MICHAEL PHILLIPS >> Freshman year, when I was launched into another universe,
my only grounding point was the gravitational pull of a question,
"Will Harvard change me?"
That question mingled with the heartfelt gifts and the parting words of my parents.
My mom was placing a set of keys around my neck,
each key engraved with a word,
believe, fearless and inspire.
My dad said, "I've always imagined life for you like a canvas,
and I hope to have had one big enough for you to imagine new possibilities.
I'm proud to see Harvard become your canvas."
Minutes later I walked into my dorm room,
and on my desk I found a list of alumni that held the keys to that room before me.
The first name I read was Henry David Thoreau,
the prophetic essayist and abolitionist.
It was a glimpse into the greatness of what the surreal world was capable of.
"Maybe," I thought, "it just might change me for the better."
Perhaps you had a similar experience on move-in day,
but the chronicle of what we could become predates that moment.
When the class of 2020 was still scattered across the world,
our first connection came from a story that we heard.
From TV punchlines to political institutions,
the name Harvard reverberated across the canyons of culture with an infinite echo.
It permeated the boundaries of class,
Cree, country and continent.
Like kids reading a bedtime story,
we inserted ourselves into this narrative arc of a galaxy of greatness.
In 2016, we converted those dreams into
essays and traded them for tickets to the new frontier.
We landed on campus eager to perform our own superhuman feats,
from pulling all-nighters in Lamar basement,
to breaking the laws of the universe with great inflation.
The more we progress the more we pursue.
Freshman year, we spent our energy writing
viscerally scribbled applications to social lords.
Sophomore year, we exchanged our space suits for
business suits so we could rush to networking events.
Though with every superhuman attempt,
some shortcomings were revealed.
By junior year, many of us remained
agitated by the persistent presence of imposter syndrome.
It felt like the incessant pain of a paper cut or worse than that.
The place that we had imagined as kids,
a place defined by the pursuit of passion, became troubled by the fear of rejection.
Our community of collaboration converted to one of crippling comparisons.
Suddenly our aspirations to pursue progress,
were limited by our desperation to preserve status.
We began believing that our purpose lay in our importance,
but we forfeited our power.
We saw our galaxy of greatness stripped of the light of possibility,
subdued by the darkness of self-doubt.
At that confusing junction,
many were asking themselves,
"Is this all I really came to Harvard to become?"
But what if we open the door to a different reality?
What if we already have the keys?
The first key from my mom said "Believe."
Could she have been asking us to believe
that we never really came to Harvard to acquire accolades,
but that success is second rate to soul saved and lives made better.
The second key said "Fearless."
Did she know that the path to purpose might be unpopular,
but if we clung to that fear of rejection,
we might fail to offer the world what was ours to give?
The last key said "Inspire."
Might she have understood that if we did not become leaders of sacrifice,
we would become leaders of selfishness but we would be leaders either way.
When my dad said Harvard is your canvas,
was he not giving us the confidence to emerge from the college,
and the Kennedy School,
and the business school, and the divinity school,
and the design school,
and the law school, the medical school,
the education school, the extension school, the dental school,
and every other school at Harvard,
painting portraits with our presence as a community of artists
and not imitators of key makers and not gatekeepers.
As I stand here today,
my answer to all of these questions is a resounding Yes.
And if yours is too,
then we can leave our galaxy of greatness and land back on Earth
with such an unyielding collision that the paradigms of broken systems and
mediocre standards might splatter like gas and dust in a
supernova.
In the midst of this historic global pandemic.
This message carries more weight than it ever has before.
Use our powers for good.
That by those deeds we might demonstrate that
our gifts are not a solemn path to importance,
but a promise for another person.
Harvard will change you,
but let it continue to change you.
Let it make you keenly sensitive to injustice.
Let it make you more empathetic to struggle.
Let it embolden you to make change.
Let it make you all of these things because to become anything
else would be to forfeit any meaning in being a Harvard graduate.
We were fortunate to fly high enough that we might
grab the moral arc of the universe itself.
May we bend it in the right direction.