Speaker 1:	Okay, hello everyone. My name is Sedinam, and again, welcome to the Class of 2020, and our new transfer students. Now travel with me back to 2013, three years ago. This was a time before free laundry at Swarthmore, a time before an unlimited meal plan option at Sharples, and most importantly, a time before the well-discovered, the mind boggling, show-stopping, accident prone Pokemon Go. 
	I was sitting in your exact same position, except I mean it was hot, humid, but I was in awe of the amphitheater. A mixture of emotions hit me like a ton of bricks. The fear and excitement of being independent, the anxiety of the kind of people I was going to meet, the classes I was going to take, and the uncertainty of what my future at Swarthmore would be like. 
	I had flown 5,000 miles from Ghana, where I had just left my entire family behind, and I remember thinking to myself, "Okay, Sedi, I mean, it seems all right so far. You just need to get through four years. No big deal." See, what I didn't realize then was that I was not going to just get through Swarthmore, Swarthmore was not going to be something that just happened to me. I was also going to happen to Swarthmore. This community was going to influence my mindset, shape my beliefs, and unearth talents I didn't even know I had. And yet, in a mutually beneficial way, I was going to grow by engaging in three particular areas I will talk to you about today: Building meaningful relationships, seeking out opportunities, and stepping out of my comfort zone. 
	Something crucial I learned at Swarthmore was the need to be open to being transformed by this community, and for me, this began by being open to building relationships, from my French professor, Micheline, who invited me and other students to meals in her house ... we're talking delicious, home-cooked French meals ... to my computer science professor Jeff, who would always stay past his office hours to help me understand a programming concept, to Jennifer Gold from International Students Office, who literally helped me survive my first winter here at Swarthmore, to Katie Clark in the CIL, who has been one of my main support systems here as well. The relationships with professors, deans, and my various supervisors and mentors have been instrumental to my growth here. 
	In a bit, you'll be headed up these stairs to Sharples for dinner. The relationships with the Sharples dining staff have been some of the best relationships I have formed here. I can't count the number of times during Freshman year where I would go to Sharples reminiscing about flavorful, spicy, home-cooked meals from Ghana, only to be met with pasta-ba. But then Donny, one of the cooks and one of my favorite people here at Swat, would save me with an extra spicy, Sedi-style Philly cheese steak. I'm getting hungry even talking about it.
	In addition to those relationships, Swarthmore would definitely not be the same without my friends. Friends that stay up til 1 a.m. to help me move in and decorate my room, friends who spontaneously agreed to lead campus-wide dance workshops with me, friends that had to listen to me give this speech 10 times. You know who you are. It's the little things that have mattered, and day in and day out, my friends here have become my family. Again, be open to building relationships. 
	The various opportunities at my disposal here at Swarthmore have been another element to my personal growth and transformation by this community. Swarthmore has so many opportunities, but like checking in at various Poke stops, you need to actively identify and seek out these opportunities. To emphasize my point, I'm going to tell you one opportunity I experienced each of my past three years here. 
	The winter of my first year, through career services, I had the opportunity to do an externship with a tech company in San Francisco. And that connected with a Swarth alum that is still one of my mentors to this day. My sophomore year, through the Dean's Office, I applied for and received funding to attend a conference where I got to connect with a Liberian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, still one of my role models to this day. My junior summer, the Lang Opportunities Scholarship Program provided 10,000 dollar funding where I had the opportunity to implement a robotics workshop in Ghana. I learned what leadership and STEM education meant to me. 
	These opportunities have all been so meaningful to my experience here. Even when you don't see existing opportunities that you might be interested in, you have the power and the agency to create those opportunities. For example, through student, faculty, and staff collaboration, the Women of Color group on campus, WOCKA, created the opportunity for other students to meet staffers at the White House who identified as women of color. Then, weeks later, there I was, straight out of Accra, Ghana, taking a selfie inside the White House. 
	In addition to seeking opportunities, reaching out of my comfort zone has been key to my development. Something that I started doing during my sophomore semester was creating themes that would summarize how I wanted my semesters at Swarthmore to be like. My themes had ranged from party in the USA, to bold and colorful, to focus on the necessary. 
	Last semester, my theme was "Step Out". Now, what that theme meant to me was to get out of my comfort zone and purposefully seek things that I was uncomfortable doing. It was a semester where, through SwatTank, an idea competition organized by The Center for Innovation and Leadership, my teammate and friend Bulu and I pitched an international backpack business idea, and won first place and 3,000 dollars. I had always been used to giving presentations, but stepping out meant putting myself in a position where students, alumni, faculty, and staff could ask me questions where I did not know whether I would have an answer to the question or not. I had to spontaneously answer these questions, and then be in the spotlight about my business idea. And despite my fears, it worked out better than I expected. 
	The results of stepping out of my comfort zone were phenomenal. It was a major shift from the solace I had of always thinking and telling people about my ideas, to actually implementing them. It was a level up from not only seeking opportunities, but also being intentional about seeking the opportunities that challenged and revealed my strengths and my weaknesses. 
	In your time here, you meet different people with different perspectives, faiths, and beliefs. And it'll be important that you celebrate the differences that exist. I encourage you to be open-minded, and realize that not everyone will look like you or think like you or have the same beliefs, and that's completely okay. 
	So for me, that meant coming to Swarth, garnered by my Christian faith, an aspect of my identity which strengthened in my time here. It was important to me to not let any of my identities being a barrier to learning about other people's experiences and stories. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to ask others about their backgrounds and beliefs. Welcome the differences and use them as an opportunity to broaden your outlook and to grow. 
	Class of 2020 and incoming transfer students, every Swarthmore student has your individual, unique journey. As much as I love Swarthmore, and the people I've met, it's necessary to acknowledge that in every relationship, we've had our disagreements too. There were times where I felt like my voice hadn't been heard, or I was frustrated because I felt like a professor could have been more patient with me. However, I've come to understand that it's part of belonging to a community. We all learn, and we all grow. 
	So now, travel with me into the year 2019, three years from now. Just as Swarthmore has evolved and transformed to have free laundry, an unlimited meal plan option, and again, the world has evolved to have Pokemon Go, I have also evolved. I could never have imagined standing here sharing my experiences with you. And even now, even though I still have more growing to do, I'm surprised at how much I've grown in the past few years.
	It is my wish that you, too, will not be the same three years from now. And I ask you to think about how will you build meaningful relationships? How will you actively seek out opportunities? How will you purposefully step out of your comfort zones? 
	My name is Sedinam Nanam Worlanyo, Swarthmore Class of 2017, and it has been an honor to share my reflections on how open I have become, and how much I've been transformed by this community. Thank you.