|
Convocation Remarks
August 30, 2004
Anna Quindlen '74
Chair of the Barnard College Board of Trustees
Molly from Stroudsburg, Mimi from lower Manhattan, Chiara from Albany, Jackie from LA, Julia from Seattle, and all the other members of the class of 2008--
Oh....my.....god.
Are you scared? I was scared witless. Suddenly I was not the smartest girl in the room. Suddenly I didn't know my teachers, nor they me. Suddenly my narrow path of Shakespeare, trig and conversational French had widened to what seemed to be an endless field: sociology, biochemistry, art history, political science, philosophy. Suddenly I was in the greatest city on earth. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.
What if I didn't make it?
What had I done? What was I thinking? Where was I?
I was so overidentifying as I watched all of you move those carts in this morning. And, by the way, class of 2008? Four little words: way too much stuff.
Where was I on this day in 1970? I was at the beginning of becoming the woman I am today. I am an opinion columnist, a novelist, the chair of the board of the finest women's college in America and one of the best liberal arts institutions in the country, and I have three children who have put all of that in its proper perspective.
That was why I was scared, I suspect. There was excellence out there, and possibility, and challenge, and maybe failure, too. There was Random House and the New York Times and Newsweek, City Hall and Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and the federal courthouse and all the places you want to go if you want to do things worth doing.
I was not certain I was up to all that, never mind those three kids, who never crossed my mind.
What did I learn here? I learned how to engage the reader with an opening paragraph, how the electoral college works, what the imagery in Van Eyk's Arnolfini wedding means, and why Freud didn't know what women want.
I also learned to value myself, my voice, my opinions, my ability. I learned that in part because I was surrounded by the smartest women I'd ever known, both faculty members and fellow students.
I am part of a great sorority that includes the chief judge of New York's highest court, the president of the American Museum of Natural History, eight winners of the Pulitzer, and more recipients of the McArthur "genius grants" than any other liberal arts college.
One night my teenaged daughter and I were watching Gilmore Girls. "The star and the director," I said. "Both Barnard." Not that I'm trying to influence her or anything.
Sometimes when I'm giving a speech, someone will ask: how do you feel confident about telling people what to do on foreign policy, domestic programs, abortion, homelessness, child care, welfare.
There are a number of ways to answer that question, but I will use the simplest one tonight.
I can do it because I am a Barnard woman. And we learn to fear nothing and no one.
Do not be afraid. Or be afraid and use it. Terrify yourself a little bit with your audacity, your leaps of faith, your surprising choices. Take the course that you never thought you'd tackle. Try the activity that seems outside of or beyond you. Introduce yourself to someone a little intimidating you want to know. And embrace the greatest city on earth all around you.
In the next four years you are going to see me from time to time on campus. I'll be here to meet with President Shapiro or to lead my fellow trustees as we hold our daylong series of meetings or to woman the bacon station at midnight breakfast.
You'll have grown bolder, and I'll have grown older, but we will have this in common: we refuse to be held back, by age, by gender, by the world, by our fears.
Tell me how it's going. Wave or say hello. This place changed my life. It is about to change all of yours. I am a wife, a mother, a writer and an activist. I am Anna Quindlen, Barnard College class of 1974. And that last has made all the difference. |
