The ignition of those experiences are long behind you now. So, Class of 2024, my wish for you is that in this semester, in this year before you, and the years journey ahead of you, especially during this time where your graduation may not have been what you hoped, nor your college application process, nor the world you hoped to enter into finally as a college student, I want you to let all of that frustration go. It was not an easy process, by any means, but when you know you’re doing what is best for you in that moment it brings peace and helps you find that thing called purpose.
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My MIT journey is a testament to listening to who I was becoming and making sure I was giving myself the experiences that I needed to grow along the way. I’ve even paused my time at MIT to work on a presidential campaign. I’ve stepped into leadership within the Black community, the undergraduate community, my fraternity, and have built relationships with colleagues in staff, faculty, administration, and The Corporation. Since being at MIT, I’ve taken a lot of what was, for me, exploratory courses like MIT & Slavery, Designing the First Year Experience, and Woke Literature. I don’t think I’m alone in saying that MIT placed me in a wealth of challenges and how I responded to each and every challenge revealed where I was in my own growth process into what I’ve learned is more important than being a student, more important than being an instrument in someone’s company-it was my growth into being what I am first-a human being seeking purpose.
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And so, Class of 2024, you are going to come up against similar questions that force you to ask yourself what you’re doing here and I want you to know that above the academic rigor, above the social dynamics, above the professional and post-graduate opportunities, the most worthwhile thing you are learning here at MIT, is more about who you are. Most on this Zoom with less than 20 years of life. But, I was naïve and impressionable by my peers and society to feel that I needed to know what Course I wanted to be, or what I wanted to do with my life or at the very least what I wanted to do with my MIT degree since I was a prefrosh.
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The truth is the only thing I really knew about myself when coming to MIT was that I wanted to heal people and I wanted to be among and advocate for BlackMIT. I never wanted to feel like that again and thus chose to quite literally live and work with my people at MIT. I had even lived in a dorm where this feeling of being what they call a “minority” was exacerbated by racism. I came from a predominantly white school and knew what it was like to live in a space where those who looked like me, especially in my classrooms, were far and few.
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So first, when I was a prefrosh, I was headed to live in Chocolate City, I wanted to be Course 20, pre-med and I knew extracurricularly at the very least I was going to be active in the Black Students’ Union. The second is the task ahead of your class which is unique compared to the 21s, the 22s, and the 23s, and arguably any other MIT Class since the early 20th century. One is about my personal journey and the lessons I’ve learned that hopefully are useful to you. There are two things I want to talk to you about.