FEATURE
By Lauren Monacell

"We have come a long way over our four years at Columbia College," salutatorian Lauren Monacell '01 told her fellow graduates at Class Day, May 15, 2001. A native of Atlanta, Monacell majored in English and will start film school at Columbia in September 2001, with the goal of earning an MFA. Although she is on her way to forging a career as a movie writer and director, Monacell used her Class Day speech to remind everyone that a liberal arts education is more than the first step in a "careful linear progression" to a career.

To my fellow members of the Class of 2001, I'd like to say congratulations. To our parents, our friends, our professors, and everyone here at Columbia University, I'd also like to say congratulations, and thank you. We're really graduating! You know, as I stand up here, I can't help but think about that first night four years ago when we all gathered on the lawn for CUnity. How we ran around in the dark, trying to find 10 things we had in common with classmates we'd just met: people born in March; people who have brothers; people who like reggae. And now, as we get together again, here on the steps to graduate, these connections have become a good bit deeper. We have come a long way over our four years at Columbia College, and Columbia, with its brand new buildings and its always more exclusive admissions rates, has come right along with us.

However, for a minute let's look at our time at Columbia not in terms of progress, which our first classes here assured us was a myth anyway. Yes, of course we're gathered here today at a ceremony that marks the end of our time as undergraduates of Columbia College and the beginning of whatever comes next. We're moving on to a new point in our lives, and there's no doubt that's exciting. Still, I've always cringed at the view that high school is for getting into college, college is for getting into grad school, for landing that great job, for working your way up, and so on. Instead, I hope that we can look back on our years at Columbia, at all our years, and see that we've spent every minute — not worrying about what it will do for us in the future, but enjoying that minute for itself.

This constant enjoyment, no matter what we're doing, is what I hope we can take from our Columbia education. When I look back at all the incredible classes I've taken, I am amazed at the variety of things I've done, of the subjects I've explored. For the past four years, I've been totally immersed in everything from primatology to modern Chinese film, from Plato to John Cage, and that was just the Core. At Columbia, a biology major can't just take biology classes any more than an English major, like myself, could just take English. You know, there have always been questions about a liberal arts education. What is it for? What, in particular, have we been doing here for the last four years? Is it just a luxury, a couple of years we get to "take off" before we have to get down to business, before we're thrown kicking and screaming into the "real world?"

Frankly, I hope not. I would like to think that as we work our way through graduate school or as we slave away at those entry-level jobs, there's something else we got out of our Columbia liberal arts education. Of course, we're no strangers to working hard. We've all had nights where we watched the sun come up as we crammed for that test, as we finished up that big paper. However, if we looked for the reason why we had been up all night, I bet we'd realize that it was because during the day, we were busy doing other things. We were playing sports, acting in plays, protesting or volunteering, singing or painting. We were going out with our friends and then sitting around back at the dorms, discussing relationships or religion.

There's a reason why these past four years have flown by so fast, and it's because we've been so busy. Our lives have been packed with activities of all kinds; we've been exploring everything, and this is what I'd suggest that we take from Columbia and bring with us, wherever we go. Now, it might seem that in the "real world" of the ever-increasing workday, there's not a lot of time for exploration. We've all been asked a million times, "what are you going to do after college," as if there could be a one-word answer. I'd like us not to give that answer.

Monacell happily accepts congratulations from Dean of Student Affairs Chris Columbo during the Class Day ceremony. PHOTO: EILEEN BARROSO

The world doesn't stay still for long, and with everything we've done at Columbia, I'm pretty sure we're going to be ready. We can adapt; we'll be open to all our changing options; we're not really scared, but excited that we could very well have not one, but several, or many, different careers. However, I also hope that just as schoolwork was only one part of our experience at Columbia, careers will only be one part of our lives in the future. I hope that we can keep from getting too caught up in the race from A to B to C. And that's why, for a minute, I'd like us to remember one of those Lit Hum books that we've all forgotten. Remember Mr. Ramsay, the cold intellectual alienated from all those around him in Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse.

Mr. Ramsay imagines that, "If thought is like the keyboard of the piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in 26 letters all in order, then his splendid mind had no sort of difficulty in running over those letters one by one, firmly and accurately, until it reached, say, the letter Q." Now, Mr. Ramsay agonizes because he gets stuck in the alphabet he's created. He can't get past Q to R. He imagines, "In that flash of darkness he heard people saying — he was a failure — that R was beyond him. He would never reach R." However, are our lives ever really a careful, linear progression? What's wrong with starting with C, moving on to J and Z, and then examining O for a while?

As we move on from our time here at Columbia College, let's remember to keep branching out, to keep staying involved, and to always keep exploring. Let's take a little office e-mail time to keep in touch with all our friends from Columbia. We will keep paying attention to what's happening in the world, and we'll get involved in whatever community we end up in. I know we won't give up sports, art, or theater just because we're no longer Columbia students. My hope is that we all continue to live a liberal arts life.

I'd like to personally thank everyone who has made my own time here at Columbia such a busy, varied, and wonderful experience. Like all the graduates, I want to thank my parents for giving me this opportunity. Without your inspiration and your support and your belief in a liberal arts education, I would not be here today. Also, I know that all the graduates have had those really amazing professors who we'd like to thank. For me, one was Michael Rosenthal, my Literature Humanities professor who not only got me excited about Shakespeare and Virginia Woof, but who also became an adviser and a friend. Whenever I started to get stressed out because I didn't know what I wanted to major in or what I wanted to do after I graduated, Professor Rosenthal was there to remind me to slow down, to stop worrying, and to enjoy myself.

I wish the best of luck to everyone in this, the Class of 2001. I have no doubt you're all going to go on to do amazing things. You will have enormous success in every field. Just remember to keep having fun along the way.