What to Say in a Graduation Video: Ideas and Example Messages

A graduation message is harder than it looks, and for a reason worth naming: congratulations is the whole of what most people feel, and it takes four seconds to say. So the recording stalls at "we are so proud of you", the contributor apologises to the camera, and the clip ends on an apology.

What fixes it is not better wording. It is having something specific to point at. The graduate has spent three or four years doing things that most people in their life half-watched, and a message that names one of them lands differently from one that summarises the achievement. The scripts further down are examples to adapt, not lines to read: nobody said these words to a camera, and a graduate can tell a recited sentence from a remembered one instantly.

Say the specific thing, not the stage you are watching

Everyone in the film is looking at the same cap and gown, so a message about the cap and gown is the one thing the graduate hears twenty times. The clips that get rewatched name something only that contributor saw: the semester they nearly quit, the shift they worked before a 9am exam, the module nobody expected them to pass.

This is also why a graduation film wants more than parents in it. A parent can describe the whole arc and often struggles to pick one moment out of it. A flatmate, a manager or a lab partner has exactly one angle, and that narrowness is what makes their thirty seconds good.

What to say, by who you are to the graduate

• A parent: the moment you stopped worrying, and what changed to make it stop. Avoid the full retrospective from birth; it is the commonest graduation clip and the hardest to sit through.
• A grandparent: what this degree means in the family’s own history. First in the family, first in a generation, the thing you did not get the chance to do. Nobody else in the film can say this.
• A sibling: the unglamorous evidence. You lived with the revision, the breakdown, the 3am kitchen conversation. Say the bit the parents were not there for.
• A friend from the course: the specific module or project, named. You are the only person who understands what it cost, and the one contributor who can be funny about it without it stinging.
• A friend from home: that they did not change in the way people warn you about. This is a real fear for graduates and almost nobody addresses it out loud.
• A teacher, lecturer or coach: what you saw before anyone else. Your clip carries authority nobody else in the film has, so spend it on an observation rather than a congratulation.
• A manager or colleague: what they managed while studying. A graduate who held a job through a degree rarely gets that part acknowledged by anyone.

Six example messages to adapt

Each of these runs about twenty to thirty seconds out loud, which is the length that holds up in a film of ten or twenty clips. Take the shape, replace every specific with yours. Nobody said these words to a camera: they are written examples, not transcripts of anyone’s message.

A parent

“The night you called me from the library in second year, I thought you were going to tell me you were coming home. You asked me for help with a deadline instead, and then you solved it yourself while we were still on the phone. I have thought about that night every time someone has asked me how you are doing. Congratulations. Go and have a day off.”

Why it works: one night, named, instead of the whole four years. The pride is implied by the memory rather than stated.

A grandparent

“I left school at fifteen. Your mother was the first of us to finish, and you are the first to do a degree. I do not entirely understand what you studied, and I have told everyone at church about it anyway. I am very proud of you.”

Why it works: it puts the degree in the family’s history, which is the one thing nobody else in the film can do. The admission of not understanding it is what makes it warm.

A sibling

“I want everyone watching this to know that you did this on four hours of sleep and an unbelievable amount of instant noodles. I saw the state of that kitchen. I also saw you keep going when it stopped being fun, which is the part nobody puts in the photos. Well done, genuinely.”

Why it works: the sibling has evidence the parents do not, and teasing earns the serious sentence at the end.

A friend from the course

“Nobody outside this course will ever understand what the third-year project did to us, so let me be the one to say it: you carried that group. You rewrote my section the night before and never once mentioned it again. Congratulations, and I am sorry about the group chat.”

Why it works: it names a specific thing the graduate did for someone else. Being thanked is rarer in these films than being congratulated.

A teacher or lecturer

“You asked a question in the second week of first year that I have used in lectures ever since. I did not tell you at the time. You spent three years being the student who asked the thing everyone else was wondering, and that is a harder habit than good marks.”

Why it works: it spends the authority of the role on an observation rather than a compliment, and tells the graduate something they did not know.

A manager

“You worked Saturdays through your final year and never once asked anyone here for a favour about it. Half the people watching this will not know you did that. Enjoy today, and please do not come in tomorrow.”

Why it works: it makes visible the part of the achievement that happened off campus, which usually goes unmentioned by everyone.

The sentence most people leave out

Almost every graduation message looks backwards. Very few say anything about what happens next, and that is the thing the graduate is actually anxious about on the day: the gown comes off, the course that structured four years ends, and nobody has told them what they are now.

One line is enough. "I cannot wait to see what you do with this." "Whatever you pick next, you will be fine at it, and if you are not, call me." Said once, by a few different people, it turns a film of congratulations into one the graduate replays in the uncertain month afterwards.

Three things to avoid

• Advice nobody asked for. A graduation film is not the place for the real world speech, and the contributor who gives it is always the one clip people skip.
• Reading it off a screen. Note the two or three specifics, then look at the camera and talk. A remembered sentence beats a polished one.
• Starting with an apology for the recording. Everybody films themselves badly and the graduate does not care. Cut the first ten seconds of hedging and start at the thing you remember.