Two thousand nine hundred and fifty four miles: that's how far I came from California to be at UMass Amherst.
I took the biggest leap of my life coming
here and every day since NSO I am so
beyond thankful that I did. Now I'd like
to think that I've made lots a great
decisions since I've been here but
perhaps the greatest of all was choosing
political science as my major. It's
given me a foundation for a career in
public service and introduced me to
people who think like me, sometimes
alarmingly so. I used to think that I was
the only one who would call a member of
the president's cabinet for any
autograph, but here in this department
I'm not alone. And apparently emailing and calling elected
officials is a favorite pastime for the
people here. Amongst my friends in the
major and myself
skimming "The Times," "The Post," "The Journal,"
and "Politico" is a daily routine and
something tells me that this isn't
unique to just us. The people in this
department have never failed to lift my
spirits or to inspire me. Here are
students who are interns for the White House,
the United Nations, faculty who are
published authors, and students who are
Truman, Churchill, and Fulbright
scholarship recipients. Each day simply
being around these extraordinary people
has only intensified my own dreams. The
lessons of the UMass has taught us are
now more important than ever. If you had
told me in September or even in February
that the world would be embroiled in a
terrible pandemic, that we, the Class of
2020, for the first time in over a
century would miss our commencement, I
probably would have left or even cried.
Now I won't say that I haven't done a
healthy amount of both lately but in
these last several weeks I've learned
how resilient we are. It's not easy to
forego walking up that stage to get that
diploma that we've strived for four
years for, or to miss these last few
weeks of college with our best friends,
but those graduating with me will know
that we're stronger than we thought. My
classmates and I have continued to work hard to
attend Zoom lectures, to take exams online, we've continued to work hard but most
importantly we've continued to think
about others even in the face of
tremendous hardship ourselves. My
classmates have begun fundraisers for
those most vulnerable right now, they
fought on the front lines, and they
continue to relentlessly contact our
legislators; they continue to push the
world to be better. And I am proud to be
among these people. I am proud to say
that all of these people from my
advisors to my professors to my friends
have had an influence on me, they've
inspired me, they've challenged me, and
they've supported me, and for that I will
forever be grateful. And five, ten, twenty years
down the road, I look forward to seeing
my fellow UMass political science majors
as the world policy makers, change makers, as the ones fighting for the world to be
a better place, all the while
representing UMass even if we're 2,954
miles away. So here's to us.
