Baccalaureate
A reflection on Stanford, this beautiful place I learned to call home.
Each year, Stanford hosts a Baccalaureate Speechwriting contest. This year, two hours before the deadline, I began writing. Five minutes before the deadline, I trimmed a hundred words to meet the word limit. I submitted seconds before the competition closed.
This speech was a chance for me to reflect on my time at Stanford, to mull on my experiences and wonder over what comes next. The following speech is the product of this thought.
❧❧ ❦ ☙☙
Stanford has taught me many, many things. How to read into a novel, to pull stories apart at their seams and understand their gods and creators. How to project into subspaces, compute all sorts of products, and perform Gram-Schmidt orthogonalization (thanks, MATH 51). How to ride a bike first with one hand, then none, then how to patch up scrapes and bruises after accidents on the Circle of Death.
I can go on and on. But standing here today, there are a few special lessons I'd like to share that I'll carry with me for the rest of my life. Three, to be precise.
The first, a lesson on home. October 27th, 2019, was the first day when, without even thinking, the word home wrote itself into my journal. It was then, a month into my stay, that I finally grew familiar with campus. The Row transformed from a verb to a noun; the sprawling campus finally seemed to gain a semblance of order. And though I was still finding my place, it was a moment of wonder. What a beautiful place, I remember thinking, how I'd love to spend my next four years here.
A few months later, the pandemic happened.
For many of us, this Spring is just the second Spring we've had on campus. The pandemic shook our worlds, but it also taught me what home truly is. Home was the communities that worked so hard to stay together despite time zones and Zoom fatigue. Home was the upperclassmen that mentored a sophomore still finding their way, the bits of conversations exchanged in digital passing. And when we finally returned to Stanford, home was not this campus, but the people, the creative, colorful communities I've grown to love all these years.
The second, a lesson on faith. Stanford taught me to take the leap, because so often, the best things in life are just a bit out of reach. I've learned that when your friend says it's the super bloom, you take the drive out to see fields aflame with lupins, poppies, and fuchsias. That when your friend says there are opportunities to explore Asian American liberation through dance, theater, and service, you dive into all three. That when your neighbor down the hall invites you to take a swim in Lake Lag at 4 AM because it finally stopped raining and they're surely draining the lake soon, you… maybe sit that one out.
The point stands. My only regrets have been leaps not taken, bridges not crossed. I invite you all to live without regret. Take that leap, and see where you land. If not on solid ground, you'll soar above us all.
The last, a lesson on learning. It's funny — the most important lessons I've learned have rarely come from lecture halls. Rather, it's been the moments in between that have taught me the most, moments of calm spent in meditation, late-night conversations until 3 AM with friends. Learning is a lifelong process, a state of open-mindedness and eagerness to empathize. Issues that once seemed black and white have given way to rich gradients of viewpoints. Injustices previously painted over by the brush of history invite me to rise up and challenge the systems around me.
Looking ahead, I can't help but feel a certain excitement, tempered by the bittersweet reality of saying goodbye. In the next few years, we will disperse across the world, into communities, disciplines, and industries ripe for change. We'll create the worlds that, at present, we can only dream of. I'm confident we'll create a world we can be proud of.