Having been a university professor, I’ve been to a lot of commencement ceremonies.
With our campus in a poor, semi-rural area, it was especially moving to see students who were not only the first in their family to get a college degree, but the first to have even graduated from high school.
Sometimes it was boring, but it never got old. It was routine for me, but for some graduates and their families, it was an event of a lifetime.
Which makes what happened with the speaker...