pie remains the same. And that is true with actual pie,” she said.

“But not with life, not with opportunity. So my advice to you is, as much as possible from here on out, take yourself out of that mindset.”

Physician and author Abraham Verghese told Harvard graduates on May 29 to “make your decisions worthy of those who supported, nurtured, and sacrificed for you.”

“The decisions you will make in the future under pressure will say something about your character, while they also shape and transform you in unexpected ways,” he said.

Verghese also encouraged the Class of 2025 to read fiction.

“To paraphrase Camus, fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives,” he said. “And if you don’t read fiction, my considered medical opinion is that a part of your brain responsible for active imagination atrophies.”

Actor Henry Winkler spoke about the power of positive thinking in his May 17 address to graduates of the Georgetown University College of Arts & Sciences.

“A negative thought comes into your mind, you say out loud — you say out loud — ‘I am sorry, I have no time for you now,'” he said. “Yes, people will look at you very strangely. But it doesn’t matter. Because it becomes your habit.”

Instead, when faced with doubts and negative thoughts about your goals, “you move it out; you move a positive in,” he said.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told graduates of Princeton University on May 25 that “the combination of luck, the courage to make mistakes, and a little initiative can lead to much success.”

“We risk failure, awkwardness, embarrassment, and rejection,” he said. “But that’s how we create the career opportunities, the great friendships, and the loves that make life worth living.”

He reminded graduates that “each of us is a work in progress” and “the possibilities for self-improvement are limitless.”

“The vast majority of what you need to know about work, about relationships, about yourself, about life, you have yet to learn,” Powell said. “And that itself is a tremendous gift.”

Jessica Livingston, cofounder of startup accelerator Y Combinator, told Bucknell University graduates to “find the interesting people.”

“Talk to people. Get introduced to new people. Find the people that you think are interesting, and then ask what they’re working on. And if you find yourself working at a place where you don’t like the people, get out,” she said in her May 18 speech.

She also advised the Class of 2025 that “you can reinvent yourself” at any time.

“If you want to, you can just decide to shift gears at this point, and no one’s going to tell you you can’t,” she said. “You can just decide to be more curious, or more responsible, or more energetic, and no one’s going to look up your college grades and say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. This person’s supposed to be a slacker!'”

“Don’t collect promotions. Collect experiences,” S&P Global President and CEO Martina L. Cheung told graduates of George Mason University.

In her May 15 address, Cheung shared how lateral moves in her own career later prepared her for promotions.

“Most people think of their careers as a ladder,” she said. “They see the goal as climbing the ladder with promotions or leaving one job to take a bigger one elsewhere. The truth is, moving up is not the only direction. It’s not even always the best direction. Sometimes it’s the lateral move.”

Writer and science YouTuber Hank Green reminded MIT graduates in his May 29 speech to stay curious.

“Your curiosity is not out of your control,” he said. “You decide how you orient it, and that orientation is going to affect the entire rest of your life. It may be the single most important factor in your career.”

Green also emphasized the importance of taking chances on your ideas.

“Ideas do not belong in your head,” he said. “They can’t help anyone in there. I sometimes see people become addicted to their good idea. They love it so much, they can’t bring themselves to expose it to the imperfection of reality. Stop waiting. Get the ideas out. You may fail, but while you fail, you will build new tools.”

He closed his speech on this inspiring note: “Do not forget how special and bizarre it is to get to live a human life. It took 3 billion years for the Earth to go from single-celled life forms to you. That’s more than a quarter of the life of the entire universe. Something very special and strange is happening on this planet and it is you.”