F&M Stories

Thank you Drew Stelljes for your kind words. Thank you, President Altmann, members of the Board of Trustees and the faculty, and distinguished alumni. And, of course, thank you to my fellow students. I am humbled to stand here before you and your families. 

In Fall 2020, I squinted at the pixelated Zoom boxes on my computer screen, as I listened to one of my professors lead a fascinating discussion about the dangers of essentialism, the act of categorizing people and things in static and limiting ways. It was an intense 80 minutes that left my head spinning. As he wrapped up the discussion, he said, “Religious studies makes the unfamiliar familiar and the familiar unfamiliar.” I scrawled this at the top of my notebook, memorialized in blue ink for the next four years. While this was a description of the discipline I would come to know and love, it also underlines an essential part of an F&M education–how our classmates, professors, and mentors have encouraged us to not only exist in but embrace the dynamic and changing world around us. 

To make the unfamiliar familiar is something we have done from the moment we became F&M students. We arrived here four years ago to an unfamiliar college campus, made even more strange and distant by masks and plexiglass dividers. And when restrictions eased, we saw each other's smiles and shared friendly waves. Each semester we have stared at syllabi full of unknown topics and terms, learning and learning until they became familiar. We have witnessed unfamiliar faces turn into our most trusted confidants, and the most daunting responsibilities became manageable. We have become familiar fixtures of this campus we now call home. 

But, just as importantly, we practiced making the familiar unfamiliar. We had the opportunity, emerging from a global pandemic, to not just return to a pre-2020 status quo, but to feel the freshness of being, face to face, learning together. We have doubted and second-guessed ourselves, we have redefined and reinvented ourselves. We changed majors, minors, hobbies, and post-graduate goals. We shed old habits and comforts, growing into new versions of ourselves. 

For me, one of the ways I have turned the familiar unfamiliar has been to walk backward, leading tour groups for the admissions office, traversing a familiar landscape completely turned around. I have realized, after some trips and stumbles, that this requires a certain intention and awareness, a re-engagement with the paths and places through which I would normally move, only half conscious, focused on getting somewhere. 

Engagement. Consistent and continuous engagement with the world around us. That is what is at the heart of those cramped blue words written in my notebook, all those years ago. By learning to lean into the unfamiliar, we prepare ourselves to not be discouraged or undone by obstacles, but instead to see them as openings, as opportunities to be changed.

Class of 2024, these past four years have been a whirlwind of unfamiliar and familiar. And, we are about to step into a new world of uncertainty. But we have proven to be adept at finding comfort in the unknown and the in-betweens; indeed we have thrived in them. 

As we graduate today, we enter our next phase as true Diplomats. We must be ready and excited to not only find the familiar, but, more importantly, to challenge it, to make it unfamiliar. To poke at its edges, check its crumbling foundations, and open its locked doors. To be engaged with the world this way is to be a lifelong learner. And, it is to take agency in the process of becoming, to be agile and flexible, compassionate and honest. I am so proud of what we all have become. Here is to becoming and becoming and becoming again.

Williamson Medalist Roxy Calder ’24. Image Credit: Deb Grove

F&M President Barbara Altmann and Williamson Medalist Roxy Calder ’24. Image Credit: Deb Grove

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