In the past few months, I’ve thought a great deal about my time at Union; the conversations I have had with people here; the classes I have taken; and the things I have accomplished. In particular, however, I’ve thought about a question often posed to me at home while catching up with friends and family I haven’t seen in some time. “How do you feel about Union?”
When I was a first-year, I usually just replied with the stock answers: “Oh, it’s wonderful! Classes are challenging! There are so many fun things to do! You really get to know everyone!” While I certainly still hold those statements to be true, as I got a bit older and developed more nuanced ideas about my education, I began to answer this question a bit differently. I found that the best way to encapsulate my experiences at Union was to say the following: “Union College is exactly what you make of it.”
That might seem a bit generic – it probably is – but I haven’t found a better way to describe this campus or the people you find walking through it. Union and its community cannot be pithily described, because they are in a constant state of flux, and each individual has the opportunity to shape the College into something that excites and challenges them.
You have a great idea – maybe a bike program or a green garden shed – and you want to get it off the ground? There are places on campus that are begging for your input. Are you frustrated with some kind of perceived apathy? Organize students in whatever way you can toward a positive goal, like creating a more sustainable campus or tying a big pink ribbon around the Nott. Would you like to expand your horizons academically? It doesn’t matter – GenEd forces you to do it either way. This malleability is one of the most fascinating things about Union; it is just what you make of it – nothing more, nothing less – and there will indeed remain deep-seated imprints on the shape of Union College left by the Class of 2009.
More significantly, however, I have come to understand that Union College is more than what we make of it for ourselves. Union must also be what we make of it for others. This is a lesson I managed to learn in a regrettable manner. I remember quite vividly an atmosphere of discord and frustration permeating the campus during my first year. A rally was being held outside of the library, where hundreds of vocal and impassioned students were coming together to voice their opposition to ignorance and intolerance.
From what I am told, the rally was an incredible sight. Where was I? Asleep in my room in West, taking a nap to recover from a long night of homework. While it may seem like a trivial act, as it did at the time, such lapses in judgment serve to undermine the community we should be continually striving to create at Union College. We have a responsibility to support our classmates – not only our friends or our fraternity brothers, but most especially those with whom we are unfamiliar or perhaps share little.
I believe these notions are reflected quite clearly in the futures we have before us. We are leaving this pristine, shielded bubble known as Union College – walking away from meal plans and housing lotteries, and entering a world full of new opportunities to be pursued. Indeed, life is exactly what you make of it – nothing more, nothing less. Sure, you might have been forced to take the only job you got called back for after twenty-five different applications. But the prospects of making that into something incredible and worthwhile are boundless. Do you have some kind of great idea, something you’ve wanted to see in this world so badly you could taste it? This is your chance to seize that moment and work unremittingly toward a goal limited only by your imagination. I challenge each of you to seek out those opportunities and to make the most of them.
However, our focus and attention cannot be placed solely upon ourselves. The world is too large and its crises are too numbered to be simply ignored. While it may be full of promise for those who are able to take hold of it, the world is also plagued by instability, discrimination, disease, and many hardships too great and complex to be easily enumerated. Even here at Union, we are surrounded by a city with its own difficulties, waiting perhaps for an individual with a brilliant mind and an unrestrained determination to do great things.
It seems to be a common theme in these speeches to say “good luck.” I won’t be doing that today. In my estimation, we in attendance already possess enormous amounts of good luck. We are fortunate enough to graduate from an esteemed institution of higher learning, while many receive no education at all. We may someday be fortunate enough to live safely in cities like New York, Boston, or London, while a quiet, unrepresented number in these places are unsure of which alley to sleep in each night. We are fortunate enough to live in one of the most secure and developed nations in the world, while distant poverty-stricken countries devolve into civil war.
I remind you of these things not to depress you – today is a day of celebration, and rightly so. Rather, I say these things to press you a bit further to apply what you have learned at Union, both inside and outside of the classroom. As with Union College, this world is certainly what we make of it for ourselves, but more importantly, it is what we make of it for others. As you leave this ceremony and enter the dreaded Real World, I challenge you to internalize this reality, and to be mindful of it as you carve out your doubtlessly remarkable futures. Think of this as the GenEd of real life – it might be at times a burdensome responsibility to be so cognizant of others, but the difference it makes is incalculable.
Thank you very much, and congratulations to the Class of 2009.