Ten years after he dropped out of school in order to begin a career in the entertainment, rapper Aubrey Drake Graham earned his high school diploma from Toronto’s Jarvis Collegiate Institute earlier this month. So when it came time for the commencement ceremony, the school naturally called on their star pupal to give a speech about his great accomplishment.
“I reached a point in my life where I realized there aren’t material things that can give me the excitement that I’m looking for,” Drake said. “There’s a void in my life that I need to fill and I need to sit and think long and hard what that was. It was the fact that I had left a gaping hole in my story of following through.”
He continued: “Sometimes it’s about going there, not getting there. Sometimes it’s the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination. And sometimes when you get there, you’ll look back and you’ll realize that you wish you could go there again because all the experiences are the reason that you are who you are today.” Drake dedicated his diploma to his mother, who is a retired teacher and encouraged him to complete his studies.
Below, you can watch a five-minute clip of the speech.
