What a strange time it is for us seniors. We’re at a threshold moment in our lives, which is always a little frightening. Lately, it’s had me looking both backward and ahead.
In conversations with friends and in quiet moments alone, we’re wondering how four (or so) years could have passed so quickly. I’m going to deeply miss my time here. Stevens’ culture, for however much we tease it, is made special by our campus and the people and places that surround it. I felt that early on in college, and a major reason I joined The Stute was for the chance to always be looking at this school from new and interesting angles. I wanted to help tell some of the stories that make up this community.
Somewhere in that larger canon is my own story. A rapid tableau of memories surfaces: Saturday bagel runs with friends; watching my circuits professor dance in front of class to illustrate the movement of electrons; late night club eBoard meetings, when no one has gotten enough sleep the night before; trips around Hoboken, into New York, to friends’ hometowns; projects, both long-labored and phoned-in; long walks to school in the rain or snow, made better by a good conversation with a roommate; the feeling of vertigo when I think back to orientation and remember what it was like to meet all of these people for the first time. Today, these memories constitute who I am.
As much as we dread it, we then turn and dare to peer forward. Stevens’ motto is Ad Astra Per Aspera: Through adversity to the stars. As we step forward from this place, what adversity are we prepared to endure, and what stars do we contemplate reaching? This year’s seniors will scatter into a world of experiences new and old, exciting and frightening, clear and nebulous.
I was recently struck by the opening of Charles Dickens’ semi-autobiographical David Copperfield:
“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
As we push forward in our lives, I think we all want to prove to ourselves that we are the heroes of our own stories. In the face of countervailing forces and under the weight of new experiences, we all strive to stay true to ourselves and our aspirations.
I wouldn’t be the person I am today without the friends, peers, and mentors who have shaped me. They have shown me how to grow, helped me understand myself more clearly, and taught me to navigate life through all its highs and lows. But in the end, it will be me and no one else who determines if I will be the hero of my own story. It rests on me to traverse my loftiest successes, my most arduous challenges, my most miserable failures, my closest or most strained relationships — and allow those things to affect me without allowing them to define me. I believe that all of us must leave the defining to ourselves.
Whatever else these years have changed, they have left me far more prepared to find that narrative for myself. I hope all of us move forward with optimism, sincerity, and the strength to be the authors of the next chapters of our lives.
