Oh boy, here we go again. A new batch of freshmen brimming with optimism and joy. *Sigh*
I’ll spare you the doom and gloom until next time for now. Instead, allow me to say this: Welcome.
At this school that I’ve been attending for more than four years now, I have seen people come and people go. And every time, I see people change. They change from excited children to mature and competent adults, most of the time.
This place, this Institute of Technology, is going to be your school, your job, and your base of operations for the next few years. Here is the place that you’ll master the art of writing resumes. Here is the place that you will learn mathematical methods for solving problems you never knew existed. It is a place for expanding your mind and molding it into something great. By the end of your term here at Stevens, you will be a honed weapon, capable of making change in the world outside.
You will make friends and join clubs. You will pursue complicated degrees and undergo programs you never imagined. You will struggle to balance the social life, academic life, and personal life that you desperately want and need, but somehow, you’ll survive.
So again, welcome. Welcome to your home for the next four or five years.
I urge and implore you: get involved. Make friends in the clubs you’ll join. They are just as eager for you to come in and help take over as you might be to make friends with them. Talk to people, make connections. Figure out how the Stevens system works before any of your peers.
But, don’t be deluded into thinking this place is the best place on earth – it really isn’t. Stevens is a decent college, but it has its faults. From the administration making decisions you won’t agree with to the ever looming fate of next year’s tuition, there are many reasons to wonder if you made the right decision.
Did you make the right choice, choosing Stevens as your home? The only answer I can give you is that I don’t know. Part of growing up is owning up. You made the decision to come here, it is up to you to make sure that this decision was the best choice, no one else can tell you otherwise.
If you stick with it, Stevens will take you and change you. You will be a great thinker in this world. Maybe not the most scholarly (you’d have to go to an Ivy-League or some other fancy college for that) but probably more practically oriented than most other college graduates.
So, come. Welcome to Stevens Institute of Technology.
