What my Wesleyan education means to me

I was one of three seniors to speak at a Baccalaureate ceremony on the day of graduation. We were asked to look back at our four years at Wesleyan and what our education means to us. My speech was about recovering from failure... a lot of my friends were unable to attend and due to technical difficulty I was unable to show my paintings, thanks to technology I have uploaded my photos and my speech:

May 25th, 2008
Challenges and Recovering are two are words I would like to explore in my piece. I hope to combine two paintings that reflect on moments of failure and the feeling of recovering from those challenges. As I think back on my four years at Wesleyan I know that my education has not only given me the ability to be critical but to also always challenge the world and myself to do better. I have been taught to persevere and how rewarding it can be to accomplish my goals and I hope that by the end of my speech you will all see that in dark times of defeat, with a little bit of attitude, a guiding hand from friends, and a lot of hope, there is always light at the end. And before I begin, I would like thank my parents, my friends for all they have done for me in the last four years. Thank you, I would not be where I am today without you.

My first painting speaks about courage. It takes courage to pick yourself up after failing and perhaps even courage to be here today to speak about it. If you had asked me to do this three years earlier, I would not have been to do so. In the past, whenever I saw people speaking at concerts or other program and events on campus, I often felt as if I was voiceless, lost, and sometimes defeated. This was not because I didn’t understand the issues at stake, or didn’t get asked to participate; I had lost my courage and will to. As our times at Wesleyan is coming to a close, I often feel guilt that I did not do enough here. Why did I not participate more? The answer always came back to the same. I felt that I had lagged behind my classmates and in my mind it seemed as if I was always overcoming one obstacle over another and most times while I persevered, it was always so hard for me to recover. While failure has no face, it has the way to engulfing you. In your mind, you have been defeated, and no matter what you could have, should have done, the outcomes will not change. And as I have learned, challenges have a way of making you feel wrought with worry, hurt, and guilt of failing those you love. But I realize today that while I may have felt like I had failed in the past, and the challenges I faced may have set me back one or two steps it has ultimately made me grow. So I hope when you look at the painting, you remember to never let your challenges defeat you. I quote now, Winston Churchill who once said “if you are going through hell, keep going”

And now I share with you this story in hopes that you will see that while I only explore two words today, I do not measure my Wesleyan experience by my success and failures, but by the people I’ve met, the opportunities I’ve had, and by how much I have learned about myself and identity. I think back to April 30th, the day I turned in my senior essay, a culminating project that I had been working on all year. As I got dress that day, ready to turn my senior essay in, I found myself wondering if I had to answer my own interview question from my senior essay what would I say?

“What have you learned about yourself coming to college? And what do you attribute to that?” As I watched many people struggle to answer that question, I feel no pressure or struggle to answer it. I think about the day I arrived at Wesleyan. Four years ago, seventeen and scared. I cam e here determined to figure out what it feels like to belong somewhere. All my life, I let friends, family, and acquaintances, tell me what made me special or who I was. It seemed easier to let other people tell me than to figure it out myself. But at Wesleyan, it was a different atmosphere and space. No one could tell me who I was or what I needed to be. Here I learned to be the kind of person that I wanted to be, confident, witty, and accepting. And while along the way, I have made plenty of mistakes, mistakes that have affected my academic success, and success that would have made my parents proud and I ask mysef was the sacrifices I made along the way worth it? And it was. And so I dedicate my second painting, to my friends and the class of 2008, who I have also seen grow and face challenges of their own but have yet survived. We have come full circle. Congratulations all. We made it!