senior reflection speech that I gave on May 17th 2018 at Georgetown’s Multicultural Graduation Ceremony, Harambee.
Class of 2018, family, friends, guests, it is truly an honor to share with you all tonight. I am Mia, a Biology of Global Health major and Women’s and Gender Studies minor from New York. I think it is only right that I start by saying congratulations! You have worked incredibly hard to reach this point and should be very proud of yourselves. Whether you realize it or not at this moment, each of you has accomplished a great feat! So please take a moment to applaud yourselves (make them clap for themselves)
When asked about my Georgetown experience, I sum it up to a beautiful challenge that I am grateful to have experienced and survived. The terminology beautiful challenge came to me my junior year as I was entering one of the most emotionally challenging times in my life. The words beautiful and challenge are simple while they hold so much meaning. As a person who likes to receive good news last, I will start with the meaning that “challenge” holds in my story. Not that a challenge is a bad thing because you know you can’t grow inside your comfort zone.
But, as we all know and have experienced, Georgetown is a tough place to be. While I have not heard the words “you don’t belong here” I have felt it. Each day presented me with new challenges to face and overcome. Freshman year challenges included surviving NSO (new student orientation) week, getting lost on campus, finding my classes, making friends, homesickness, procrastination, and struggling with feelings of alienation and isolation when I looked around my class and saw no faces that looked like mine. Sophomore year included defining my course of study, struggling with aspects of my identity, having my numerous commitments catch up to me while still finding my voice and space on campus, situationships, shifting friend groups, the sophomore slump, financial struggles, losing grandparents, and so much more. Then there was junior year; moving on up to the big leagues. At this point, I dealt with the pressure to lead, think about the future seriously, secure internships and potential jobs, made and lost friends, felt stuck emotionally, and reached a breaking point. Next up: senior year which came with a boatload of mixed emotions and challenges. Balancing relationships, dropping pre-med, confronting my own issues after avoiding them for so long, rejections from post-grad plans, just to name a few. Now, I know all that was heavy, but remember I said I like to save good news until the end.
Just as Georgetown challenged me, I challenged it and this process taught me how important it can be to reshape and reframe your own narrative and find the beauty in every challenge. I am proud to say that in my time at Georgetown, I have made my mark. During my freshman year, I was part of a group of students known as the Last Campaign for Academic reform that mobilized, organized, and pushed the administration to make a change and include a diversity requirement in the core requirements of every student at Georgetown. As an institution that values community in diversity and educating the whole person, it only makes sense that students who come through Georgetown take time inside the classroom to explore and engage with difference. I am happy to say that the requirement is now entering its second year. Of course, this is not the only thing that I was involved with during my freshman year, but being a part of that amazing group of students helped me step out of my comfort zone and use my voice and skills to create change. I was able to continue to grow these skills during the summer following my freshman when I was an intern with a DC-based non-profit, ONE DC.
In my sophomore year, I continued to engage in the community in different ways. I continued my internship, sang in the Gospel choir, danced with Black Movements Dance Theater, became a woman of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated and grew as a leader with the Minority Association of Pre-Health Students. Being in these different spaces engaging with other minority students on campus and reflecting on my course work, I truly began to take time to explore my own identities, especially as a black woman on Georgetown’s campus. I began to engage in more conversation about intersectionality and my life as a determined, spiritual, cisgender, Caribbean-American woman, whose family was part of the upper middle class. I had conversations with my friends, my spiritual guides on campus and my professors. I also began to think more about the identity that I had created for myself here at Georgetown. I found myself overwhelmed in silence but continued to press on and engage in my numerous extracurriculars on top of my pre-med courses.
The summer going into my junior year, while struggling with organic chemistry, I decided to start going to counseling on campus after being encouraged by a dear friend. In this space, I thought about the ways that I, like so many students, were parts of numerous clubs, double majoring, sacrificing sleep and just engaging in a generally unhealthy culture of stress and busyness. To combat this, as a resident of the Black House, I put on numerous events that focused on self-care from coloring with chaplains to movie nights, and my “Let’s Talk Hair” events. I was so determined to take care of the community that I forgot about myself even after constant reminders from Dav and Shola until I found a new counselor who changed my life. The summer before senior year, I got away from Georgetown and went back home. It was the longest time that I had been at home since arriving here (at Georgetown) freshman year. Being away, I had the space to grow and have conversations with myself and I came back to Georgetown in senior year with a new attitude and energy.
As a senior, I am happy to say that I have been transformed during my time at Georgetown. I have found my passions and purpose. I have grown into my own with the help of my professors, staff, and the people that I call my chosen family, my friends. I am definitely not the same person that walked onto Georgetown’s campus four years ago and for that I am grateful. This ride called the beautiful challenge dragged, shaped and molded me into the woman who stands in front of you today. But it is not over. Going forward we will continue to be challenged in a multitude of ways and also experience moments of pure bliss and beauty. I hope that each and every one of you will not forget what happened here, take the good, the bad, and the ugly from Georgetown and help it guide and propel you. May you remember to take deep breaths, reshape and reframe your own experiences, and revel in your greatness.
Thank you all for listening and taking a ride on the Beautiful Challenge with me. Hoya Blaxa!
