Orientation Dinner
Class of 2005: President's Welcome
Wellesley College
August 26, 2001

Diana Chapman Walsh
President
Wellesley College

A warm welcome to everyone. It's wonderful to see you here at last. We've been waiting for you for what seems a very long time. And many people have been anticipating this moment. My thanks to everyone - students, staff, faculty -- whose creativity, commitment, and hard work has come together in planning this opening day and the activities to follow during this orientation week.

I want to say a special word of thanks to the students who have come back early to get things ready: Orientation Committee, Res. Staff, First-Year Mentors, Ask-Mes, others here this evening. We're grateful for your energy, enthusiasm and good work.

I want to thank the staff as well: members of the Student Life Division, and all the front-line and back-stage people who make this College run-who prepare, provide, and manage the food, the buildings, the grounds, the technology-on and on … many, many people performing many many overlapping functions. We're akin to a small town in that respect-highly dependent on one another for our comfort, our safety, our satisfaction, our success -- and for ensuring the conditions under which you can learn, we all can learn … the reason we are here.

So … before we do anything else tonight, I want us to think about all of those people-most of whom you haven't yet met, some of whom you may never meet. I want to ask you to join me in pausing to reflect on our debt of gratitude to everyone who has worked to bring us here - and that includes the folks at home: your parents, families, teachers, friends. Would you pause with me for a moment of silence to call to mind some of those people to whom you are grateful, some of those people who have made it possible for you to be here today (whether they are here with us or not). [pause].

And now would you join me in a round of applause to thank all the people who are here and who have been part of getting you here and/or preparing the way for your arrival? Thanks.

Now you may have noticed that I made a big deal of that and you may have wondered why. It's because I want to encourage you to hold this moment of thanks in your memories as a reminder, throughout the year and indeed your whole time here, a reminder to notice, experience, and express your gratitude often -- to one another and to all who provide you any help and support, however mundane, no matter how busy you are, no matter how preoccupied, or needy, or self-absorbed you may be when the help is rendered. Learn the stories of the people who are serving and supporting you here. You will be enriched and inspired if you will open yourselves to others and if you will listen for the lessons you can learn from discovering who they are, what you have in common with them, how you and they are different.

This is important because the most essential thing we are all doing here is creating and sustaining a community of inquiry. Each of us has a role to play in that-there are many different roles. We learn from our differences, and the quality of the whole depends on the commitment each one of us is willing to make to our collective exploration. We are highly interdependent. The quality of life at Wellesley during your four years here - the depth of the inquiry in which we engage -- will depend very much on the attitude each of you brings to each encounter. If you cultivate in yourself the virtues of compassion, patience, tolerance, gratitude, discernment, simplicity, then you will find those virtues in others and the whole community will benefit.

I'm counting on all of you to do that and I am so delighted to be welcoming to Wellesley College all of you who are joining this community today for the first time -- transfer students, Davis Scholars and post- baccalaureate students, and the great green Class of 2005. I know we are going to have a wonderful four years together-four years full of wonder.

You, who bring us such a wealth of possibility and promise, arrive at a promising moment in the history of this institution. We have just completed the celebration of the 125th anniversary of Wellesley College (a year-long birthday bash), and last fall we also launched an ambitious five-year fund raising campaign that will end just as you graduate in 2005. You missed the birthday party, I'm sorry to say, but you'll be part of what I'm sure will be an equally exuberant celebration of the completion of the campaign at the close of your senior year.

And along the way you'll be seeing steady progress on some of the goals the campaign will enable us to pursue. Already we've begun to create new internship and study abroad possibilities, the new Tanner Conference about which you'll be hearing a lot this fall, new professorships and academic programs and new facilities for teaching and learning, for technology, and for athletics. We'll be planning a new campus center as well and it probably won't open until you're getting ready to graduate (it takes a long time to design and build a complicated new center). The student representatives on the bulding committee commented the other day that they'll just have to have daughters and send them to Wellesley because the building is going to be so cool - and so slow to go up.

Our anniversary provided us many occasions to reconnect with our mission and history and to look to the future. What we observed were the impressive ways, ever since our beginnings, that Wellesley College has been redefining what constitutes effective leadership by making it truer to women: to the gifts they have for the world and the hopes they have for the future.

Madeleine Albright '59, who spoke at our 125th anniversary symposium last April, expressed her hopes for you when she said: "I do hope that each of you will use the knowledge you gain here at Wellesley to be more than a consumer of liberty, but also a defender and enricher of it, employing your talents to heal and help and teach." You will, I am sure. You will bring your own distinctive experiences, perspectives, and gifts to that task. We are delighted to have you joining the sisterhood of powerful and passionate Wellesley women who are making a difference in the world - women who have made something noble of their lives, as I know all of you will do, each in your own way.

It's a great pleasure, today, also, to welcome the families of this class of 2005 to the Wellesley family -- to share your excitement and pride in your accomplished students-daughters, sisters, granddaughters, whatever your relationships. With that well-deserved pride, I do also recognize your feelings of impending loss, as you prepare to say good-bye and watch these women set off on this new adventure they've been anticipating for so long.

I want to say a brief word, first, to the families, and especially the parents, here with us this evening. I know from my own experience that many of you will be leaving here not only with your cars still full of all the paraphernalia that couldn't be jammed into those cramped dormitory rooms, but also with a large lump in your throats as you say your good-byes.

As the mother of an only child -- a daughter - who is now in her late-20s, I still recall this transitional moment vividly ... viscerally, although it was a decade ago (which itself is hard for me to believe). In fact, I still remember as though it were yesterday the feel of her hand in mine, the crunch of the leaves under our feet, and the crisp autumn air in our lungs, as we walked to kindergarten for her first day of school some 25 years ago. Do you remember that moment too?

Our own David Pillemer, a professor of psychology here at Wellesley, has written an elegant book about these kinds of vivid memories -- they stay with us with a saliency that brings back a flood of sensations and feelings. There will be aspects of this day -- today -- that for many of you will occupy such a place in your minds and hearts, an indelible place as a major life transition for your family.

We all have our coping strategies when we need to sort things out, and one of mine has always been to write. I wrote a couple of poems that day my daughter left for college. It's become something of a tradition for me to read one of them on this occasion and I'll do that this evening -- at the end of my remarks.

But first, I'm happy to be able to report -- from personal experience -- the good news that your daughters will be back to you (and not only for all that extra stuff you'll be schlepping home today). They'll come back fresh with a new appreciation and respect for all you've been and done for them -- once they've had a chance to find and claim their own passions.

One of the greatest joys in my husband's and my life right now is the deep and rich relationship we have with our grown daughter, who was married here in the college chapel in June, the day after Wellesley's graduation (not exactly the best day to squeeze a wedding into my calendar, but it was the day that worked for her; she's a senior resident in internal medicine at the MGH and a day off is a rarity). We'll catch her for a rushed meal at some strange hour as she rotates off a long shift, exhausted, and, as she says "toxic" after an all-nighter, but those moments with her are precious, and we do savor them.

At the same time, we try hard to strike the right balance with her between intimacy and invasion of her space, between silence and words. We try to be there for her when she needs us, but not to impose our needs on her, at least not too much. That's the delicate balance of parenting -- acting as though we really accept the famous dictum from The Prophet, that our children are not our children but life's yearning for itself.

The new relationships you'll develop with your daughters will evolve in surprising and delightful ways, so hold on to that reassuring thought as you take your leave this evening, and be patient with yourselves and your questions as the new relationship unfolds. It will take time and there will be peaks and valleys. Be patient with your daughters too.

We're deeply grateful to you for sharing these exceptional women with us; we do know how lucky we are to have them for a time, and we'll work hard to be worthy of your trust. We thank you for it.

And now, to you incoming students -- the Class of 2005 -- first it's a real pleasure to add my words of welcome to those you've been hearing all day long. As Wellesley women, you already sense, I think, that much will be expected of you, during the time you're here on campus, and throughout your lives. I know you have high expectations of yourselves; they brought you here.

Your task while you are here will be to discover what matters most to you, what for you is most fully alive, the places where you can be most passionate, most powerful, engaged, and effective -- the places where "your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet," Frederick Buechner's evocative definition of vocation.

And then your task will be to find the courage to develop the capacities, knowledge, and wisdom that will enable you to shape your life from that wellspring of identity, integrity, and commitment. That sounds straightforward enough, but it is a life-long task. And you will succeed at it. Wellesley women succeed.
 
You will succeed as Wellesley women by applying yourselves, by taking advantage of the extraordinary opportunities that lie before you here, by making learning your number one priority during your four years with us.
This is the only time in your lives when you'll have in quite such a concentrated form the luxury of investing so directly in your own growth, surrounded by so many people so committed to supporting and rejoicing in your intellectual strides. I know you'll take every advantage of this unique and precious time. Make a point of really getting to know your professors every semester.

You'll succeed by being true to yourselves, by taking risks (but not dangerous ones), by stretching your minds and surprising yourselves, by experimenting with entirely new ideas and new tests of your mettle, with different versions of yourself, different ways of expressing your vision, your promise, your voice.

 Cultivate curiosity and interest in many things, but don't spread yourselves too thin. Do as many things as you can do well at any one time. Learn to amuse yourself -- to find your muse. Try to notice something every day that delights you and takes you by surprise -- and try to surprise others. Notice what inspires you. Find out what it is you love, and do more of that, however hard it may be.

You'll succeed here if you let yourselves grow toward the sun (as you certainly will), and I hope you'll make the time to mark and observe that growth. If, as a child, any of you periodically marked your height and the date on the door jam to your room, or in the closet, or somewhere else, just to have a record, then you'll sense what I mean.

You won't be growing much taller here -- and most of us would just as soon not expand a lot in girth -- but you will be growing in every other vital respect, if we're all doing our jobs. And I strongly encourage you to take time, with some regularity, to mark where it is you are -- intellectually, socially, spiritually -- to assess and to consolidate the personal growth you will surely experience.

Keep a journal, meditate, take long walks, sit by the lake, write poems or letters to yourself (or to someone else and keep a copy), save quotations or writings or other works of art that speak to you, share your struggles with friends -- use any and all touchstones that work for you -- from your own culture or (even better) from a new one you'll encounter here.

You'll succeed by asking yourself what you need from this College to develop into the finest, wisest, deepest person you can be. Ask yourself that question from time to time and then make sure you get what you need. And let me or someone in the administration know if you're not finding it. We don't promise that we'll be able to fix everything, but we do promise to listen. Because the best way -- the only way -- Wellesley can make a difference in the world (our most fundamental purpose) is to graduate women who will - and you will be such women.

It won't always be easy. I trust you know that. There will be times of struggle and distress, times when you will feel lost and overwhelmed. That is an inevitable part of the journey on which you are setting off. Trust yourselves through those times. When you hit the wall or find yourself lost in a cul de sac, don't take that as evidence that something has gone terribly wrong or that you are failing. More than likely it means that you are taking a major new step.

There's one other obligation we all share -- one other measure of our individual and collective success. We must all ask ourselves not only what we as individuals need from Wellesley College, but also what each of us can bring to make this the best learning community it can possibly be -- for everyone.

I ask you, please, to ask yourself this question from time to time: What personal, intellectual, cultural, creative contributions am I bringing this community? Is there more I can do to make this a vibrant, inclusive, challenging place in which we all can learn from each other? Am I being constructive? Am I being creative? Is my impact positive?

As you do these things, as you ask these questions, as you are mindful in these ways, as you act, always, as though what you do makes a difference (because it does), then you will surely succeed ... at Wellesley and throughout your lives.

So -- there is serious and important work we will be doing together -- learning, questioning assumptions, shaking loose of prejudice, supporting one another in community-building and intellectual-inquiry. I know you'll do this work faithfully and well. I know we can count on you.

I know, too, from eight years of visits with Wellesley alumnae across the country, around the world, and down through the generations, that among the greatest treasures you will take from this College -- and cherish for the rest of your lives -- will be the deep and enduring friendships you will nurture here. And some of the most lasting ones have begun this very day.

So please savor your friendships, guard your spirits, and save some time for fun. As important as our serious work is, it is equally important that we not get so bound up in it that we miss the joy along the way. "If you miss the joy of it," Robert Louis Stevenson said, "you miss it all."

Let's make a pact together then -- on this memorable day as we contemplate the next four years together. Let's agree to work hard, to be disciplined and respectful, to take seriously our commitments to ourselves, to one another, to this special community, and to the powerful legacy of this College.

And let's promise, too, to save some time for laughter, levity, and love. When you catch me walking around the campus with a distracted or worried look on my face (I'll probably be thinking about all that money I have to raise), remind me to lighten up -- and I'll do the same for you.

Welcome to Wellesley and the very best of luck to each and every one of you. We are delighted, and we are privileged, to have you here.

Now the poem. I wrote it a day or two after my daughter went off to Stanford as a first-year student in September of '91. As hard as my husband and I had tried all that summer to change her mind, she was resolute that she wanted to fly alone to California. She said it was going to be hard enough and this would make it easier for her. So we said our good-bys at Logan airport. This poem describes the moments just after we put her on the plane.

Shall we watch the plane take off?
You ask as I try not to cry.
I shake my head no,
And we walk to the car
Unburdened except for the pain.

It's not as though there wasn't time
To see this coming, you say
Cautiously, half question-half joke, as if to help.
But I am blinded by a loss
Beyond envisioning.

We come to the car, just two of us now.
No child to sit in the back ...
Empty electric chair at the end of death row.
Let's go back, I blurt. Gently, you say
No. It's time to go on.

So ... now is it's your time to go on. Safe journey and God speed to you all.

Your daughters are going to thrive here and make you even prouder of them, if that is possible, than you are at this precious moment. Thanks again for the confidence you have placed in us.