The English Channel The English Channel Volume 17 Issue 2 Spring 2017 | Page 24

Student Successes
Eden Hartley’s
Address to Graduates
Originally when I was planning what I was going to say tonight, I wanted to do
something very fancy and stunningly poetic, with all these brilliant anecdotes and
metaphors, and just essentially all of the things that as a newly minted English gradu-
ate I should be able to deliver. But unfortunately whenever I tried to make all of
these clever metaphors and poignant words of wisdom happen I just got very sad
and a little weepy. So, because I think all of us are some combination of intellectually
and emotionally fragile right now, with exams having only just ended and with com-
mencement right around the corner, I’m going to try to keep this relatively short and
hopefully tearless.
Tonight is very much about the future and celebrating where we’re all going next, but
it’s also very much about reflecting back on the last four years that brought us here,
and for me that means reflecting back on the people who have made these last four
years extraordinary—so if you’ll bear with me, I have a few thoughts to share with
the professors and the other graduates in the room.
To the Professors:
I can only really speak for myself here, but I
can’t imagine I am the only one with this same
message to share with you, so here goes: I am
so sorry. I really do apologize for the mountains
of misspelled words in the painfully rough
drafts, for the semi-hysterical oddly-timed
emails of exam season, and for my freshman
self who, much like my current self, still had so
much to learn.
Yet in spite of all the things that I remember
with mild embarrassment, that is not the point
of this note: because for as sorry as I am for all
of these little patience-testing moments that I
know I at least put some of you through, I am
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