Commencement Speech Version 1

I submitted this for consideration to the committee but did not make it to the top five.

My fellow graduates: congratulations! We survived our academic battles and have come to claim our reward. We fought valiantly, persistently, and celebrated galore. These words of felicitation might seem cliché, but the truth is, getting a degree from IIT is a big achievement. I hope that for many of us this will only be the first step; that we’ll go on to accomplish bigger and better things. But for now, and especially today – be proud of it.

I remember attending an Orientation Session as an incoming freshman almost four years ago. Everything seemed so new, different, kind of exciting. With Professor Kallend’s recommendation, I started as an MMAE major. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. I did learn many things, like the fact that stress is what a body experiences during finals week, and how covalent bonds are like monogamous relationships. But I learned just as much, if not more, outside of the classroom.

Perhaps one of the biggest lessons to be taken away from IIT is the ability to change. Because regardless of whether your perception of it has been altered, over the past few years, IIT has changed, and it changed a lot. Things like the Idea Shop, IPRO 2.0, the Office of Campus Energy and Sustainability and the Customer Service improvement program did not exist; library hours and food service options have been expanded significantly, remote printing became available, and even the recycling bins got more sophisticated. Not to mention the countless administrative and curriculum modifications – less noticeable to the student, but just as important to university life.

Not every decision was popular, and eventually some might need to be rolled back or corrected. But the parallels to a constantly evolving living system are unmistakable. And the most exciting part, in my opinion, is that a number of these changes were student-driven, be it through SGA, the Students Speak survey, or simply active individuals who made their voices heard. I think we’ve all grown while at IIT, and it grew with us.

This often vast personal growth that happens to people in college is also what is responsible for the stereotype of a bubble they live in – buried in books, neck-deep in social life, unaware of current events and missing the bigger picture. However, this self-imposed incubation environment is a natural occurrence, simply a stage of life. The trick is to gently crack it open, climb out and face the world, along with everything that has happened while we were tucked into our microcosm of college.

This experience is much like going from being a big fish in a small pond to a small fish in a very, very big one. On the bright side, we can apply what we learned in and out of the classroom to help us cope. This is where IIT’s lesson of change comes in handy. First, that being open to transformation and having the ability to adjust quickly are key to a successful existence. And second, if you can change IIT, you can change the world. Our time is now.

Thank you.