President Obama gives UM commencement address: Pass

I got to cover the University of Michigan commencement ceremony this morning/afternoon. President Barack Obama was the keynote speaker.

Now, let's be honest... whether you like him or not, that is a pretty sick person to be delivering your graduation speech. Amirite? I went to UofM too, and graduated two years ago. We had Bob Woodruff, a journalist... so for me that was pretty exciting. Plus our class was the only one to graduate on the Diag instead of in the Big House. Still, Obama trumps Woodruff.

It was a pretty solid speech. There were some tinkerings that I didn't like here and there, but on the whole it had the appropriate level of inspiration, motivation and story telling to make it worthwhile. He kept the audience laughing, sometimes at his own expense, for the duration.

I covered it as a photographer and basically did everything in my power to keep up with the photographers standing next to me. I know I didn't because their cameras cost well over $3,000 and mine was only $800. Mere peanuts in comparison.... which means of course that my close-ups weren't really close-ups and so on and so forth.

But it was still an incredibly experience and definitely a highlight of my career as a journalist. Getting to listen to the sitting president speak is an incredibly thing. In fact, this speech was to the largest audience he's had since the speech he gave at his inauguration. About 90,000 people were there.

... and I was one of them. =)

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