A Message to McMaster University Science Class of 2017
#AnjoLovesYou
Congratulations, we are scientists! You are headed towards your science degree because you know how to solve for x or you know how to pipette small amounts of clear, colourless solutions into other clear, colourless solutions or you finally learned how to GetIt@Mac with LibAccess when you’re not on campus.
But do all of these things define us as scientists? Does our degree give us the honour of being called such? Or are we here because we are scientists by nature?
As we trudge through our last set of final exams, I want you to think about what science means to you. For me, my definition is probably going to be different from yours.
We have all taken our own spin on the Marauder experience and that is something that needs to be celebrated, especially these days. We often put labels on ourselves and on other people, whether it be by which program you are in, where you are planning on going in life, or even what clubs you are part of. With these labels, it is so easy to define our own paths based on the expectations of other people in the labels we put ourselves in.
But I think it is so important to embrace our uniqueness and our multiple dimensions and to remind each other that we each have our own stories that got us here and that moving forward, we must continue to make our own stories and share them.
We are scientists. We experimented and failed and reflected and experimented again and failed again and reflected again and experimented again and failed again and then got back up. But as much as these failures seem to loom over us - whether it be by a syntax error on LaTeX, or getting 4 spots when you were expecting one on your Western blot, or getting a p-value of 0.051 - the fact that we are graduating should remind us that what matters most isn’t the fact that we failed, but it’s the fact that we tried and tried again and supported each other through it all. And that’s what science at McMaster means to me.
But we are not all just scientists – some of us are teachers, some philosophers, some musicians, but we’re mostly here because we are all just general nerds. It is so important as we move on to our next chapter to continue being nerds, but also to try and not trap ourselves to our expectations. Because that’s not what McMaster University taught us to do.
I have seen you take the opportunities and resources offered at McMaster in so many unique ways, some of us even made our own opportunities, and that truly describes who we are as McMaster graduates – a generation of innovation, creativity, and interaction. I learned that, with the right intentions, you can do almost anything at McMaster University. And you all did and contributed to making our school a hub for cultivating exceptional people in our society. So don’t forget your capacity to impact as we move on from this community and enter the world. I am so happy to be here with you and so proud of you all. I am looking forward to seeing how you move on to impact the world just how you impacted me and McMaster University. So congratulations Class of 2017. You are all so much stronger than you think and your impact on this world will definitely be seen wherever you go as long as we remember our Maroon roots.
We are scientists. We took the campus by storm, and now it’s time to take on the world.
