Friends, Family, Faculty, Invited Guests and my Fellow Graduates:

Welcome and Congratulations.  If you are present, you are part of the reason for at least one graduate being here today.  After a little more than 4 years, my fellow students and I will be leaving SUNY New Paltz with friends, experiences, and a degree.   We should all feel proud of our accomplishments, grateful to those who supported us, and excited about the future ahead.  Reaching this day is not only the achievement of the students, but that of their families, friends, professors, and school administrators.  

We devoted ourselves to a task that would be challenging academically, socially, and emotionally.  Completing this stage of our lives means we were up to the challenge, and understood the benefits of possessing a college degree.  From this day on, we may consider ourselves part of a community that is needed as well as respected. 

I went towards Electrical Engineering because it is the science of problem solving.  I was used to being one of a few girls in the technical classes I took in High School, and expected the same here. What I found instead was an environment of diversity.  I have met, studied, and worked with students from China, India, and Africa, and have had professors from Egypt, Iran, and Argentina.  There were classes in which I was the only female, but for my classmates and my professors, they too were the “only one” in their own way.  Engineering is an applied science, and scientific law is true anywhere in the world.  It was therefore fitting that my department consisted of a diverse, international community.

 Looking around, I see there is not one of our collective majors in which diversity does not play a role.  It is the differences in people that prompt the studying of a certain demographic to market a product. It is the differences in people that lead to the conflict in drama that must be expressed by writers and actors.  And it is the differences in people that make life interesting, and worth-while.

Among us today are those students who may go on to make scientific discoveries, those who will implement those findings as usable technology, and those who will act as liaisons between its suppliers and consumers.  There are those who will compose music, paint, act, and express the emotions we all need to observe in order to know that we are not alone in the world.  All of these people will use the knowledge and skills that they have learned during their college career. Yet also here are those who will pursue careers having nothing to do with what they have previously studied. Opportunities can arise in life that we cannot conceive of right now, but I am starting to believe that the only thing sadder than a missed opportunity is for your life to turn out exactly as you planned it. 

So how do we choose what to devote our time to, whether it be a specialized area within our major, or one in a completely different field?  I defer to my mom’s favorite poet, Robert Frost, and his “Two Tramps in Mud Time.” 

Frost writes:

But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As my two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future's sakes.

Now I know the English Majors graduated yesterday, but I think we can understand Frost’s meaning.   The best result comes from one who is doing what they love, as well as what is needed.  There is no job that can offer pure enjoyment all of the time, otherwise people would do it for free.  However, we should strive to be of use at something that meets our needs, as well as our desires, and pursue it wholeheartedly.

Working as a co-op at IBM, I was able to meet students from other schools of engineering.  What I usually found was the same; they were one of many in their major, and the environment was heavily related to that field.  I am so glad this wasn’t my undergraduate experience.  After sitting through an electronics class, I was able to see a production of Freshdance, hear Maya Angelou speak, or watch the fashion show held during the fall semester.  For these opportunities that allowed me to stay well-rounded and exposed to other areas of study, I thank my fellow graduates, their professors, school administrators and deans.

I of course thank my own professors.  Thank you for your knowledge, your enthusiasm, your time, and along with my family, helping me get into graduate school.  I thank my classmates, for undertaking this difficult major with me, and showing me that engineering cannot exist unless people can communicate and work together.  And I thank the woman who made the whole department run, Secretary Judy Depuy.

To my family:  You are, quite simply, the reason I am standing here.  I love you all.

Meg:  You were an awesome roommate for 3 years.  We’ve been through a lot together, and you’ve become one of my best friends.  Thanks for always being there.

Pop-Pop and Nani:  You’ve always supported me in everything I do.  Thank you for your love, encouragement, and making the time we spend together special.

Grandma and Grandpa:  You have built a strong family, and shown all of us the importance of our Judaism, and balance in our lives.  Thank you for your love, your gifts, and Grandma, Happy Birthday.

Aunt Lisa:  You are one of the most fun, hardworking people I know. Thank you for spending weekends with us, encouraging me in my education, and being the best aunt my brothers and I could ask for.

My Brother Nathan:  I think you exhibit Mayer’s, and my, best qualities.  You’re kind, helpful, funny, and are always there to get me to laugh, and enjoy being home.

My Brother Mayer:  Nathan learned to make me laugh from you.  I admire your confidence, the leader you’ve become since starting at SU NY Maritime, and your ability to balance all of your responsibilities at school with spending time with us.

Mom and Dad:  Over the past 22 years, you have shown me what I am able to do myself, and what a family is meant for.  You have made our home haven.  It is the light I see when things are difficult, and the place I most want to be when they are wonderful. I strive to be like both of you- your work ethic, your kindness, and you ability to teach through example.  None of what I accomplished would have been possible without you.

I thank God that I have been blessed with the people I have around me, and can only hope that my fellow graduates fill their own lives with people who love and support them.  For education means nothing if it does not serve to better those around you. 

It is a critical time in our nation’s history, politically, socially, and environmentally.  Yet I have no doubt that all of us are now better equipped to not only to make an improvement in our area of our interest, but to more critically analyze, teach ourselves, and relate to others.  We have all been fortunate to live in a world where our job has been to learn, for knowledge is a gift that cannot be taken away.   Another poet, William Butler Yeats, said that “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”  We may consider ourselves illuminated.  Thank you, and Good Luck!