As a baby, I used to go on bike rides through the Lakefill strapped into the back buggy of my father’s bike, and was one of those high schoolers that frequented Dillo Day’s evening headliners when I was 16. Despite this, growing up in Evanston beside Northwestern’s campus, I believe there are two primary factors that led me to this school. The first was the fact that I had once dressed as a Northwestern cheerleader for Halloween in first grade, and have since regarded it as one of my best costumes. The second, which may perhaps better describe the first, is that I have lived in Evanston my entire life, and for my primary 17 years Northwestern was a mere playground of bike paths and full, lush ivy.
As a townie, it never once occurred to me that I could actually attend college here, make a home-away-from-home-five-blocks-away here, grow up here. Only when I stood in Arts’ Circle on my campus tour overlooking Chicago did I realize that this was the place for me, a place that I slipped into easily like a well-fitted, knit glove, somewhere where I already knew me better than I knew myself.
I was looking for a type of work that would do more than simply serve as a tunnel to a six-figure salary or to a potential graduate school career, though you can certainly create that here. I wanted what would become my life’s work - a work that becomes your lifestyle as much as it becomes a career. I viewed Northwestern and its students as doing just that, as having big dreams and knowing the importance of sacrifice and what it means to be truly dedicated. These students do nothing less than dive head first into what they love, often without a life jacket. Standing in Art’s Circle on that day in September 2007, I realized I did not quite understand what my own life’s work would be, but that Northwestern was a place where I would be able to discover it.
This, at its very core, has proven itself to be the core of Northwestern’s culture, driving me to work harder, smile brighter and concentrate on spending these four years doing something that will outlast graduation.
As I quickly discovered early into my first fall, I was one of debatably three 18-year-olds who also wanted to study Classics, in addition to my primary major – as I’m often told, Latin is a dead language, after all, making it a major that lies near the bottom of the popularity totem pole. People often ask me why I’ve spent 12 years studying Latin, and the specific example I always give in response is one that has become so synonymous with our time in both Northwestern.
The phrase carpe diem is one that I’m sure many of you have used and, subsequently, pronounced incorrectly. At the very least, you know that it translates to seize the day, a call to arms to take advantage of every opportunity that awaits you. The true meaning of carpe, however, is pluck, a beautiful distinction that infers that this opportunity is all right there in front of you, waiting to be picked effortlessly. In that sense, it has never been and will never be easier to stumble upon involvements, upon majors, upon best friends, upon love as it has been these past four years.
We spend much of our time in Northwestern, for all intents and purposes, inside a classroom, writing and rewriting a headline, calculating a three-line equation, learning about the difference between an A-Wind and a B-Wind. Northwestern meticulously trains us to channel our energy and ambition in creating a product on which we would never compromise, which has our fingerprints all over it, which tells a really incredible story. Northwestern has given us carefully cultivated roots, furthered by the constantly available opportunity to extend them and grow upwards in the direction of our choice.
In these past four years, we have been provided the opportunity to do difficult things, to do disappointing things, to do emotional things; opportunity has been all around us, oftentimes in venues that we did not consciously seek out. Every one of us is composed of hundreds of these opportunities that we encountered throughout our time here. On September 12, 2008, we moved into our freshman dorms with only a mini-refrigerator and our values, only to be eventually made complete with the puzzle pieces of our character. Whether by intention or by happenstance, Northwestern has crafted our tabula rasa, or blank slate, into the talented professionals, fierce friends and exceptional people we have now become.
I am in part my freshman year CATalyst counselor, who introduced me to that organization called Dance Marathon, which taught me the real meaning, and greater reward, of sacrifice, be it our weekend plans, our sleep schedule or, oftentimes, our GPA. I am in part the girl I once befriended over our ritualistic lunches of Norris chicken tenders, who taught me what true, unyielding friendship really means. And I am in part how I felt on those rare, summery days in March, when I sat on the Lakefill and used my AP Style Guide as a pillow.
I fell in love with Northwestern the moment I realized it had fully molded me into the person I wanted to be that afternoon I stood in Arts’ Circle, but it wasn’t a person with a resume, extracurricular activities or weekend plans that I had ever envisioned. Right now, the real world is a scary place composed of a salary, a morning commute and an apartment where your best friends no longer live three steps across the hall. In the real world, just as here, in Evanston, at home, there are opportunities that we may not be able to visualize. These are only puzzle pieces that are meant to provide a hint of assurance in our own capability throughout our next steps after Northwestern. I would give anything to make the mistakes I made, meet the people I met and take the leaps of faith I took in my time here all over again, but we owe it to our future to celebrate our past and brace ourselves for another chapter full of equally exciting puzzle pieces.
We graduated knowing that while we are no longer enrolled in Northwestern, we will continue to act as though we are students of Northwestern for the rest of our lives. We will not only search boldly for opportunity, for what we know is beyond our limits, but we will allow ourselves to grow through our work, our relationships and ourselves; we will both seize and pluck.