Stations nationwide, including Dublin, Cork and Limerick. This is. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to introduce to you a man whose unique voice contains strains of rock singer, poetic songwriter, social activist and committed citizen. I give you this year our commencement speaker Boehner. Please join me in welcoming Denzel Washington. No, my pleasure to ask Dr. Ferral to offer. The 2017 commencement address for the University of Southern California, it is now my privilege to welcome to the podium United States Senator Barack Obama.

OK. Thank you so much. A commencement address sounds like a beginning, but in fact, it marks the end of a university life. It's a speech given to graduating students at universities. And these speeches are expected to inspire members of the departing graduate class.

Lucky students from graduating classes of the likes of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Pennsylvania Wesleyan University have had the honour of listening to the inspiring words of Barack Obama, Will Ferrell, Bono, Steve Jobs, to name just some.

First off, a small sample of the words of Jim Carrey's commencement address at the 2014 Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa.

Now, fear is going to be a player in your life, but you get to decide how much you can spend your whole life imagining ghosts, worrying about the pathway to the future. But all there will ever be is what's happening here and the decisions we make in this moment, which are based in either love or fear. So many of us choose our paths out of fear, disguised as practicality. What we really want seems impossibly out of reach and ridiculous to expect.

So we never dare to ask the universe for it. I'm saying I'm the proof that you can ask the universe for it. Please.

And if it doesn't happen for you right away, it's only because the universe is so busy fulfilling my order.

In 2003, the actor Will Ferrell was awarded an honorary doctorate by Harvard and the assembled graduating class got to hear what the honour meant to him running around in elf tights, eating gum off the ground.

And playing cowbell. I think my fellow Doctorate's would agree, based on our achievements, we are all on equal footing. I want the university to know that I do not take this prestigious honour lightly. I've already instructed my wife and my children from this point on, they have to address me as Dr. Farrell.

There will be no exceptions. Especially at our children's various school functions, and when opening Christmas presents, yay, we got the new Xbox.

Thank you, Dad. I mean, Dr. Farrell, Will Ferrell.

We want to feature now the commencement speech given by musician, comedian, actor, writer Tim Minchin.

In 2013, his alma mater, the University of Western Australia, awarded him an honorary degree of doctor of letters and invited him to address the graduating class.

The essence of this speech was his nine life lessons, which he presented so eloquently. One, You don't have to dream, too. Don't seek happiness for yourself, keep busy and aim to make someone else happy. Three.

Remember, it's all luck for exercise, amongst other things, helps combat depression. And we take it up at point five in Tim's list of life lessons.

Five Be hard on your opinions. A famous band mate asserts that opinions are.

And that everyone has one, there is great wisdom in this, but I would add that opinions differ significantly from that.

Y'all should be constantly and thoroughly examined. I used to do exams in here. It's revenge. We must think critically and not just about the ideas of others, be hard on your beliefs, take them out onto the veranda and hit them with a cricket bat, be intellectually rigorous, identify your biases, your prejudices, your privileges. Most of society's arguments are kept alive by a failure to acknowledge nuance. We tend to generate false dichotomies and then try to argue one point using two entirely different sets of assumptions, like two tennis players trying to win a match by hitting beautifully executed shots from either end of separate tennis courts.

By the way, while I have science and arts graduates in front of me, please don't make the mistake of thinking the arts and sciences are at odds with one another. That is a recent stupid and damaging idea. You don't have to be unscientific to make beautiful art, to write beautiful things if you need proof. Twain, Douglas, Adams, Vonnegut, McEwan, Sagan, Shakespeare, Dickens. For a start, you don't need to be superstitious to be a poet.

You don't need to hate GM technology to care about the beauty of the planet. You don't have to claim a soul to promote compassion. Science is not a body of knowledge nor a belief system. It is just a term which describes humankind's incremental acquisition of understanding through observation. Science is awesome. The arts and sciences need to work together to improve how knowledge is communicated. The idea that many Australians, including our new PM and my distant cousin Nick Minchin, believe that science, the science of anthropogenic global warming is controversial is a powerful indicator of the extent of our failure to communicate the fact that 30 percent of the people in this room just bristled as further evidence still is.

The fact that that brisling has more to do with politics than science is even more despairing. Six. Be a teacher. Please, please, please be a teacher. Teachers are the most admirable and important people in the world. You don't have to do it forever. But if you're in doubt about what to do, be an amazing teacher just for your 20s. Be a teacher, be a primary school teacher, especially if you're a bloke. We need male primary school teachers.

Even if you're not a teacher, be a teacher, share your ideas. Don't take for granted your education, rejoice in what you learn and spray it. Seven.

Define yourself by what you love. I found myself doing this thing a bit recently where if someone asked me what sort of music I like, I say, Well, I don't listen to the radio because pop song lyrics annoy me. Or if someone asked me what food I like, I say I think truffle oil is overused and slightly obnoxious and I see it all the time online. People whose idea of being part of a subculture is to hate Coldplay or football or feminists or the Liberal Party, we have a tendency to define ourselves in opposition to stuff.

As a comedian, I make my living out of it. But try to also express your passion for things you love. Be demonstrative and generous in your praise of those you admire. Send thank you cards and give standing ovations beep prose stuff, not just anti stuff. I respect people with less power than you. I have in the past made important decisions about people I work with, agents and producers, big decisions based largely on how they treat the waitstaff in the restaurants.

We're having the meeting and I don't care if you're the most powerful cat in the room, I will judge you on how you treat the least powerful.

So there are nine.

Finally, don't rush. You don't need to already know what you're going to do with the rest of your life. I'm not saying sit around smoking cones all day, but also don't panic. Most people I know who are sure of their career path at twenty are having midlife crises now. I said at the beginning of this ramble, which is already three and a half minutes long, that life is meaningless. It was not a flippant assertion. I think it's absurd the idea of seeking meaning in the set of circumstances that happens to exist after thirteen point eight billion years worth of unguided events.

Leave it to humans to think the universe has a purpose for them. However, I am no nihilist. I'm not even a cynic. I am actually rather romantic. And here's my idea of romance.

You will soon be dead. Life will sometimes seem long and tough and God, it's tiring and you will sometimes be happy and sometimes sad. And then you'll be old and then you'll be dead. There is only one sensible thing to do with this empty existence, and that is fill it, not fill it, fill it. And in my opinion, until I change it, life is best filled by learning as much as you can, about as much as you can, taking pride in whatever you're doing, having compassion and sharing ideas, running, being enthusiastic.

And then there's love and travel and wine and sex and art and kids and giving and mountain climbing. But you know, all that stuff already. It's an incredibly exciting thing, this one. Meaningless life of yours, good luck and thank you for indulging me. The commencement speech given by musician, comedian, actor, writer Tim Minchin in 2013 when his alma mater, the University of Western Australia, awarded him with an honorary degree of doctor of letters and in which he outlined his nine life lessons to the graduating class.