Student Speaker
December 14, 2007
Ladies and gentlemen, friends, family, faculty, staff, and fellow graduates: good evening! I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm thrilled to be here right now. Perhaps my excitement comes from the fact that I finished my last final less seven hours ago, or maybe I'm still glowing from the realization that never again will I ever have to attend another organic chemistry lecture. But I think it has more to do with the fact that, despite being exhausted from the last few weeks of preparing for finals, putting portfolios together, and worrying over graduate school, we can all finally look back on the last 4 years and say yes, it was worth it.
Between tonight and tomorrow's ceremonies, plenty of wisdom will no doubt be imparted by individuals with credentials far more impressive than mine. After all, I'm only 22 and a quasi-art student besides... so I'm hardly qualified to give anybody here advice. But I will share with you a few of the more remarkable things my education here has taught me.
#1: Standing in line is fun! I have an admission of guilt to make here: during last VEISHEA's midnight pancake feed, I cut in line. I'm sorry, I love pancakes! It was until I finished my high-fructose corn syrup-drenched stack did I realize that goofing off in line with your mates is way more fun than chewing on mass produced pancakes. (Besides, most of us had already eaten a dozen pokey sticks, four cherry pies, chemistry-club ice cream, and a jumbo funnel cake anyway.) Don't worry, I won't hit you over the head with clever allusions to the journey being more important than the destination, but you get the idea.
#2: Being indecisive about the future is OK. A defining point in my educational career occurred one morning during my engineering physics lab when my TA called my attention to a problem involving a dam (it had something to do with volume and flow rates). He pointed at the illustration I had made to accompany the problem--a pleasant depiction of the dam, the surrounding countryside, a wide variety of flora and fauna... and then he pointed at my solution to the problem, which was somewhat less comprehensive. He told me, half-joking, that perhaps I should reconsider my major. And reconsider I did, five times, until finally settling an LAS cross-disciplinary program that combined my love of natural science with that pesky urge to draw all the time.
#3: Choosing a major that's stuck between two worlds is frustrating, but it pays off. I'm graduating with a degree in biological pre-medical illustration--perhaps you're familiar with the catchy acronym BPMI. What that means is that in between art classes, I took lots of biology courses. Of course, the greatest benefit to a cross-disciplinary program like BPMI is the diversity of experience. For instance, I picked up the single most valuable skill offered in the art world: how to keep from crying when a superior rips into your most beloved work. It took a few embarrassing incidents before I got the hang of it, but I'm pretty stoic now. Speaking of embarrassing, I also learned how to keep from blushing during figure drawing. BPMI students are trained to be professionals, after all.
#4: Genetic propagation is amazing! Biology is really great stuff. For instance, in animal behavior, I learned all about how animals around the world work very hard every day to propagate their genes. I also learned, via my intimate association with the ISU unicycle club, that unicycling across fallen tree trunks is not the best way for one to ensure the future propagation of one's genetic information. An important life lesson, there.
#5: How to deal with not being the best. It's not pretty, but there will always be somebody out there who's better than us. And that's where a liberal arts education kicks into gear. During our time at ISU, we've all had a huge variety of experiences, been exposed to unnumbered combinations of disciplines and outlooks, and settled in with completely different groups of people. But within that variety exists the thread common to all of us. Through exposure alone, each of us has had the opportunity to figure out what we love to do. Some of us love splicing genes, some of us love digging up buffalo remains, some of us love programming openGL, some of us get a kick out of drawing small woodland animals, and some of us love doing all of the above. This variety is our protection against an increasingly specialized, pigeonholed workforce. If somebody's better than you in one area, you can adapt and be better in another, or figure out how to combine two fields into a shiny new one.
So look back on that time you took a bit part in Fiddler on the Roof just for the heck of it, or when you sprinted, buck naked, between Curtiss and Beardshear at midnight in the dead of winter, or when you belted out Handel's Messiah with 400 other people, or when you stayed up all night in a cyber defense competition, or when you helped excavate bits of hundred-year-old vet school rubbish, or when, in an amazing feat of endurance, you tailgated for 24 hours straight. Look back and smile knowing that those experiences were as essential as any class to your well-rounded education.
In the end, a lot of effort from all involved parties went into this achievement. Our folks gave us moral and financial support. Our siblings demonstrated what not to do in college. And our professors put up with our whining, day in and day out, long enough to teach us a thing or two. Pretty unbelievable. So thanks are in order to our dear families, to our tireless professors, to our advisors, faculty employers, even our beloved teaching assistants. But most of all, I extend my gratitude to you, my cohorts in the liberal arts, for giving this university character. Thank you.
