At universities and colleges across the US and Canada, May is the graduation season. With fanfare and pomp, graduation day brings festivities and commencement speeches, in front of students decked up in gowns, hoods, caps and tassels.

In the pre-historic era before YouTube and social media, commencement speeches were just for graduates, their families, and the faculty in attendance. Now we get to see snippets of speeches from institutions across the world.

Very few speeches are genuinely good, some are bizarre and cringy, and most are predictable. Unfortunately, all too often, the attention is on the commencement speaker, and not the students whose achievements the speaker is invited to celebrate.

Among the sea of students, dressed up in identical gowns, there are those who have a perfect GPA, and those who have won prestigious international awards. But in the same crowd, there are many who have carried an invisible but heavy burden throughout their time at the........

© The Express Tribune