After everything it took to get here, we made it!
To everyone who made it possible for us to be here today, thank you.
August 2022, I, exhausted, dehydrated, arrived to start my journey at NYU Shanghai. Even though I’d studied the language and lived in the city as a child, I hardly understood when locals spoke to me. Even more difficult was knowing what to say.
For the first time, I experienced a funny habit many language learners know: When you don’t understand what’s being said, you panic slightly, smile, nod, and say "好的.” “ok,” hope you’re agreeing to the right thing, and figure it out.
I’ve nodded my way through apartment tours, into getting iced coffee instead of hot, food orders I didn’t ask for, and once, when I just wanted a bag of walnuts, I nodded my way into the shop owner pouring the nuts into a food processor, adding sugar, grinding them up and handing me a 1kg bag of a sweet nut paste. I smiled, paid, and added that to my “figured it out” list.
But somewhere between all that nodding, smiling, and figuring it out later I actually did figure it out.
Class of 2025, In Shanghai, New York, Florence, Abu Dhabi, Accra and beyond I want to share three ways being NYU students taught us that we can step into the unknown and figure it out.
Firstly: We find proof in each other.
When I told people I was moving across the world for college, many asked things like: “Do you even speak the language?” “Aren’t you scared to go so far from home?” “What about being Black abroad?”
But I wasn’t afraid.
I had seen my parents, in their twenties, move to Shanghai for three years, with three kids and hardly having left the midwest — just with a belief that they could figure it out. And that sense of possibility transferred to me.
I then discovered this same spirit at NYU:
My best friend, Santiago, failed elementary Mandarin classes and then biked across the entire country the next summer speaking only Mandarin.
Manaal who came to NYU to study public policy and left an independent filmmaker.
Again and again, watching our peers try bold things and then figuring it out, showing us what’s possible, and making stepping into the unknown a bit less scary.
Second: We are bridge builders.
Take a second to reflect on conversations you’ve had in the classroom, late nights in the dorms, debates and discussions in which everyone brings in their own unique lived experiences.
In our time here, these conversations about our homes, interests, and values uncovered how we carry different pieces of the world with us and how those pieces connect; how one of us cares about education access and the other had a different kind of education; how by empowering each other we can shape lives anywhere.
Being here, at NYU, means you are becoming equipped to build bridges between friends, communities, ideas, conflicts, countries.
Bridge building is another kind of figuring it out. It teaches us that simply showing up, present, engaged, and yourself, is meaningful and can connect worlds that might never otherwise meet. That’s a powerful reason to believe in yourself.
Finally: We are resilient.
How many times have we been told these past few years that we are resilient? I don’t need to say it again. But it’s true. As we step into a world of uncertainty, we don’t have to feel ready; just go forth holding what we’ve created together here: People, to lift and inspire us. Tools to build and mend bridges. And resilience, to persevere.
When moments come that scare you, remember you can take a deep breath say "好的好的" “okay, okay” and figure it out along the way.
Congratulations, Class of 2025.