I would like to celebrate the end of four years of honest work with an act of plagiarism. A certain Victorian author prophetically wrote about our graduation day when he said:
It is the best of times, it is the worst of times, it is the spring of hope, it is the winter of despair, we have everything before us, we have nothing before us.
For those of you wondering how it can be the winter of despair under this beating California sun, I’d like to remind you that the sun has yet to shine on our economy, and I fear that some of our future investment bankers are probably soaked on the inside.
As I reflect on our present condition, I cannot help but ask myself: How did we did we get here? And, more importantly, why on earth are they kicking us out?
My theory is that we got here because of the American Dream. Now, you’re probably thinking that a better hypothesis is one with a dollar sign in front of it, but let’s give the American Dream theory a chance
Everyone tells us that it is quintessentially American to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. But we aren’t born with bootstraps… Lucky for us, there are people who’ve put boots on our feet, who’ve picked us up when we’ve stumbled, who’ve reassured us in the fourth grade that, no matter what others say, those awful, unfashionable boots are fashionable since they’re on our feet. Over the years, these people have polished the worn leather and patched up the holes — it is because of them that we can pull ourselves to our full height today. Whatever our literal debts, we all have figurative debts to pay. After all, none of us is raised by wolves — last I checked — and none of us walks down life’s road alone, no matter what Green Day has to say. Families and friends — it is because of you that we don these graduation caps, and so our hats go off to you.
Four years ago, as my dad’s car pulled up outside of Ellen Browning Hall, I was determined not to like this College for three reasons. First, I thought green was a terrible school color — it’s hard to explain why… I guess I was just a bigot when it came to school colors. My second very logical reason for disliking Scripps was that I wanted to go to a big school. Bigger is better — that’s how it was with In-N-Out, that’s how it must be with college. And third, I thought there should be more — how shall we say it — gender equality.
As we prepare to leave this College, let me remind you just how wrong I was.
First, I must debunk a common myth. Women of Scripps College are actually not women. Or, since I don’t want to be sued on my graduation day, I’ll retract and say, we are not any women. We are unforgettable characters. Scripps is not only an awesome women’s college but also a college for awesome women.
Sitting among you today are some who exude optimism while others suck it out of the room. Beware of mixing these two, because the interaction is caustic. I saw it once, when two of my RA friends were talking. The pessimist said, “I’m so negative,” and the optimist naturally replied, “No you’re not!”
Another character-type at Scripps are the cynics, who think life is bland without Tabasco sauce. That explains why one cynic, an English major, cautioned me that reading poetry in Margaret Fowler Garden is cliché. Now, I think that I’ve committed a lot of cliché in my life. Including eating and drinking. We should all abstain immediately.
Then, there are the selfless zealots. The ones who spend hours — not volunteering — but flying halfway across the world to volunteer. When one of you told me that she doesn’t know how to drive, doesn’t own a car, and yet goes to LA every week to help the bus riders’ union, I remember pitying you — you were essentially paying not to get paid. But then again, when you’re the first woman President, I’m sure you’ll pity me right back.
Oh, but how can I forget — the staple group. The women who came to Scripps because of its intellectual rigor, while others were running in the opposite direction for the same reason. One of you nerds confronted me over breakfast on a Monday morning with panic written all over your face. Not God, but a dead French philosopher spoke to you last night. I’m not gonna lie. I was a little worried about you. Then I remembered that a lot of Scrippsies suffer from that malady — many of us are plagued with a sacrilegious fascination with ideas. Granted, you took it to an all-new level.
Now, I don’t bring up these examples to undermine our degrees. No, no. We learned a lot of practical things at Scripps College, let me tell you. We were taught survival skills.
In my first day, I learned that four verbs strung together could make a meaningful sentence: slap grab twist pull.
I learned that snack night in Toll is a metaphor for Darwinian survival. How many people must you dodge to get a cinnamon challah? Whose arm is longest? Who arrives too late and is eliminated from the gene pool?
I also learned the hard way that my sleep schedule and the library’s are not perfectly in sync. Denison Library often calls it a night at the hopeful hour of 11 pm. Now, that’s roughly when I crack open the books. Or, more accurately, when I crack open my laptop to crack open my email to avoid cracking open the books.
At Scripps, I learned to beware of the sprinklers — they are jealous of the fountains and so, every now and then, they throw tantrums. It’s probably cathartic for them — what with all those repressed feelings and angst. Either that, or someone thinks we don’t take enough showers.
And finally, I discovered that looks can be deceiving — I learned that, not from motherly advice or from a PhD holder, but from squirrels. Don’t believe the bushy tail and cute posture. They are out to get you.
Those missing today have perished at the hands of squirrels, while the rest of us survive because we’ve learned these valuable lessons. Sure, there were some lessons learnt in the classroom, some books read, some papers written, some big words added to our lexicon. You know — pedagogies, signification, hegemony, heteroglossia, psychoanalysis, defamiliarization, orientalism, and beta-galactosidase. We use those words like common currency now — words that are an inch longer than we ever needed before — words that sound great in your mouth, like marshmallows. But these are words that terrified me in Core and they may be intimidating to others. So I remind myself and you that, words are invented to convey meaning, not to be demeaning — unless, of course, applied to your younger siblings, in which case, they may be used liberally.
As we bid Scripps adieu and adios, I think of what else we ought to remember. We leave at Scripps a lush, vivacious world that is hostile only to those with allergies. We leave behind the comfort of knowing passersby by name (and facebook status), and we enter upon a world that is arguably more rugged. Less equitable. More diverse. At Scripps we’ve learned not to fear anything so much as fear itself, but our post-graduation experiences will test that knowledge.
During a summer project in Jordan, I met a refugee child who told me that, if he could fly to anywhere, he’d fly to death. I was stunned. Death? Why would a 13-year-old boy with almond-shaped eyes ever want to fly to death? He and his peers wanted an education. They wanted a ticket out of their refugee camps. They wanted work opportunities. What did they fear most, I asked them? Many answered: the future. They feared the future. As we anxiously prepare to go into a world with glass ceilings, countless others are pushing up against fortified steel. When I think of the less fortunate, I recognize my own privilege and, with it, my responsibility. Access to education, like healthcare, ought to be universal, and until that happens, I am afraid we will see the light of hope dim in children’s faces.
In her mission for this College, Ellen Browning Scripps recognized the importance of instilling hope in graduates, because she understood that hope is contagious. During my first year in college, I worked to improve the literacy and social skills of a preschooler named Michael. Michael hated me. He hated me when I talked to him and hated me more when I talked to others. He mutilated dirt worms in his hands and shoved them in my face to upset me. He turned reading time into hide-and-go-seek. It was hard for me to visit Michael twice a week and be rebuffed time and time again. You know, we college students are used to putting in effort and seeing grades. But here, there were no grades. Even though I can never be sure that I made any lasting impact on Michael’s development, what I do know is that, at the end of the year, Michael could spell his name in carrot sticks. To me, that was gold.
My experience with Michael taught me that hope is like mercury –glittering from afar, often easier to lose than to keep. It is easier to demand immediate results than to work to achieve them gradually. Hope itself must be hopeful. Hope itself must endure.
When I visited Cairo this summer, it was hard not to see the dusty sweaty face of poverty everywhere. But to the locals, the poverty was invisible. I asked myself — is there poverty like this at home, in one of the richest countries in the world? Do I not see it because desensitized? I realized that our society is compartmentalized, with social classes clustering together. The poor are invisible here, not because they are uncommon, but because they are sequestered, quarantined. Too often, social inequalities are elusive and those who search for them are slapped with a muckraking label. And yet, we must all be muckrakers, reading between the lines, connecting the dots, listening to the silenced, seeing the invisible.
Whether our struggles take us abroad or keep us in our own neighborhoods, In our novels, we’ve read about epic battles in foreign lands, and yet our battles are in our own neighborhoods, not far from home. In our battles, the weapon is education and the enemy is one — inaction or worse yet, indifference. Not to act is to act, a certain part-Irish professor once said.
But the battles are not only without. Some are waged within. In the chorus of peer pressure and social norms, do we lose our voices? Can we still hear ourselves? When we entered college, each of us brought familiar, comfortable songs from home. Here, we tested our voices, sometimes successfully, and sometimes at the detriment of the person who was trying to sleep next door. Now as we leave Scripps, we take with us our songs — ones that have lyrics from our roots, rhythms from our childhood and a refrain that rings of courage, confidence and hope.
Courage, confidence and hope — those were some of the first words I heard here! And though they sounded high and lofty during orientation week, I was still wondering — why was I at a small college? Why could I kick a ball from one side of campus and see it land on the other? Of course, I couldn’t do that in reality , but that meant that Scripps was too small in my imagination.
Now that I’m on the verge of leaving this college, I am so glad that Scripps is small because we are packing it up in our bags. Hey everyone, we’re taking Scripps College to go.
What’ll we take, you ask? I’ll tell you what.
We’ll take that enduring friendship between a pair of seals who oversee the pond — or who are having a stare-down contest. We’ll take persistence from the wrangled goat who struggles everyday against her captivity. We’ll take the Motley’s not-so-secret ingredients — that blend of inclusion, fair-trade and healthy eating. We’ll take all the homemade vegan chocolate chip cookies — all of them. We’ll take the ambition of Denison’s ivy — the ivy that climbs upwards, unhindered by gravity, bringing life to places where no (insect) life has gone before. We’ll take the generosity of the orange groves that fed us so much citrus they practically lowered our stomach pH. We’ll take it all. Because Scripps College is so small that it has lodged itself in our hearts. Yes, somewhere between the aorta and the left coronary artery.
And finally, before we leave, I need to tell you about that sea-foam green, because today, I love it.
Now, one of you specifically asked me not to make my speech a poem — and I understand. All year, I’ve terrorized you with sonnets that break away from iambic pentameter — but here’s one last one from me:
Our class of women here, wrapped in sea-foam green
We came to Scripps as girls, with anxieties and dreams
But today we are a different set, with stronger, bolder strides
We plan to make a difference, nearby or ‘cross the tides
We know the world and she knows us, we’re friends that won’t let go
We carry each other in our hearts no matter where we go
Today we girls-turned-women are sailors fit for sea
Our sea-foam green’s our uniform,
We’re equipped with our degree
Some of us, nervous, will tell you
We’re not ready for the world
But look around you. The world begs to disagree.
Class of 2009 — I am honored to be among you.
I’m taking each of you with me.
Thank you!