I'm about to (virtually) graduate this Saturday. The world is crazy right now; it feels like one world is dying and another is being born. That's exactly what Fordham has felt like to me. I am most certainly not the person I was in August 2016 when I first walked on campus as a freshman. Some of these changes in myself were discernible when they happened; others are noticeable only in hindsight. I'm graduating as a double major in Spanish Language and Literature and English with a Creative Writing Concentration and a double minor in Theology and Comparative Literature. I've sung in the Fordham University Choir and Schola Cantorum since the beginning of my freshman year. I did a Global Outreach service project in January of 2019, and then I spent a semester studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I've met people I'll never forget, I've had my mind almost infinitely expanded by my classes, and I've been deeply enriched by my creative pursuits at Fordham. (This fall I'm planning to begin Columbia University's MFA in Poetry program.) It's all been dizzying, and the coronapocalypse has been an excellent opportunity to (try to) take stock of it all. At the end of it all, I am not the person I was 4 years ago, and, I suppose, that's what college is supposed to do to you. To anyone planning to come to Fordham this fall, I'd like to offer hearty endorsement and warm encouragement.

Take classes at both the Rose Hill and Lincoln Center campuses. Explore New York City. Adopt a building on campus as your second home. Take classes with professors whom you'll never forget, and make friends who'll stay with you forever. You'll grow in ways you've never imagined before. That is, I suppose, what you ought to do at this stage of your life. And Fordham is a great place to do it.

At the end of his poem 'Four Quartets', T.S. Eliot says that "the end of all our exploring / Will be arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time." When I visit campus for the first time post-graduation (and when I have my in-person graduation ceremony there in the near future), I will know that I've been shaped and formed, matured and stretched, enriched and changed in many ways that I cannot fathom; and that's a wonderful thing. To anyone who is right now where I was 4 years ago, go ahead: begin your life. You won't regret it.