High-achieving students across the land are preparing speeches to deliver at the graduation ceremony. Some schools give this honor to the student with the highest grade point average, while other schools hold auditions and encourage students to audition for the opportunity.

I thought I'd share some advice for the speechwriters out there, but I'm just getting the ball rolling. I'm hoping that others will pitch in and add their own words of wisdom. Feel free to submit your comments below.

• Be inclusive. Make sure that your speech relates to all students--not just some of the graduates.
• It's risky to try to be funny if you're not really good at it. If you want to be funny, you could start or finish with a humorous quote from a famous person.
• Read a few inspirational speeches before you write one, to get an idea of the format and tone.
• Include gratitude.
• Start early and revise.
• Read each draft out loud to see how it sounds.
• Practice a lot!

I'll end with that, but I'd like to hear from others!

I know you've heard of reading between the lines before. That's what you do when you pick up on clues to detect a hidden meaning that is not expressed explicitly.

For example, when you are reading a novel and you come across a scene that involves a chance encounter, darting eyes, and very curt expressions, you know that there's something going on between the characters, perhaps some underlying tension from a previous encounter. You can detect this because you have some sort of life experience that enables you to pick up on the clues the author has provided.

When you take notes on a class lecture, you must learn to listen between the lines. An instructor will give you part of the story, but he or she is expecting you to fill in the "back story" with information you've picked up from your homework readings. This is why it is so important to read your assignments before you go to class!

By the time you start writing your research paper, you've probably collected most of your sources. If you're typing in Microsoft Word 2007 or Word 2010, you can organize and manage your various sources easily.

Before you get too entrenched in your writing, you should enter all of your source information into your "manage sources" section of Word. To do this, you simply select the References tab which is located at the top of the page. Then select the style (MLA, for example).

You'll see Manage Sources on the menu. Select that, and then select New. You will be prompted to input all the information (title, author, publishing company) for one source. When you're done with each source, select OK. Continue adding your sources until you've entered them all.

Once you've entered your sources, you will be able to insert in-text citations, footnotes, and bibliography entries with one click!

Many students are working on several big end-of-year projects this month. Some of those students will find that they have two or more due dates falling on the very same week--and that situation can create a real time management headache!

The trick to managing several projects is practicing good task management. In other words, you should manage your time by breaking down your big projects into small tasks, writing them down in lists, and managing them on a strict timeline.

To make this work, you must be sure to include every step for every project, whether it's shopping for model supplies or entering sources into your list of works cited. It might help to plan backward. Even when two projects are very different, you will probably find some similar jobs that can be combined.

Once you've made a big list of tasks, then you allot a time for each of those tasks, and stick rigidly to your plan. You will find that this method cuts down the stress factor considerably. You won't worry about forgetting things or missing deadlines, because everything has a proper time and place.

And when you don't stress over everything you're not doing at any given moment, you can concentrate on each individual task at hand, and you'll find that you do a much better job all around.