Who Did You Meet in College?

Posted on May 23, 2014 by sammweber

I applied to give the senior commencement speech for my 2014 Grove City College graduating class. I wasn’t selected, but I still wanted to share my thoughts with my class. Congratulations, everyone! We did it.

I came across a quote this semester that says: “We are judged by what we finish, not by what we start.” Graduating from Grove City College is not an easy task. My time here has taught me things about myself, about my faith, and about life that I never could have learned at any other school. I discovered that I have more willpower, more patience, more discipline than I ever could have imagined; I also found out that I have friends whose love, support, values, dreams and desires are truly inspiring and push me to be a better version of myself every day. We are emerging smarter and stronger from the challenges this environment has placed on us. Graduating from Grove City means that we can be secure, or better yet, we can be confident in our ability to endure and survive hardships — hardships in our academic, personal and professional lives – for years to come. See, it is impossible to truly know yourself, or the power and grace of God, or the strength of your relationships, until all of these things have been tested. And I am sure you can all agree, Grove City has certainly tested us. But it is knowledge like this that is a true gift, and one that we will carry with us for the rest of our lives.
I wish that I could sum up the past four years for all of us, but the truth is that we have all had unique journeys during our time at Grove City. While we have been taught in our academic lives to analyze and synthesize, real life teaches us that we cannot always draw big conclusions, profound truths, or great significance from the events of our lives. On days like today, we may desire to have some great epiphany or to know what our time at Grove City has all meant, but I can’t pretend to know how God will use our time here in the future.
Looking back over these past four years, the majority of my memories involve boring Friday nights flipping through flash cards, sitting in the library writing research papers into the wee hours of the morning, anxiously waiting for class registration to begin only to find that the internet isn’t working, standing in line for chocolate chip pancakes in the SAC, pouring my heart out in worship at Warriors, sitting on a bus to Thomas More College with the women’s soccer team, and cleaning snow off of my car for what seemed like eight out of the nine months that we are here each year. While none of these memories seem like they will have a profound impact on my life, it turns out that this is okay. It’s actually amazing, really.
A few weeks ago, my friends and I were eating lunch in the cafeteria, not talking about anything very important. In fact, I can’t even remember the topic of our discussion, but it was the kind of lunch you can only have with your friends where it doesn’t really matter what you are talking about, the fact that you are with them is enough to make you happy. It was fun, but not really noteworthy. It was then that I realized that it’s the every day, mundane moments like this, the kind of moments you have experienced hundreds of times over again — like eating lunch with your friends in the cafeteria — that these are the moments that have the biggest impact on us.
See the truth is that it doesn’t really matter what clubs you have been the president of, how many games my your athletic team won, how many A’s you got in your classes, or even what career you have chosen. Instead, true meaning comes from the relationships we have with others. Very few profound life revelations come from the accomplishments we achieve in college. The rest, maybe even the majority, are molded by the time we have with the people around us: the people we see in the library, walking into chapel with us, or sitting next to us at commencement today. And who knows, the people we met during our time at Grove City might turn out to be the next President, the next CEO of Facebook, or maybe the person who finds a cure for cancer.
So, take a moment to evaluate your life at college. What people did you meet? What friends did you make? What professors influenced your life? Who will you continue to share your life with long after we leave here today?
All those seemingly meaningless little moments of your time here, all the trips to the TLC to get your computer fixed, all the IM sports you played, all the times your RA had to tell you to be quiet when you and your roommate were laughing too loudly during quiet hours, all the time you spent proofing each others’ papers: these are the pages that you have been writing in your book of life. These are the things that possess the truest vitality. These are the things that you will take with you from this day forward. So, now that we have started and finished another chapter of lives, where are you going from here? What chapter will you finish next?