Students in Australia are making headlines this week for mobilising against education cuts flagged in the Federal Budget.

In the US, however, it’s commencement season — when stars, leaders, and inspiring figures from across the spectrum famously deliver addresses to both departing high school students and university graduates before they take their next steps into the wide world (a world marked by protests, budgets and other such aspects of grown-up life).

In the last 24 hours alone, students have been dealt different lessons from such diverse heads as First Lady Michelle Obama, movie star Sandra Bullock and US Navy SEAL honcho Bill McCraven.

The admiral — who organised the raid that killed Osama bin Laden — shared ten lessons learned from his basic training with University of Texas seniors.

Standouts included:

If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed: Then you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

... find someone to help you paddle: You can’t change the world alone — you will need some help — and to truly get from your starting point to your destination takes friends, colleagues, the good will of strangers and a strong coxswain to guide them.

... get over being a sugar cookie and keep moving forward: A reference to cadets who failed uniform inspection and were forced to roll, in wet gear, in the sand and stay like that all day. Those who “just couldn’t accept the fact that all their effort was in vain ... didn’t make it through training. Those students didn’t understand the purpose of the drill. You were never going to succeed. You were never going to have a perfect uniform. Sometimes no matter how well you prepare or how well you perform you still end up as a sugar cookie.”

... don’t back down from the sharks: “If a shark begins to circle your position — stand your ground. Do not swim away. Do not act afraid. And if the shark, hungry for a midnight snack, darts towards you — then summon up all your strength and punch him in the snout and he will turn and swim away. There are a lot of sharks in the world. If you hope to complete the swim you will have to deal with them.”

TEN OF THE BEST

While the students are usually given warm, frank and useful advice, not all such speeches follow that script. Here are some of the best.

1 — Oscar-winning actor Sandra Bullock surprised high school graduates in New Orleans this week with the advice “Eat something green every day” and “Do not pick your nose in public”. Fortunately for the Hollywood starlet, the students at Warren Easton Charter High School had a sense of humour. She continued, “Think about this. How about we just don’t pick it in private either? How about we just go get a tissue?”. The Gravity star went on to advise the graduates, “If someone doesn’t want to play with you, it’s OK. ... Not everybody is going to love us.”

2 — Michelle Obama pulled no punches when she addressed graduating high school students on matters of race relations in the Topeka district of New Orleans on Friday. The First Lady of the United States accused the students of pulling back “on efforts to integrate”. She warned them that “by some measures, our schools are as segregated as they were when Dr (Martin Luther) King gave his final speech.” Now that’s full-on.

3 — William Bowen, the former president of Princeton University, labelled Haverford College students “immature” and “arrogant” during a commencement speech on Sunday. He was having a go at students who campaigned against an invitation to Robert Birgeneau, the former chancellor of the University of California. Birgeneau had “responded intemperately, failing to make proper allowance for the immature, and, yes, arrogant inclinations of some protesters. Aggravated as he had every right to be, I think he should be with us today,” Bowen said in his address. Ouch!

4 — Funnyman Lewis Black, a regular on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, got plenty of laughs during his address to UC San Diego graduates in 2013. Let’s just say he, um, kept it real.

“You are now entering a world that’s filled to the brim with idiots. Since there are so many idiots out there, you actually may start to think you’re crazy. You are not. They are idiots.”

5 — Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey urged commencement students at Harvard — the birthplace of Facebook — not to get lost in social media. Now isn’t that ironic.

“Even though this is the college where Facebook was born, my hope is that you will try to go out and have more face to face conversations with people you disagree with. That you’ll have the courage to look them in the eye and hear their point of view and help make sure that the speed, and distance, and anonymity of our world doesn’t cause us to lose our ability to stand in someone else’s shoes and recognise all that we share as a people.” Read the full speech.

6 — Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report — and soon-to-be new host of The Late Show on CBS — reassured commencement students at Northwestern in 2011 that it’s OK to change your mind as you get older.

“Thankfully dreams can change. If we’d all stuck with our first dream, the world would be overrun with cowboys and princesses. So whatever your dream is right now, if you don’t achieve it, you haven’t failed and you’re not some loser — but just as importantly — if you do get your dream, you’re not a winner.” Read the full speech.

7 — English author Neil Gaiman (Coraline, The Graveyard Book, Stardust) told The University of the Arts commencement students in 2012 to, well, just be free.

“The old rules are crumbling and nobody knows what the new rules are … so make up your own rules.” Fair enough!

8 — J.K Rowling, the wizard behind the Harry Potter fantasy novels, told Harvard’s 2008 commencement students it’s OK to fail, In fact, it’s a must!

“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously, that you might has well not have lived at all; in which case, you’ve failed by default”. Read the full speech.

9 — Steve Jobs’ 2005 commencement speech at Stanford is perhaps one of the most moving speeches ever. The computer visionary and Apple co-founder spoke of his battle with cancer — the disease that ultimately claimed his life.

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose,” he said.

“Death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.” Read the full speech.

10 — Political satirist Jon Stewart used his address to commencement students at William & Mary in 2004 to simply spread the message ‘don’t worry, be happy’.

“College is something you complete, life is something you experience. Don’t worry about your grade, or the results, or success. Success is defined in myriad ways and you will find it and people will no longer be grading you. It will come from your own internal sense of decency.”