Through service, I was able to find what I needed and carve a path for my life that truly felt like my own and the truth is, those seminars where you explored new ideas.
Those late-night conversations where you challenged each other and learned from each other, after all of that.
You might find yourself a little dismayed by the clamor outside these walls, the name-calling, the negative ads, the folks yelling at each other on TV, the power of inventing the future.
I just want to pause for a moment on the word invent; because the term - phrase isn't, succeed in the future.
It's not planned for the future or do the best you can in the future. It's invent the future and, with those three words, comes a simple message, a call to chart your own course and live life on your own terms. And that's a lesson that I first learned back when I was a teenager. And some of you may have grown up like I did
In neighborhoods where kids had -very few of them - had the chance to go to college.
Where being teased for doing well in school, was just a fact of life.
Where well-meaning but misguided folks questioned whether a girl with my background. Could get into the kinds of colleges I dreamed of attending. After being surrounded by people who are so dedicated to serving others and making the world a better place, You might feel a little discouraged by the polarization and gridlock that too often characterizes our politics and civic life.
You might be tempted to find a community of like-minded folks and work with them on causes you care about and just tune out all the noise.
I worked hard, and I did my best to tune out those voices of doubt, including the ones inside my own head and eventually, I was accepted to Princeton and I got that education that my dad had always dreamed of.
But the truth is graduates, there will always be folks who make assumptions about you, based on superficial things like where you're from or what you're wearing or how you look, there will always be folks who judge you based on just one thing that you say or do.
Folks who define you based on one isolated incident. I want to urge you to do just the opposite.
Today, I want to suggest that if you truly wish
to carry on the Oberlin legacy of service and social justice, then you need to run to and not away from the noise.
Today, I want to urge you to actively seek out
the most contentious, polarized, gridlocked places you can find. Because so often throughout our history those have been the places where progress really happens.
The places where minds are changed, lives transformed.
In the end, people can only define you if you let them. In the end, It's up to each of us to define ourselves. It's up to each of us to invent our own future with the choices we make and the actions we take.
To succumb to feelings of despair and anger only means that in the end we lose. Those feelings are not an excuse to just throw up our hands and give up.Not an excuse, they are not an excuse to lose hope.
But here's the thing our history provides us with a better story, a better blueprint for how we can win. It teaches us that when we pull ourselves out of the lowest emotional depths
and we channel our frustrations into studying and organizing and banding together then we can build ourselves and our communities up.
we can take on those deep rooted problems and together. Together we can overcome anything that stands in our way.
Nothing, and I mean nothing is going to stop you from fulfilling your dreams. And you deserve every last one of the successes that I know you will have.But I also want to be very clear that with those successes comes a set of obligations to share the lessons you've learned here at this school.
The obligation to use the opportunities you've had to help others. That means raising your hand when you get a seat in that board meeting and asking the question “Well, whose voices aren't being heard here?”
“What ideas are we missing?”
It means adding your voice to our national conversation. Speaking out for our most cherished values of liberty, opportunity, inclusion and respect the values that you've been living here at this school. It means reaching back to help young people who've been left out and left behind helping them prepare for college, helping them pay for college.
So I want you all to go out there be great, build great lives for yourself. Enjoy the liberties that you have in this great country. Pursue your own version of happiness.
And please, please, always, always do your part to help others do the same.
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