Kayla Tam
English
Hong Kong
We feel warm and fuzzy inside, because Commencement is a day we honor and reflect on our achievements and experience. And here I am, trying to say more things that will make you feel warmer and fuzzier inside. But what can I say that will resonate with all of us?
Aside from the fact that we’re all part of Class of 2014, what do we all have in common? We may have different majors. We may come from different places. We may speak different languages at home. We may come from different socio-economic backgrounds. We may have different political inclinations. We may have different genders, different sexual orientations. We may have different abilities, different mental or physical conditions.
Then, I thought back to the American Studies class called “Placing Identities” I took in my freshman year. Place. Of course, what else do we have more in common than this place, Carleton? A place of our own.
Take a moment to look around you, and imagine: What will this place look like after graduation, when we, the Class of 2014, are all gone?
Yes, Carleton will still be here, but not the Carleton as we know it.
Not the Carleton as we know that was flooded in 2010, or the Carleton that embraced the opening of the Weitz Center in 2011, or the Carleton that changed Sayles Dance to Cowling dance, or the Carleton that changed Memo to James. Can you imagine nobody will remember that James was once Memo? And definitely not the Carleton that was buried under 10 feet of snow, in March.
Carleton is this physical place that we all interacted with. It’ll still exist after we leave. But Carleton is also this life experience we created, and will from now on exist in our memories.
We’ll remember the all-nighters. Well, maybe not all of them, because there were too many. We’ll remember the parties. Well, maybe some of them. We’ll remember the awkwardness of New Student Week. We’ll remember the COMPS experience. We’ll remember the times when somebody we loved passed away, the times when we felt it was impossible to move on, the times when we felt that graduation is the least possible thing on Earth.
But we’ll also remember with fondness the times we spent with our friends on the Bald Spot, in the library, in our dorms, in the Rec, in Sayles. We’ll remember the mid-night Sayles runs, our friends dancing in Ebony, Smash Mouth performing and getting drunk at Spring Concert last year.
Our Carleton experience challenged our minds, our emotions, our tenacity. We didn’t always like the decisions we had to make. But we were figuring out what was right for us. The great thing is, this process of figuring out will never end, and we learned here how to deal with this challenge.
As we conclude our journey here as Carleton students, some of us will go on to graduate schools, some will begin their fellowships, some will go on to professional careers, some of us, like myself, will have to search and wander for a while, some of us will start our own families.
Carleton as each of us knows it will continue to exist. It’ll exist in the way we look at this world. It’ll exist when we choose to take the road less traveled. It’ll exist in the way we treat our fellow humankind. The Carleton as we know it will exist, because it changed who we are as people, as world citizens.
Class of 2014, we were here, and we made Carleton our own. And now let’s go forth into this world and find places of our own with Carleton in our hearts.