Scripps College

“You cannot authentically live anyone’s life but your own. That is the deal that life offers us. We as women have fought too hard and for too long against the narrowing confines of social expectation to have anything less. Here at this wonderful point in your lives today, this hatching into your future, it is now time for you to embrace what was denied those who came before – it is now time to follow the passion inside your heart and listen to its voice above all others. When you do this, you don’t just make your own life better. You make the world better. Pursue your passion, and everything else will fall into place. This is not being romantic. This is the highest order of pragmatism. There will be many, many times in the course of your professional and personal lives where you will be encouraged – in shockingly plain ways – to take the easy way, to go along with the group in contradiction to your own principles. You will one day be standing in the shoes of Faust, most likely somewhere on one of the jobs that you take. But the safety of the world, in some sense, depends on your saying ‘no’ to inhumane ideas.”