An Inspiring Speech From Exploring Transfer's Victoria Brown '01

One of the reasons I’ve been eager to deliver this talk for so long is because I am the you that you are and the you that you will become. Community college student, ET student, Vassar graduate, educator, writer, not to mention: immigrant, woman, black, minority, first generation to attend college, parent, spouse…there has to be some overlap.

So the talk is for you. I’ll also confess that my husband was a little concerned when I told him I’d be delivering this address. Don’t depress them, ok. Tell them something positive, something uplifting. I don't know why he would even think that. But maybe I do know. So just in case I get too dire in the next few minutes, I’ll start by telling you something you do know: You are bright. This is something you have always known. You didn't need Exploring Transfer to tell you this. You’ve always grasped difficult concepts, or seen the world from a more nuanced perspective, asked questions (you’ve asked a lot of questions). You always wanted to know more and you knew that there was more.

Chances are, the last five weeks confirmed what you’d always suspected: the best professors do not tell you what to think, the answers, but know how to suggest an idea or direction to stimulate your own burgeoning thoughts. Learning is measured when they see you get it, not by a numerical score. Also, you have had confirmed that much of learning happens outside the classroom, in the casual conversations you fall into with your fellow students that go on long into the night (after which you start writing your paper); that learning, then, is often a collaborative process; that when distractions are stripped away and learning becomes your priority the seemingly insurmountable task you were presented with when you first arrived in Poughkeepsie—two Vassar level classes in five weeks—becomes a matter of course, what you were working on, what you were meant to do. You hit your stride.

I do think one worrisome outcome of the program’s exclusivity is to think of yourself as exceptional and therefore deserving of having been singled out and offered this experience. Here’s one of the first things I want to tell you, that yes while you are bright and maybe even exceptionally bright, exceptional brilliance should not be the criteria for getting an exceptional education/opportunity. Here’s how I found out about ET. In early 1996 at LaGuardia, a humanities professor, Rosa Ducree, asked me to stay after “Oral Communication,” and told me about a program at Vassar College she thought I should apply to. A casual mention that altered the trajectory of my life. She didn't make an announcement to the entire class. And come to think of it, had she, maybe out of say 26 students, 10 might have paid attention, five might have applied and maybe rather than just me, two of us might have been accepted to the class 1996. One more doesn't sound like much, but statistically it’s 50 percent more than did, and an additional exponential number of lives would have been directly and indirectly affected. What I’m trying to say is that there is a wealth of information and opportunities (scholarships, fellowships, internships, programs) which exist that underprivileged students (here I’m describing students who aren’t coming from a tradition of attaining post-secondary education) aren’t even aware that they’re missing out on: it’s one of Donald Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns—the things we don't even know we don’t even know. And yes, we can look stuff up online now, but what are you looking for, and who is going to write your letter of recommendation, or mention your name in a committee meeting, or explain a gap in your CV?

My children played with friends the other day and the mother and I chatted while they ran around. I asked her where she had gone to school, and much more sheepishly than I thought she needed to be, she told me she had gone to Harvard. You know, I didn’t pretend to not be impressed. She lit up though when I told her I had gone to Vassar. It turned out her paternal grandmother had been a Vassar grad. She’s my age, forty-few. Her dad, in his early seventies, is a retired Brooklyn College math professor who had also gone to Harvard, and her dad’s mother, who I presume long dead, had gone to Vassar. How do we catch up to that—level that playing field? But we do, and we must, and right here you are establishing a new tradition. I saw Yolanda post about her son attending the Summer Institute for the Gifted here at Vassar and choosing “Philosophy, Diving into Deep Thoughts” and “Anticipating Algebra.” My own daughter, who just turned nine, pits lucid arguments between Vassar and RISD, her father’s alma mater, for her college choices.

Arrival at the moment where attending a school like Vassar is a given option is where the dreaming in the American Dream comes in. But the dream requires you to be wide awake, to be an active participant in your own progress, and the first order of business is to find the mentors. Find the mentors. Find the people who hold the keys to unlocking doors you aren’t even aware exist, far less have the ability to unlock. Yes, you need grit and determination. Politicians in particular like to hew to the up by the bootstraps narrative, but more and more social mobility through hard work is a myth, regardless of what David Brooks thinks. And again, it’s not because you are not bright or you are undeserving, or someone else from your family or school or neighborhood might have already had the opportunity and opportunity is a limited commodity. I read recently, and I suppose it's something I’ve known anecdotally but hadn’t articulated: a middling, middle-class high school student is far more likely to attend college than an exceptionally bright working class student. And, the brightest working class students rarely apply to top-tier schools. These studies aren’t just numbers or statistics, I know these people. It is becoming more and more impossible to do it on your own.

There’s a necessary component to almost every commencement speech where you are supposed to tell the graduating class to go out and change the world, to make your mark. But a few weeks ago I attended a conference on Mindful Teaching at Alumni House and one of the ideas articulated by Professor Kevin Quashie stayed with me (the idea, simplified, is that minority students in particular, when they find themselves in privileged spaces, take on too many social burdens) so while I do want to encourage you to be responsible citizens, to start your own tradition of post-secondary aspiration, I also want to encourage you to be a little selfish. To hoard some of your precious personal resources: your time and your energy for yourself. Just as we’re supposed to occasionally unplug from all our technology to give our brains space to process the stimuli, it’s ok to unplug from the woes of the world, to find your own center, to learn for the sake of learning; get into the habit of browsing the books on the shelf adjacent to the one you were looking for and to read only for the pleasure it brings. You don’t have to want to change the world, at least not all the time.

Over the last nine years so many of my analogies have come out of parenting. At a recent party a mother talked about her toddler son’s obsession with trains and the subway and how he had memorized all the of the NYC underground map and routes and how he listened to the morning radio reports about delays and connections. And the other parents began to say wow, he’s going to be an engineer, or oh buddy, you’re going to design the trains of the future (flying trains). And I said, or maybe he can work for Transit. Crickets. And I wasn't even joking or trying to be provocative. I had a picture of this little boy as a hardworking man, doing a job he loved that brought him satisfaction and allowed him to take care of himself and his family, and that didn't seem so terrible a future to me. Stability is nice, too. A steady gig is a good thing, bonus if it’s related to your passion, lets you have leisure time and provides a retirement plan.

Listen, I’m not able to prevent the crash you’re going to suffer when you go back to your lives. It’s inevitable. I suffered ET withdrawal and my classmates did as well. You’ve spent the last five weeks being intellectually stimulated and challenged. You’ve had your meals cooked for you, had 24 hour access to one of the world’s best libraries; had an enviable student/teacher ratio with almost immediate and unlimited access to your professors, breathed the clean Poughkeepsie air and now you’re going back to your old life which is bound to seem drab in comparison, or if not so stark a contrast, you’ll still not have the friends with whom you’ve spent so much time over the last five weeks. But once you get over that hump, your eyes will be wide open. You won’t see the same way and you certainly won’t be satisfied with what you have had to make do. Seize your discontent. Use it to propel yourself toward your goal. And find the mentors to guide your decisions.

You do get to try on new selves, but remain true to your lived experience. At the same time, you are not the sum of your hard-luck tales and really, avoid anyone who tries to define you by misfortune; it is your ability and curiosity rather than your biography, which grants you a place at this table.

To end, I want to ask you one favor: when you arrive at a place of privilege, when you are the one holding the keys, when you find yourself guarding the gates, promise me that you’ll try to let more than one person in; that you will become a mentor. Promise me that you’ll use your power, whether you’re an economist, a researcher, a Transit supervisor, or an editor—remember how the summer you spent in Poughkeepsie changed your lives, and pay it forward.