'Practical Dreamers' Of Wellesley College Get Their Diplomas

WELLESLEY, MA — For the 140th time, Wellesley College gathered to celebrate a commencement ceremony and say goodbye to faces that had become familiar across campus for the past four years.

Always a bittersweet day, the day was one of joy and reflection. For student speaker Marley Forest, that meant reflection on the entire Wellesley experience, not just the good moments.

"It’s true that for many of us Wellesley has been a place of incomprehensible love. But it’s also true that many of us have faced difficult times here, some of us perhaps even the worst of our lives," she said. "There have been nights in which we didn’t think we could stay here, nights when we questioned if we had been admitted by mistake or if we would be better suited somewhere else."

Forest said she brought up those moments to show the resilience of her classmates and celebrate the successes and the obstacles. In speaking about the world they are about to enter, she said that everyone part of her class had tremendous insight and potential, a mixture of knowledge and awareness that is unique to only to them.

"Recognize your ambitions and your dreams and be proud of them. And then, in recognizing your influence as one person, multiply that by 35,000. That is the number of living Wellesley alums worldwide, whose ranks we are about to join. If we choose, we have a global army of brilliant, driven, and powerful peers who hold within them this same community that we do. That is not insignificant, that is extraordinary. And So, I leave you with this thought: As individuals, we can each make a difference in this world, but as a community, we can and we will change it," she said.

Tracy Smith, the 22nd U.S. Poet Laureate, told the graduates to practice love, rather than tolerance.

"Tolerance is a barely-disguised foul look on my face as I glance across some line from me and us to you and them. Tolerance requires no cognitive shift. Tolerance forgives my prejudices, my innate sense of bias and authority. At best, tolerance supports the idea that your needs must be as important to you as mine are to me. But Love is a radical shift. Love tells me that your needs must be as important to me as mine are; that I can only truly honor and protect myself by honoring and protecting you," Smith said.

Prior to the presenting of the diplomas, President Paula Johnson told the class to be "practical dreamers."

Practical dreams give rise to grander dreams. They are both flower and seed. We saw this at the historic March for Our Lives Rally for gun regulation, where Dr. (Martin Luther) King’s 9-year-old grand-daughter spoke. And you probably recall her words. She said: 'I have a dream that enough is enough.,' Johnson said, before ending with, "Much that lies ahead is unknown, but one thing is clear to me. Purple Class of 2018: You are the practical dreamers that the world needs."

Below is the full ceremony: