Right now, as we speak, 60 miles from where we sit among these trees, thousands of horseshoe crabs are piling their awkward bodies on the beaches of the Delaware Bay for their annual reproductive ritual. A single female will release thousands upon thousands of small green eggs, and males will fertilize them. The sand is streaked with eggs and as the waves rise you can see eggs suspended in the water, like chia seeds in a giant ocean pudding.  

There’s more to tell about this story that I’m not going to talk very much about today. The red knot, a shorebird with one of the longest migrations in the animal world — from the tip of South America to the Arctic — makes a critical stop in Delaware Bay to feed on horseshoe crab eggs every spring. This web of relationships is affected not only by climate change, which is changing everyone’s schedules, and also by harvest of horseshoe crabs for both bait and biomedical purposes.

But today I’m thinking more about the crabs, and us.  

I think it’s easy to get caught up in the perfect, especially for Swatties. And the horseshoe crabs help me remember that none of us are perfect beings. If they’re very lucky, maybe 10 in 100,000 of those eggs will survive to adulthood. That’s a lot of not-perfect.  

There’s a phrase: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. And one thing I wish I had better understood when I graduated from Swarthmore 25 years ago is that none of us are perfect. With the best of intentions, I have caused problems, hurt people, and made decisions I regret. And I wish I’d learned sooner how to handle my own mistakes. How to acknowledge, apologize, and make changes for the better without getting derailed by shame. We’re never going to be perfect, but I do believe that we can get better at being imperfect.  

And it’s not just about our own imperfections, but those around us.  

I thought long and hard about accepting this honor. And a great honor it surely is, to get to celebrate you alongside these incredibly accomplished individuals. Swarthmore is a complicated place.  

I am here because I didn’t want to let the imperfect obscure the good. And there’s so much good, so much light to hold up. Everything you’ve learned about the world and yourselves. The work you’ve created. The magical relationships you’ve forged with your peers and mentors here, which I hope will nourish you for the rest of your lives, as they have for me. And the potential of what you all, and this place, can be in the future.  

And because, frankly, this is neither the first or last imperfect institution of our lives. In fact, like me, you may find yourself at the helm of an imperfect institution sooner than you expect. We have to do our best, help others to do theirs, forgive what we can, and keep moving forward with grace and intention. Because there is simply too much work to do in this world right now to get stuck.  

Horseshoe crabs don’t get stymied by missing perfection. They’ve been at this for millions of years, and I’m not exaggerating here; these crabs first appeared in the fossil record literally 250 million years ago, long before the North American continent emerged, much less the coastline we know today. And they’re still at it today, in this spring of 2026, as you walk across this stage.  

I hope that as your good and imperfect selves leave this good and imperfect institution, you can carry the enduring persistence and awkward grace of the horseshoe crabs with you into your good and imperfect futures.  

Thank you.