How can that banker be more interesting than me?

Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the US central bank, has received a Hollywood-style response to a speech he delivered to graduating Princeton University students last Sunday. That a boring banker type can be pithy, witty and insightful about life has amazed the online world.

"A refreshing dose of reality from the world's most powerful central banker," is what one commentator wrote. I couldn't ignore the hullabaloo.

As I read it, I cringed thinking about a speech I delivered last year. There was no media reaction to mine. I had written what I thought was appropriate for matric girls at the former Model C school to which I hadn't returned in almost 30 years. In my time there I was locked up as a boarder where 80 girls had little to do but get up to mischief, not all of it innocent.

I spoke of how little and of how much had changed. I was right about the obvious change: the school was no longer white. But presuming the girls I spoke to were like me and my friends in the mid-1980s was wrong.

It was an excruciating experience standing in front of a large hall of school girls, their parents and teachers in academic gowns, realising my well-rehearsed speech was a flop. I spoke of my bumbling teenage experience. Of how I had no idea what I wanted to do. Of how making choices is hard and that growing up took me a long time.

The young girls I addressed are smarter (confirmed by the multiple awards handed out at the prize-giving ceremony minutes later), more directed and more responsible than we were. I don't think they jumped over walls to kiss boys, bunked to drink at the closest student bar nor learnt to smoke rather than learn their trigonometry. If they did, they certainly didn't laugh at my stories.

Bernanke has no anxieties about his speech. While I've deleted mine from my hard drive, he has posted his on the US central bank's website. Its success and pitch perfectness has been confirmed.

He used sociology, economics, politics, and the Bible to offer 10 suggestions for life. There is one point he makes, which I made too, and which makes me feel less foolish. With whom you partner, if and when you choose to do so, is one of the most important decisions you'll make.

Ben says: "The two of you will have a long trip together, I hope, and you will need each other's support and sympathy more times than you can count.

"Speaking as somebody who has been happily married for 35 years, I can't imagine any choice more consequential for a lifelong journey than the choice of a travelling companion."