Welcome

Thank you for that generous introduction. I'd like to welcome everybody that's part of the 2010 graduating class, as well as the parents, grandparents, relatives, friends, teachers, and administrators that helped get us here and are in attendance today. My name is Simon and, no, I'm not that streaker who got tackled by security on the Channel 4 news.

Introduction

Four years. That's a long time. A racing horse that was born when we entered college is already past its prime. In dog years, four years is nearly three decades' worth of experience and living. For sea turtles, four years is...okay, sea turtles are a bad example. But you get my point.

Four years: that's how far we've come. It's a large enough chunk of time in some of our most formative years that you can't help but grow and change as a person. We might look different, act different, and even think different. But in a university like this one, we also recognize that we can't help but change for the better, growing as students, developing our skills, and changing into people that have courage to go out there and make it on their own. Or...with a little help from some of our parents, I'm sure.

Reflections

What gets accomplished in four years? For me and my fellow students, I know how much you can accomplish just in one night - especially when the paper is due the next day and you haven't even started on a rough draft. I know how a week can turn into a semester's worth of lessons during final exam week, and how you emerge on the other end feeling like your brain has expanded just a little bit. We all know how much our paradigms might shift just from hearing one piece of advice that our professors give to us personally. Imagine all of that progress placed over four years and you get a better picture of what's taken place during our collective college experience.

For many of us, college was also a fresh start in other ways - not just academically. Some of us didn't have friends from high school accompany us to university. So we made new friends and now that we're adults, many of these friends are the friends who will last a lifetime.

Future

College forces you to face life like that - to be accountable, because from here on out, that's exactly what we have to be. Accountable. The world beyond college will be another lesson in making adjustments, making new friends, and adapting to different demands. Despite our strong education, we'll have to learn how to deal with impatient bosses or maybe mend a rocky relationship with a colleague. If you think the learning stops now, the biggest lesson is still waiting for you.

But that's what life is. If there weren't any challenges out there to overcome, there'd never be any reason to be proud. If there weren't any fears to conquer, we'd never know how to trust ourselves even in our moments of self doubt. I say: bring it on.

Conclusion

That's why it's important to remember, even as we look back on our accomplishment of becoming college graduates, that while four years is a long time, education lasts a lifetime. And in the future, we hope we can look back to these four years, be grateful for the growth we made, and think to ourselves, "thank goodness I did all that." Thank you and congratulations to all of my fellow graduates.