As students from Nansemond-Suffolk Academy kick off the high school graduation season for Suffolk today, they also continue the fine, long tradition of commencement addresses filled with advice likely to be forgotten even before the last diploma is hoisted triumphantly into the air.

Rare is the graduation speech that is truly memorable and rarer still the one that breaks new ground in the pantheon of such speeches. Which is not to say they’re not important and even insightful, but expectant graduates can hardly be blamed if they’re daydreaming through much of those speeches, lost in a reverie of churning emotions and fraught anticipation.

The spectators will applaud politely when the speakers complete their orations today and, for Suffolk Public Schools and Suffolk Christian Academy, next week. But they’ll cheer and — in the case of the more exuberant families and friends — blow air horns, ring bells and generally raise a ruckus when sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters receive those diplomas.

For all the excitement over the handoff, someone visiting from another planet might reasonably conclude that the diplomas themselves are the stars of these graduation shows, with the speakers adding color commentary to the distribution of these valuable tokens.

But the rest of us know the stars are the flat-hatted, betassled and nylon-robed teens who truly become young adults as they walk from one side of the stage to the other. The diploma is a symbol of the accomplishment of completing Virginia’s mandatory educational requirements. But it’s also a token granting graduates passage into the community of adult citizens, and those newly minted adults seem to shine brightest on the stage of the high school commencement ceremony.

Every decision made from the moment they step from that stage will either polish or tarnish that shine, and nobody walks far without losing some of the luster. The key is to recognize that a little elbow grease can restore the shine lost to all but the very worst decisions.

In case you miss it or forget the big speech from your own graduation, there it is, all distilled into one paragraph. And here it is in one sentence: Don’t be afraid to take chances or even to fail; you can do great things if you’ll just press your own boundaries.

Congratulations to the Class of 2015. We have great expectations for you.