Being in college is a unique time in life. It can be tough to figure out what you most want to achieve during these four years, but hopefully you’ll be able to come to the realization in due time.
Your life at William & Mary is probably not going to resemble anything close to what it might look like 10 years from now. Sorry to be the bear of bad news, but I want all of you to keep this in mind in going about your day-to-day experiences.
You live, breathe and interact in a community that has the primary purpose of fostering and encouraging new and innovative ideas, heated debates and vanquishing any self-held notions of obstacles. Spending hours simply talking about ideas and current events is the norm; students tend to go above and beyond what is required of them within and outside of the classroom simply because they truly love to learn.
This is the underlying message that I hope has been immediately clear since the day you set foot on campus: There is not a day that goes by in your life that you do not learn something. Being in a college community affords us the ability to be surrounded by competing arguments and ideas, and it is up to us to determine which of the lessons we learn we will take with us once we graduate.
The best way that you can help teach others some of these lessons is to always remember that every single one of us has a different perspective or story that can help shape the expectations and ideals of another generation.
