Smith College

"The Board of Trustees has set a very great challenge for itself: to educate us all for lives of distinction. You are never going to be able to make a bar graph out of that. That is immeasurable, and that's what makes it so real. I admonish you -- because that's my job -- to think about the things that float away: your love for your friends, the smell of the lilacs, the feeling your families have on this day. You will have nothing to take with you. The diploma you receive will be someone else's.... Everything meaningful about this moment, and these four years, will be meaningful inside you, not outside you."