- Thank you.
Good morning everyone.
Welcome to
the class of 2018 graduation.
(crowd cheering)
Welcome, Mrs. Rita Dove, President McCartney,
member of the Board of Trustees,
administration, families who have come
from all over the country and all over the world,
friends and last, but not least, you students.
This is the 140th commencement.
Seniors, this is your day
and it's a special one,
not because of anything particular,
except that we're inside for the first time in 15 years.
So I want to talk to you all today
about time,
because I seriously do not know where it's gone.
We just had an awesome week without assignments,
without deadlines and without needing to wake up early,
but it feels like just yesterday
that we were looking forward
to our summers between each school year,
looking forward to our first day of classes
and yet here we are at the final stage of it all.
I can't speak for each one of you,
but for me, this passage of time has been such a blur
going by almost as fast as reading period does,
but blurs don't make for good commencement speeches,
so I'd like to remember some of
what we have experienced together.
It all started at President McCartney's welcome address
my first year.
During the address,
I felt so emotional that I started to cry.
I put my head on my dad's shoulder,
so that no one would see me,
but behind us a Smith College photographer
with a good eye for capturing
complicated emotions in a single image
took a picture and posted it on Facebook
(audience laughing)
with the caption:
As orientation for parents draws to a close,
here's a shout-out to all the families
who've been there for our new students over the years.
Thanks for all you've done.
And the caption seems so celebratory,
but to me it didn't completely match my mixed feelings,
my oh my god, what am I doing here thoughts.
Most of you were also in this crowd
sitting with your families or new friends.
Perhaps you felt like you belong,
but perhaps you were questioning
whether you made the right decision
and also perhaps you were just worried
that you would be asked about Whistling Vivaldi,
the book we were supposed to read over the summer.
(audience laughing)
And then came our next year, second year.
The year that Smith rose in
U.S. News and World Report's
annual national liberal arts college rankings,
moving from 18th to 14th
in the country.
(audience cheering)
And this was mostly due to our improvements
in faculty resources, selectivity and reputation
and it was so great to hear
that more high school students were considering Smith,
but this was also the year of the infamous sophomore slump.
We were no longer new to Smith as first years
and we were not old to Smith, about to graduate,
so some of felt caught in this in between.
But there was also a newfound confidence on campus.
We were navigating and pursuing opportunities,
the opportunities that we wanted.
Our interests became our majors.
Our classmates became our best friends.
Our professors became our mentors.
We joined clubs and sports that taught us
how to throw a perfect three pointer,
program a robot, sing our hearts out or invest in stocks.
Shout-out to Smith College Investment Club.
Then came junior year,
the year when on my birthday, October 14,
architect Maya Lin shared her plans
for the redesign of Neilson Library.
Neilson Library was the building
where we had studied all day or night or both,
enjoyed afternoons curled up in the reading room with a book
and laughed at the instructions above the printer;
I don't know if you guys remember;
handwritten by a Smithie, to perform an exorcism
on the printer if it started spewing out blank pages.
(audience laughing)
I'm excited for the new Neilson though.
We'll see it on our fifth reunion
and feel proud that we were the ones
to bear its absence while it was being built.
Some of us got to spend our times abroad junior year.
I know this from Instagram pictures.
I personally got to spend the year in London
and will be moving back there after graduation.
(crowd cheering)
And now matter where you went junior year,
we all experience a major historical moment
when in November, President Trump won the election.
Whatever your political affiliation,
I'm sure you remember that day.
And now senior year.
We've all been asked the question
how does it feel to be a senior, right?
Well how does it feel?
Before we got to campus this year,
we anticipated senioritis
and wondered if our eagerness to graduate
would distract us from being motivated
or performing at our best
and yet I saw so many of you spending hours in the library
in the campus center doing work,
saying that you were busy with an optional research project,
spending your spring break in Houston
volunteering after Hurricane Harvey,
putting together Weaving Voices monologue series
or organizing weekly lectures
by professors from for completely different fields,
to present to seniors
that didn't have a chance to take their classes.
Smithies are hard workers.
We do our best.
We get things done
and change the world around us while we're doing it.
It is no surprise then that we have
some incredible graduates in the audience today.
We have seniors
that will be moving on to top institutions
in their professional fields like Columbia,
Yale, MIT, The London School of Economics
and Johns Hopkins among many others.
We have students going to work
in tech companies like Google,
nonprofits like City Year, schools like
the Success Academy charter school in New York City
and financial institutions like Morgan Stanley
and we have students who are still deciding their next move.
And a whopping 14 members of our graduating class
received a Fulbright Fellowship this year
(crowd cheering)
and will be spending the next year abroad
in the Republic of Columbia, Taiwan and elsewhere.
Remembering these four years as we experienced them together
helps us remember that life
has more meaning when we remember to look back,
reminding ourselves of all that we've experienced,
of the lives we've touched and the lessons we've learned.
What has our time
at this small liberal arts college meant for us?
Our worlds are bigger.
We are more critical thinkers.
We are more informed members of society
and after today, we are officially Smith alumni.
(audience laughing)
So make your adventures timeless,
your love timeless,
your courage timeless
and know that whatever it is that we choose to do next,
as the moments and years pass,
we will forever be impacted by our time at Smith.
I want to thank my incredible family,
my friends, my Friedman House Hashimy unit D roommates
(audience members cheering)
for being there during the highs and the lows
and I'd like to spend a special shout-out
to my family and my dad in Yemen,
barak allah fik, God bless you.
And lastly, congratulations
to the class of 2018.
(crowd cheering)