Minnesota's class of 2023 offered heartfelt advice, crowd-sourced content and humor

As his keynote commencement speech at University of Minnesota, Morris approached, NPR journalist Steve Inskeep asked Twitter to help him decide what to tell the class of 2023.

He got more than 600 replies, some of them more, uh, helpful than others.

During the May 13 ceremony, Inskeep ended up sharing 10 favorite lines of advice gleaned from responses to that tweet, including a not-so-subtle dig at himself ("Don't crowdsource content") as well as a mix of the pointed ("Spend less time on smartphones"), the poignant ("Take big risks, not with your health, but with your heart") and the practical ("Drive to the Dairy Queen in Starbuck, Minnesota. It's a classic").

It turns out, finding the right advice for Minnesota's graduates in this moment can be challenging. This commencement season, which stretches from April to June, new graduates are stepping into the world after four tumultuous years of upheaval and unanticipated obstacles.

As Sen. Amy Klobuchar pointed out during the five (yes, five) commencement ceremonies she popped into as a "surprise" speaker, most of this current crop of Minnesota grads began with just one "normal" semester in the fall of 2019 before the pandemic pushed classes online and George Floyd's murder made Minneapolis the center of global attention.

"At a lot of graduations you hear people talking about, 'Hey, you get to enter the real world now.' But I think we all can be honest that you have been living in the real world in a big, big way," Klobuchar said at Macalester College's commencement May 13.

Still, graduation speakers across the state — politicos, journalists, students, CEOs and award-winning chefs — have been giving it their best, offering a mix of encouragement and motivation. They also, of course, have been sharing the lessons learned from their own post-graduation paths.

At the University of Minnesota's Graduate Student Conferral Ceremony on May 12, Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan urged grads to view their own life experiences as sources of expertise, saying she draws on her background as a Native woman who grew up relying on public assistance programs just as much as she uses her own degree from the U.

"My story is also part of my expertise. And when I started sharing my story — the full story, the raw story — I saw that by changing the experiences that we brought into the room where decisions are made, we could have meaningful change for the people that we serve," she said.

"Wherever you go from here, whether you start your own company or work in a school, or in a lab or at one of the many Fortune 500 companies here in our state, I want you to embrace what expertise you bring to the table — all of them. Do not shrink yourself. Do not be quiet. Do not make yourself small, because the state of Minnesota and this entire country needs you," she said.

Student speaker Neil Mendonça, who graduated from the University of Minnesota with a master of education in sport management, urged his classmates to stay true to their "aspirations and ambitions."

"Someone once told me that your time in college is more about setting the table than it is about eating the fruits. Well, guess what? It's time to feast," he said. "Trust your skills. Never, ever stop betting on yourself, and have the courage to drown out the 'what-if's' to change the world."

At the U's undergraduate ceremony the following day, Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel recalled his own graduation from the University of Minnesota in 1995 and urged students to come up with their personal Venn diagram combining "what gives you energy and what will make the world a better place."

"Time is amazing and beautiful, because it's a perfect equalizer in the world," he said. "Nobody can buy time, but you can decide to use your time to learn. And if you learn a lot every day, the compounding of that knowledge in 5, 10, 20 years will be breathtaking. One plus x to the power n."

At the Minneapolis College of Art and Design commencement on May 13, James Beard Award-winning chef Sean Sherman encouraged graduates to see their creativity as an opportunity and move forward with "intention."

"As Lakota, we're always taught to think seven generations ahead. Everything we do affects that seventh generation," Sherman said. "What steps can we do to make something that's lasting, that will benefit, that will open up doors for future generations? Because this graduating class, you guys are the next leaders. You're going to be the ones that are going to see things that need work, to see paths, to explain things to people — to have them understand and have them grow."

Many speeches are still to come. At Carleton College's event on June 10, the keynote speaker will be Washington Post Associate Editor Jonathan Capehart, who graduated from the school in 1989.

He gave the student paper the Carletonian a little preview of his advice for the class of 2023, saying, "The moment you leave that campus, you have to understand that you don't know anything. The sooner you understand that and know that, the easier things will be. It will be easier to deal with disappointments, with failures, because they're going to happen."

For his part, Inskeep ended up not giving advice to the students at Morris.

Instead, he shared his hopes for the class of 2023 — that they "get out into the world," "always learn," "always listen," "always laugh" and "walk with a spirit of optimism."

"You've grown up in times of war, financial crisis, pandemic and political division," Inskeep said. "You've had good reason to wonder if your elders were going to wreck the world. But you have reached graduation day before we quite finished doing that. Your elders weren't quite competent enough to wreck it. The even better news is we left you plenty of work to do!"