[MUSIC] To my classmates,
I would first say congratulations, we survived,
and a lot of us thrived,
and [LAUGHTER] we made it this far.
It hasn't been an easy journey, but we did it.
[LAUGHTER] Yeah, we did it.
I'm so proud of all of us.
I want us to give pat on the backs and hopefully we stay in touch.
We did it. We went to law school in crazy times,
and we should all be really proud of ourselves.
Congratulations.
We had to face truly unprecedented challenges
that come with beginning law school in the middle of a global pandemic.
I think time and time again,
the class of 2023 has shown how incredibly resilient we are.
We have fought so hard.
It's been the wildest of rides, but we've done it.
We did it and we did it together.
None of us ever knew if we would ever really set foot on campus when we started,
and somehow we did this,
and we're graduating.
It's surreal moment.
It's obviously a huge occasion to
graduate from Harvard Law School, but more than anything,
I'm just really excited to celebrate it with the people I care about,
which is my classmates and my family, and my friends.
Commencement day for me means sharing all the knowledge and
experiences I had here with the rest of the world.
Commencement from HLS is the culmination of three years of hard work.
It's a great time for us to celebrate ourselves and each other.
It's an opportunity to take a moment of remembrance,
and all the years of labor that the people alongside me and I have put into this.
Commencement is one of the proudest moments of
my life being a first-generation lawyer from Pakistan,
I think it marks a milestone for me.
I'm an indigenous person from New Caledonia.
I'm the first Kanak to attend Harvard Law School or any affiliate of Harvard.
I hope that it inspires other Kanaks to pursue,
and be part of spaces like HLS.
I've done three university graduations,
and this is the first time I actually thought about the word commencement,
and the fact that it means a start.
Finishing a chapter and starting a new one.
From now on, I think I'll handle situations differently in life.
Look at things differently with more knowledge, different skill sets.
We've learned all these new skills and met all these cool people,
and now we get to go out into the world and work on the causes that we care about,
and work with communities that we care about.
Graduating from HLS means changing my life and my family's life for generations to come.
My parents worked many jobs in order to afford a livelihood for my sister and I.
For me, walking across the stage,
a commencement will be a way to honor my mother's sacrifice.
My journey here is the result of
countless endless investments sent to me by the people I love;
my family, my friends, teachers.
All of those folks who have sacrificed for
us to have this opportunity to get our education,
and to invite them to be a part of this celebration.
I think being able to celebrate with them,
and really celebrate them and what they've been able to do for
me is the most important part of commencement for me.
If they're watching, I want to say [FOREIGN].
I'm excited to spend the summer with friends to soak up last memories together.
I'm actually most excited to return home,
and be with my family.
I'm excited to go back to my community,
and see how I can apply the skills I learned from Harvard Law School.
Off the commencement, I'm most excited to return home to Singapore,
and to basically,
put all the skills I've picked up here into practice.
I'm excited to practice law,
and so it feels like it's finally going to be the opportunity
to do the work that I've been wanting to do all these years but just couldn't,
because I had like one more class to take or just one more degree
to get before it could do. That's going to be fun.
I'm very much passionate about tax law,
and I'm ready to get started,
and I'm ready to use everything I've learned here,
and get a head start in the world.
I think I'm really excited to start working in tech policy,
and shape the future of technology in a responsible manner.
I'm excited to apply what I learned in law school to business,
but I'm also really excited to see what everyone else does.
As a first-generation immigrant,
as someone from a lower income background,
I'm often in spaces where laws and
policies are made by those who are never actually impacted by them,
and I hope to elevate the needs of
the communities who often are most impacted by legal systems.
In general, I came to law school to be a civil rights lawyer.
I feel especially lucky at HLS that I can go straight into civil rights after law school.
I'll be working in voting rights litigation.
I'm excited to be working to find our democracy.
I will join a public interest law firm in Colorado to be a plaintiff's attorney.
I'm so excited for that commencement of my life.
I'm excited to join the alumni community.
I hope that my classmates are similarly as active,
because I certainly don't want to lose
the friendships and connections that I've made here.
Really, I think the most exciting thing is just knowing that I have
a set of peers and set of faculty that I can hopefully come back to,
and rely on certain endeavors,
but also just have a breadth of experiences to take on things on my own now as well.
I'm really excited to go to one of the 63 countries that my LLM colleagues are from,
and to really understand their culture,
and understand a little bit more about them.
Commencement from HLS is bittersweet.
On the one hand, I'm very excited for what's next.
On the other hand, this chapter of my life has
been so amazing in ways that I couldn't possibly imagine.
It's tough to say goodbye to so many of the people
that I got to know here that I get to spend day-to-day with.
I think I thought before I came here,
that there would be a mold of what a Harvard student looks like.
And I was very concerned that I wouldn't fit that mold.
But since arriving here and meeting all the deities and all the LLMs,
I've realized that actually that's a myth.
HLS is made up of so many students,
a very diverse community,
but even within that,
I still feel a sense of inclusion and belonging.
I feel like HLS gives you so much room to play around with different interests.
I've gotten to know so many professors who really do care about students,
and take you under their wing to mentor you,
and I'm going to miss that part of being a student.
To be at a place for three years,
learning from the most intelligent people,
taking classes with them.
Committing everyday to learning is just so cool,
and I hope I get to do that in my job. I think I will.
I really got a sense of community just here at school,
out of the classrooms and the conversations that we had.
It's just been so fun [LAUGHTER] to be around a group of people as dedicated,
as passionate, but also as just phenomenally exciting as this group of people.
You don't realize until you leave just how much energy is here,
and it's about people who are incredibly intelligent,
incredibly passionate about what they're learning,
about what they're working on.
I'm definitely going to miss my work at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau.
Many people committed to justice,
and in the truest sense,
that has been absolutely everything for me.
Finding that pocket within the law school.
The Harvard Prison Legal Assistance Project,
where I got to represent a lot of
incarcerated clients in a variety of proceedings in prisons.
The HLS community to me it means [FOREIGN] and Equal Democracy Project,
camping outside student orgs room for free food.
It also means beating Yale in basketball
as we did this year in a battle of the unranked Law Schools.
What I'll miss most about HLS is
the late night library study sessions in the Langdell Hall,
to those coffee chats in the higher cafe by the fireplace, with the snowfall.
It's those random interactions getting to bump into someone in
the hallway or on homes field in front of the library or just in the pub,
and just getting to talk to them about life outside of law school.
I truly believe that many world problems were solved in one o'clock, two o'clock,
three o'clock in the morning over hot Cheetos and ice cream conversations,
that took place in group study rooms or in someone's apartment.
On the weekends, we'd go to one of our apartments,
and just sit there and talk from 9:00 to
3:00 in the morning about anything and everything.
It's really wholesome to know that I've found a family from all across the world at HLS.
All of people that I've met here will remain friends,
and some of my best friends for the rest of my life.
I think all of our events from Bar Reviews
to different outings in Boston really made the law school experience a ton of fun.
Everyone here has created for me such a profound experience.
Again, I didn't expect the level of support and community,
and camaraderie that I've experienced here.
Because it's really rare that you end up in a community,
and a place where there's just so many people that care about you,
and that have so much in common with you,
and so much to talk about,
and you just feel so loved and cared for.
That's really what the HLS community is.
I came to Cambridge my first year at the peak of the pandemic in 2020,
and it was really tough to find community when the entire world is locked down.
We had to work really hard to build community in a unique way,
particularly within our section,
with our 70 or so section mates.
One memory that I will take with me is,
when we finally were able to all come together in our 2.0 year and meet,
and really understand that a lot of those connections were very deep and very genuine.
I'm very proud of the community that we were able to build during difficult times,
and yet to leave with so many lifelong friends.
The same people that I was friends with my first day of class are my best friends now.
Just having that family and being bonded together means a lot.
I just hope we don't lose sight of the special space that we are leaving.
To the Class of 2023,
getting to commencement is an incredible experience.
But now the journey really begins.
I think you should be proud of this moment for what it brings,
and what it represents.
Especially to those who have been historically kept out of spaces like this,
you are here because you matter.
I've learned a lot from each and every one of you.
You've all made the past few years just absolutely amazing,
and I'll definitely miss all of you.
Thank you for being so welcoming.
Thank you for being my family away from home. Home is very far.
Congratulations, and I hope everyone maintains a sense of adventure,
and curiosity in the next chapter.
Right now, I can't wait to hear about your wonderful stories after commencement.
We've faced many challenges together,
but I think one thing that we can all say with confidence is that,
the sky is truly the limit.
I'm extremely proud to be a member of this class.
Now we're here, so congratulations,
and let's celebrate together. [MUSIC]