The commencement speech arms race is no joke this year. It takes something pretty special to grab attention during a season when one valedictorian got a nationally televised do-over after his school banned him from coming out in his address, and everyone from President Obama to Matthew McConaughey, Bill Nye, Ed Helms and Stephen Colbert have been lighting up stages.
So, Colin Yost knew he needed to up his game. The valedictorian at Portsmouth High School in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, pulled off one for the ages on Friday, when he ended his inspirational speech by saying, “all you have to do it shake it off.”
“I’ve always wanted to do a flash mob and I thought graduation would be the perfect place because our class is very cohesive and doesn’t really have a lot of cliques,” Yost told MTV News on Monday morning, while taking a break from his job as an assistant in a cardiovascular operating room at a Portsmouth hospital.