Notes From a Room

All’s well that ends well and, as this week draws to a close, my college career is ending more beautifully than I’d ever thought it could. The truth is, I expected to graduate and move on with my life without looking behind me and missing the things I’d left behind in the hallowed halls of Bryn Mawr. I expected that my professors would respect me, but not love me…think on me, but not miss me. Needless to say, I am graduating with a group of women I will dread to leave behind as they travel to the far corners of this planet and my professors have told me how much they’d miss seeing me and one confessed I was like family to her. Four years may seem like an instant in retrospect…yet while life is full of finite chapters, love can be infinite. There were days, even weeks, here where I thought I’d give up my dream of doing both History of Art and Medicine. If not for my friends and family, I might have plummeted into feelings of failure and been unable to continue as I did. As it is, I succeeded in everything I wanted! I will have my degree in the field I love, going forward into the career of my choice, with a group of people in my life I feel are almost closer to me than what I’ve ever called a family.
        
       I never thought I’d live to see the day I graduated high school and I never dared to let myself dream of college. Now that I’m graduating, the world seems close at hand and in a perpetual state of blossoming, blooming with curiosities I’ve yet to try and endless possibilities that Bryn Mawr has afforded me in my four years of study. Four years ago today, I had chosen to come to a small ivy-league-reputation liberal arts college for women above a large, coed university on the west coast with a blue-chip pedigree. I did not choose for the women, I did not choose for the name, I didn’t even choose for beauty of this campus…I chose for the best reason of all reasons, I chose for love. I fell in love with Bryn Mawr and I am happy to say that this institution returned the affection with love and care of everyone and everything I’ve found here.

       I have discovered that genius is not one’s innate abilities, but rather what one accomplishes with the abilities they have been given. I can safely say that here, I have loved and been loved by the genius all around me…and that is the highest honour an institution can bestow. Thank you to everyone who has supported me and accepted me as I am, know you are so dearly loved.