The Thomas Jefferson University commencement speaker is going to want this one back. I could listen to this lady butcher name after name all day:

@colleenb415

Please tell me how one can be allowed to speak at college commencement and mess up that badly 🫠😬

♬ original sound – Col

Four years of lectures, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, staying up til god knows when to cram for finals, and that’s what you get? What Starbucks employee wrote these names down? A moment you’ve been waiting forever for and the commencement speaker is reading your name like you’re the #3 pick in the 1996 NBA Draft.

I can’t find much information on what happened, but from what I’ve gathered in a couple Reddit threads, the speaker was given a list of names and handed the phonetic pronunciation in case she needed help and she just went with the phonetic list. That’s how you get “Macheenlo E Aubrey” for Meghan Louise Aubrey:

My girlfriend graduated in this ceremony and I was sitting in the audience so I can clear this up, although I too was crying with laughter throughout.

Basically, each of the graduates had a sheet of paper with a phonetic spelling of their names, which is what the guy on the right is taking and scanning with each passing graduate. He would then pass that to the speaker, who — instead of reading the standard names from the book in front of her (or the top of the paper with the phonetic spelling), was ONLY reading the phonetic spelling without even looking at how they’re spelled normally.

Now this doesn’t take away from the obvious incompetence on display here, as she read upwards of 50 names before correcting herself, but she also wasn’t having a literal stroke as the video makes it seem, she was just being an idiot and not looking at the way the names were spelled first and then using the phonetic spelling as needed, like she should have done.

Still, this was maybe the funniest thing I’ve ever witnessed live and I wish no one had corrected her, I could have watched her read nonsense names for hours

That last line in the post is so relatable. Graduation sucks. If you’re not the one graduating it’s even worse. Luckily I did the winter graduation. Some of us needed 4.5 years to graduate a rigorous academic institution like Temple. So mine was half the size and half the time then the major one. Still, it was boring. Could I tell you who my commencement speaker was? Absolutely not. Do I remember walking across that stage? Not really. I was just happy that I never had to study or go to class ever again. I just want to know how the hell they let this woman get through 50 names before someone corrects her? The old guy getting the card deserves just as much blame as she does.

My favorite? Easily Thomas:

That guy didn’t change 100 bedpans and feed pudding to some toothless old lady to not have his name properly read.

Obligatory Key & Peele sub skit: