My commencement speech: Putting the ‘me’ in mediocrity
Faculty, parents and friends, and, especially, graduates: It is an honor for me to be addressing you today, an honor hardly diminished by the fact that I bestowed it on myself. Yes, college graduation is a moment for reflection, not only on all that you have accomplished, but all you could have accomplished if you had studied more and partied less. 
Or maybe you did study hard but still did not accomplish much. For you, graduation is a time of realizing your limitations. Such self-knowledge is priceless, although it cost your parents a cool $111,000. Of course, some of us were well aware of our limitations even before we enrolled in college. And it is to students like me that I wish to dedicate the following poem.
The Jews have always triumphed
In the university.
From Yale to Brown to Princeton
From Penn to MIT.
It’s a love of higher learning
And an aversion to fatigue
That drives them ever upward
To reach the Ivy League.
But for every Jew in Stanford
Or Dartmouth or Cornell
There’s a bunch of Jewish offspring
Who don’t do quite as well.
Instead of As and accolades
They score more modest Bs
They average but a thousand
In the yearly SATs.
They’re not the smartest lawyers
Nor the richest MBAs
They don’t drive fancy SUVs
Or buy name-brand mayonnaise.
But we don’t want your pity
Or a handout, or a drink.
Hey, I’m a Jew who went to state school
And I don’t care what you think.
That’s right, I went to state school
And I don’t apologize.
Although my profs in literature
Won’t win the Nobel Prize.
And the whole place needs a coat of paint
And the sports teams always stink,
Still, I went to SUNY Albany
And I don’t care what you think.
No one who’s now famous
Ever went to my alma mater
Unless you count actor Harold Gould
Who on Rhoda played the father.
Oh yeah, you’ve heard of Vonnegut
The novel-writing bard?
Well, Kurt was not on faculty
But his brother was, Bernard.
But who cares if we’ve no alumni
At some big dot-com or Inc.
I’m a Jew who went to state school
And I don’t care what you think.
Who says that every Jew must reach
The largest corporate suite?
Or afford a house in Livingston
And make millions on Wall Street?
So I’ll never dress my wife
In sable or in mink
I’m proud I went to state school
And I don’t care what you think.
So you can have your damn Johns Hopkinses
And Oxford sounds good to some of ya
I’d sooner go to Paterson than
Pay tuition at Columbia.
To have graduated Montclair State
One need make no excuse.
And I’d rather shuffle off to Buffalo
Than deplane at Syracuse.
I prefer a waltz in New Paltz
Than a pas-de-deux at Duke,
To be a Jew at NYU
Is a thought that makes me puke.
So hail Fredonia! Rah to Ramapo!
Keep Stockton in the pink!
I’m a Jew without a doctorate
And I don’t care what you think.
I’m a Jew who went to state school
And for you there’s nothing lower
But anything you can do, I can do better
Okay — a little slower.
So go ahead and think of me
As a genetic missing link
I’ll send my kids to Rutgers
And I don’t care what you think.
In conclusion, I wish you success, I wish you prosperity, and I wish you had consulted me before majoring in English and minoring in philosophy.