As I stand here today, looking out at all of your familiar faces gathered here on the verge of graduation, I’m brought right back to the memory of our First Collection.

Freshly separated from our families and quietly carrying our apprehension, we sat beneath a canopy of oak and tulip trees and took turns speaking — sharing our nerves and what we hoped the next four years might hold. And for many of us, it was the first time we ever heard each other’s voices.

I remember someone likening our class to a bowl of soup — different ingredients coming together to deepen each other’s flavor. And then someone pushing back on that idea, suggesting we were perhaps more like a salad. Or maybe it was the other way around.

And then, of course, someone else offered another metaphor entirely: that maybe we were more like a painting, each of us a different brush stroke contributing to the same masterpiece.

I suspect a few of us quietly rolled our eyes, realizing we were about to spend the next four years becoming very familiar with the language of seminar discussion: complete with “I just want to piggyback off that...”s and “I’d like to push back on that idea...”s

But in truth, as the sunlight filtered down through those branches and fell across all of us sitting there together, I felt something I hadn’t expected.

I felt hopeful. Hopeful that I was in a place, surrounded by curious and outspoken peers that cared enough to want the metaphor we landed on to feel just right.

Over the last four years, I’ve often returned to that feeling.

There have undoubtedly been moments when our candlesticks dimmed — times when anxieties loomed large, when the world beyond this campus felt especially heavy, when we may have even started to question our own light.

Whether studying climate change, war, inequality, political polarization, or any number of the crises we’ve spent these years trying to deeply understand, many of us have learned that paying close attention to the world can often make it feel bleak.

Somewhere between our classroom discussions, the late-night reading, and the daily ritual of scanning the news while deciding which stories we were prepared to confront, we may have found ourselves asking:

Is ignorance, after all, a kind of bliss?

Does learning more about the world — truly learning — inevitably bring with it a certain heaviness? And is the critical awareness we’ve spent these years cultivating meant to leave us feeling less hopeful?

And yet, despite all of that, I have somehow found myself becoming a more hopeful person in my time here.

I spent the last year working in the Swarthmore Admissions Office, answering the same set of questions from prospective students over and over again.

Why a small school? What do you like most? The least? What’s your Why Swarthmore story?

And I could have answered those questions in a million different ways.

I could tell them what it feels like to sit with your friends in Cherry Border right as it’s blooming on a Sunday evening.

I could tell them about professors so brilliant, and so deeply human, that the lines between classroom and life start to blur.

I could tell them about taste-testing every dessert from Narples, or the strange miracle of meeting your best friend in the dorm room across the hall your first year.

I could tell them about the miracle that is our EVS, Grounds, and Arboretum staff—Chethun learning your name and greeting you with an elbow, your EVS tech saying "Hi" before the sun is even up, Grounds turning a blizzard into a walkable winter wonderland overnight.

But if I were being completely honest — honest without worrying about sounding a little corny — I would tell them about the hope.

Because during my semester abroad, halfway across the world, and even when I’m back home in Texas, I have found myself looking for all of you.

I’ll catch a glimpse of someone on a train, or in a restaurant, and for a moment I’ll think: Was that someone from Swarthmore?

And what a strange comfort that is.

Because the truth is, I don’t know all of you. But I’ve seen your faces for the last four years. In conversations, in laughter, contorted in all sorts of thoughtful expressions.

And somehow, that has come to mean something.

We are united not just by this experience, not just by the accomplishment of graduating from Swarthmore this weekend, and not even singularly by the intellectual curiosity we are all so proud to share.

We are united by the fact that, over these four years, we have learned to see the world clearly — its beauty and its brokenness — and still believe that better is possible. Still strive and organize alongside one another for a better Swarthmore, a better world. To continue to uplift our voices, be it in disagreement or in cheer, in protest or in celebration. To unify, to unionize, and to ultimately seek out hope in one another, no matter the seeming hopelessness of our times.

So as I stand here today, looking out upon all of your familiar faces, tucked under the accomplishment of a new degree, holding onto your candles yet again, I am more hopeful than I have ever been before.

Congratulations, Class of 2026!