To the Class of 2019

About two weeks ago, I got to celebrate the achievements of an amazing group of students walking across a stage. It was finally Graduation Day. For all of us, it was years of hard work and perseverance which had led us to line up in single file and walk through the university premises to convocation. It was a beautiful ceremony on a drizzly day, surrounded by smiling faces.

I could see my family and my two best friends waving at me frantically and taking pictures as I walked past the crowd. It hit me then how grateful I was for my parents, my brother, my extended family, my friends, and my cheerleaders for making sure I even got to the auditorium that afternoon. Lord knows that I couldn’t have got through the last five years without them. I am and will always be appreciative of their support and in debt of their love.

As I looked around me, I saw so many familiar faces. There are so many similarities we all share. We’ve all been lost in McNally, we’ve all spent at least 10 minutes in the Tim’s line, we’ve all had sleepless nights studying for finals, living on mac and cheese, and finally, in that moment, we were moving into the next phase of our lives together. There are so many experiences we have in common, yet each of us has our own unique stories.

As an international student, I’ve quite frequently been asked about how I ended up at Saint Mary’s, and this journey is probably one of my favourites to talk about. Funnily enough, I actually never intended to come to Canada at all. My brother went to school in the States and a large part of my extended family is there, so I spent most of the early part of 2014 applying to schools down south. It just so happened that around that time, Lauren from the Admissions Office came to my high school to recruit. I went home that night and mentioned it to my mom, and she basically said, “Why don’t you apply to Canada as a backup? It’s not like you’re going to go anyway, but it’s good to keep your options open”. So very reluctantly, I did as I was told. I applied to 3 schools in Canada, one of which was Saint Mary’s. Eventually my family and I decided that Canada was where I wanted to end up, and the only reason I chose SMU was because it had a really cool campus tour video online. In August of 2014, I landed in Halifax by myself to start this new life, and the plan always was to be here for first year and then transfer to a bigger school out west.

I started out as an Arts student, doing a double major in Psychology and Criminology, and first year was great! I made friends, I had a job, I was doing well in my classes, but something didn’t feel right. I went back home that summer, and I was looking around at my peers who I felt were doing so many amazing things at the time – giving Ted Talks and doing fascinating research – and I was so distraught because all I wanted to do was make an impact. I just didn’t know how. I had no idea what my passions were, I thought I was too young and too inexperienced, and any time I was asked what I wanted to do, I just said, “I don’t know, big things”. I came back to Saint Mary’s that fall, fully determined to transfer somewhere else but something inside me told me to have faith and to stay because I was here for a reason. I’m so happy to say that looking back now, I have not one regret.

Since that fall, I dropped my Criminology major, and officially became a Commerce student by tacking Marketing onto my Psych degree. I became a Residence Assistant for three years, helping students adjust to life in university. I started the tennis team on campus. I helped organize Welcome Weeks. I became a model and started this blog. I joined Enactus and found my passion for public speaking and social business. And all of these amazing things had happened right here at Saint Mary’s. SMU has given me opportunities I could only have dreamed of. I was fortunate enough to travel to rural Kenya in 2016 to teach women how to make reusable feminine hygiene products so that they don’t have to drop out of school. I was given the honour of travelling to the UK to present on the massive progress our Enactus team is making reducing food waste in our province. And I was able to go to Dubai to meet with executives from multinational food and beverage producers to build partnerships. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t come to SMU. This university, and its faculty and staff have believed in me and taken the time to push me to succeed, and for that, I will forever be grateful. But again, that’s just me.

That Wednesday afternoon, I looked out into that crowd and clapped furiously as every graduate crossed the stage. I’m one hundred percent sure each of them has just as wonderful of a journey and as impactful of a story to tell.

To my friends and classmates who graduated in May of 2019, you’ve all spent the last three or four or five years investing in yourself, and you should be so proud to share yourself with the world. If there’s one thing my time at university has given me, apart from my degrees of course, it’s the knowledge that I can make my story what I want it to be. The world is our oyster. All we have to do is believe in ourselves to step out into it.

In the last few years, we’ve experienced love and loss, failure and success, hope and frustration, and all I ask of you is to take that and use those experiences as fuel to your fire. Use those emotions to drive your story forward. For the first time in our lives, we have a blank slate. We’ve gone from school to university, university to the real world, and we have everything we could possibly need to create a life we’ve always wanted.

So, the time has come. Don’t let yourself believe you’re too young, or too ambitious, or too broke – you are who you want to be. Believe in your journey. Believe in your voice. You are your story, and it’s time to start writing.