This might just be the cheesiest thing I’ve ever written, but I had a lot of fun with it so bear with me. Ever since I’ve been able to conceptualize what a graduation ceremony actually is – and after watching Elle Woods give her speech in Legally Blonde, of course – I’ve dreamt of being a student speaker at my college graduation. I never ever thought I’d be nominated to apply for Valedictorian and to write a commencement speech, but to my immense shock and surprise I was! Now, I wasn’t actually selected or anything (which could be due to the cheesiness of the following draft), but that’s fine by me. I’m still happy I took the chance and wrote a speech that younger me would be proud of. I didn’t want it to go to waste, so here it is! This one’s for you, LMU Class of 2022…just fast forward a little bit to our graduation day.
To our wonderful administration, trustees, faculty, and staff. And to our parents, family and friends: thank you for being here today and welcome to our celebration of Loyola Marymount University and its newest graduates, the class of 2022!
This won’t be the first time you’ve heard this today, and it surely won’t be the last, but I want to begin by congratulating each and every one of you. We did it…and we did it all together.
Today is a day to look back on these past four (or however many) years of our undergraduate experience. It is a day to reflect and to feel all the feelings in the present. And it is a day to look onward towards our very bright future.
If you told me four years ago that I’d be standing in front of you all today, I probably would’ve explained to you how very unlikely that would be, seeing as I couldn’t even make it across my high school graduation stage in a normal fashion. I quite literally walked the fastest I ever have in my twenty-two years of life and made it from one side to the other before they were even done announcing my name.
There’s video proof of this moment, and I remember watching it over and over again, wondering why I felt the need to rush through it all. Back in May of 2019, I even snuck onto this very stage at night as it was being set up. It was my first semester here at LMU as a spring transfer student, but I was a freshman who was very much still reeling from the embarrassment of the year before. So, I walked back and forth across the stage at different speeds and paces like a lunatic, practicing my do-over graduation walk for this very day.
I was determined not to rush it this time, and I still am. So I guess we’ll see how that goes for me a little later. But after that night – and after my entire first semester here, really – I was determined not to rush my college experience as a whole. Instead of looking back at something like a video of younger-me booking it across a graduation stage, I wanted to be able to look back at a time capsule full of memories that would fill me with pride for the rest of my life.
Now, I’d like to take the time to do just that with all of you. Meaning, I’d like to create something that can act as a shared time capsule for all of us and our experience as a pride of LMU Lions.
Now I know we can’t make a physical time capsule full of all the things that’ll remind us of our time spent here on the Bluff; there’s just too many of us! So, throwing it back to something most of us surely did at least once in elementary, middle, or high school, I thought we could write a letter to our future selves.
For the purpose of this speech, I know that ‘we’ may look more a little more like a ‘me’, since I’m just rattling off a pre-written letter to you. But I do sincerely hope that you can all fill in the blanks that may appear for you here. Draft your own messages in your own minds about your own memories. What do you want your future self to remember most about the you that’s sitting here right now? Or about your time at LMU?
Dear Future-Selves of the Class of 2022,
How are you?
I know, a small question that can yield a simple or complicated response. But all of us sitting here on May 7th, 2022 – this fine, LMU Undergraduate Commencement Day – are really eager to know. Maybe now you finally have the answer to the question, “what are you going to do after graduation?” Or maybe you still don’t, maybe your plans completely blew up in your face. However you really are and whatever you’re really doing, I hope you answer honestly. And if the answer is not what you want it to be, I hope you find the strength needed to change it…because you deserve to love every minute of the life you create for yourself and you deserve to feel proud.
Proud like how you felt on your graduation day (today! for those of us back here in the present). Proud like your parents, professors, and friends will always be of you. Proud like we will always be of each other, for we accomplished a lot in order to make it to this day.
We made new friends, tried new things, discovered new passions, and even persisted through a pandemic – a global phenomenon that essentially took away and changed the entire “middle” and “end” portions of our college experience. Still, we managed to find the silver linings of it all. If we hadn’t…well, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here about to cross the finish line.
So, future-self, what do you remember? Or, what memories and lessons did you choose to take with you after LMU?
I know we’ll all remember the countless Zoom meetings and what it felt like to do school away from school. And I know we’ll remember and cling to what college was like before COVID stole our sense of normalcy away. I know we’ll remember the fun. But, most importantly, I hope we remember each other and how all of our individual and collective stories impacted us as fellow human beings and storytellers. I hope we remember to continue appreciating differences and amplifying each other’s unique voices. And I hope we remember how everyone in this crowd contributed to our education of the whole person and finding our purpose.
So now just one question remains. What would you tell your younger self if you could go back in time?
This is something we can always ask ourselves. And it’s a question whose answer will continue to grow and change as we do. Whatever we learn in the next however-many-years-pass-until-you-think-about-this-letter, I hope we continue to persevere and remain resilient through all the challenges we may face. That we chase our dreams with integrity. That we continue to feel empathy for our peers and neighbors always. And that we do it all with pride.
LMU pride, of course! The kind we all share as a pride of LMU Lions. Perseverance, Resilience, Integrity, Dreams, and Empathy all being aspects of ourselves that both spell out and give meaning to the word for us.
So, future selves of the class of 2022…this is why we’re writing this letter to you.
No matter where you are now, or how you’re doing there, I hope you know your LMU experience is something that can be carried with you forever – like a time capsule – to remind you to feel proud of yourself always.
Today, remember to slow down on that stage. For after we walk across it, the stage becomes our life. Savor all the moments and memories as you live and make them, there’s no rush! Go forward knowing that you’re ready for the journey that awaits you, LMU and all the people surrounding you here have made sure of that.
And to the past, present, and future you: congratulations. You have so much to be proud of, today and every day.
Thank you!