2009 Commencement Senior Speech

Listen to Nora's speech on Clark Voices

Nora Feely '09

Good afternoon friends, family, faculty, and graduates of Clark University class of 2009. Before I begin, I'd like to thank my parents and big sister for coming all the way from Missouri to be here, I love you all very much.

When I decided to try out for senior speaker, I kind of just did it for fun. I realized when I sat down to write the speech that I actually didn't know what I wanted to say. Those of you who know me will understand that this is not a position in which I often find myself. Then I got an email from my good friend Christina Herron, who sent me this quote by Steve Jobs, the founder of the Apple Company. When I read it, I knew this is what I would want to say on the day of our graduation:

"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently—they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as crazy, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to change the world, are the ones who do."

This quote made me think not only of how Clark students believe they can change the world, but also the ways in which our school encourages this belief. We are living in a tumultuous time, and last year I decided that if Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination, I wanted to leave school the first semester of my senior year to help get him elected. I knew this was one of those moments that I didn't want to look back on and wish I hadn't stayed on the sidelines. My parents supported me, so I told my professors, advisors, and administrators that I wanted to leave for the semester to do this. I was surprised to be met only with encouragement. No one thought it was impractical to leave school to work for an underdog political candidate; I received no lectures about responsibility, college loans, or staying on course. Instead, everyone told me that this was a once in a lifetime chance for me to help push the human race and my country forward. I'm lucky that I chose to go to a school that welcomes the crazy ones, and still believes that if people are crazy, creative, and passionate enough, they still have the power to change the world.

My friends who go to big schools don't really understand our quirky little school. They wonder what we do without game days, greek life, or the ability to sing our fight song on command.

But while our classmates may not know how to recruit people to a sorority, they do know how to recruit students to work at the University Park Campus, participate in the Big Brothers/Big Sisters program here in Worcester. Maybe we don't tailgate on game days but we do volunteer for Just Do It Day to help clean up our community. We, at Clark, are taught that as privileged college students, we have a responsibility to the community around us.

But we do manage to make these things fun-or at least funny. In my four years here, we've never had a "Just Do It Day" T-shirt that didn't have some slightly inappropriate innuendo on it-I guess we figure that as long as we're cleaning up trash, we might as well keep our sense of humor. And it's not like all we do here is save the world. I think we can all agree that any fun we miss not having game days, we manage to pack into one day every spring on Spree Day. We also tend to celebrate pushing the human race forward by heading to the Blarney or Moynihan's, or just laying around on the green if it ever actually stopped snowing in Worcester. And of course, none of my friends at big schools can say they partied behind their University President's house the night before graduation.

And that's how we are, I think, as a school. We work hard to make the world a better place, through opportunities like the social entrepreneurship major or the HERO research program in the geography department, but we also have a lot of fun in the process. This is because we don't just do things to put them on a resume or a grad school application, we do what we love. I learned this about Clark when I joined the mock trial team here. The stereotype of mock trial at most colleges is that only tightly wound, slightly scary students participate in it. For them, Mock Trial (and I think college in general) has nothing to do with having fun.

Like with so many activities here, though, the Clark team is different. This year, before playing a high profile Ivy League team (which shall remain nameless because I happen to know we have some alumni audience), the Clark team was in the hallway listening to music (Lil Wayne, to be specific) and dancing to get one of our teammates to relax before the big trial. The other team stood across from Sam, Amanda, Andy and me, rolling their eyes and smirking at our apparent lack of seriousness over the competition. I think they thought they had us. We laughed, and kept dancing. Later that day we beat them and because of that trial they did not advance with us to the National Tournament. Those Ivy League kids were stunned. They couldn't figure out how this goofy, scrappy team from some small school that most people hadn't heard of could beat their polished, incredibly serious squad.

That school underestimated the power of the troublemakers. They assumed that a team so clearly made up of misfits could never succeed. I guess no one told them that at Clark, that's what we do. By doing what we love, and actually enjoying it, we succeed in ways people would never expect.

We might not be the typical all-American college students but I think we can all agree that we're glad that's true. Because the world we're about to graduate into needs a lot of work, and it's going to take people who are passionate and crazy enough to think that they can change to the world, to actually do it, and make it a better place.

So here's to us, Class of 2009, we made it, and we've got a lot more to do. Thank you.