Sunday, May 24, 2026
by Mariya Novosad ’26, Vassar Student Association President

Hi all! Happy Grad!

It is an honor to be speaking to you all today. Forgive me if I’m a little nervous. This is, without a doubt, the largest crowd of people I’ve ever spoken to and had as an audience—unlike some other speakers here today. I am also graduating, after all. Like right here, right now, not to mention.

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Mariya, and I served as the President of the Vassar Student Association this past academic year. One of the questions I remember people asking me most after I first got elected was “So…what are you going to talk about at Commencement?” which is certainly a bit of a high-stakes question. And I’ll admit, it was certainly something I found myself pondering upon quite a bit early on. I would always respond with something along the lines of “Who knows?” because, given how we are living in times where it feels like everything has the potential to completely change within a day, I had no idea what kind of world—or what version of myself—I would find standing here speaking to you all today.

Honestly, I’m still a little surprised to be standing here, giving you all this speech. For starters, never did I ever expect to step into the role of VSA President. Never did I even really expect to attend and now be graduating from a place like Vassar. I mean, I didn’t even really know what “liberal arts” really meant before coming here. On top of that, my journey here at Vassar has been—let’s just say—complicated. There were days where, if I had been asked to give this speech at that exact moment, this speech would’ve probably involved a lot more yelling, cursing, crying, and just being angry.

Though I can assure you that there’s not going to be any yelling and cursing from me in these next five minutes, in the weeks leading up to today, I have been riddled with doubt—about a lot—but especially my ability to give these remarks, because I don’t stand here today in front of you all with the feelings of resolution I thought were guaranteed with an event like graduation.

And maybe some of you relate to that. Or maybe I’m projecting, but what has been my truth is that this was hard. College is hard. It’s exhausting and overwhelming, and at times deeply isolating. Sometimes you feel completely lost, unsure of yourself, unsure of your future, unsure if you even belong in the room you’re sitting in.

And I think those feelings became even more complicated because more of us than ever have been living in a constant state of uncertainty. These past four years have unfolded against the backdrop of global crises, political polarization, economic instability, genocidal violence, and a debilitating sense of the world unraveling in real time. Every day seemed to bring a new crisis, a new injustice, a new reminder that the systems shaping our lives are deeply flawed.

And institutions like Vassar are never separate from those systems. They exist within them, are shaped by them, and, many times, benefit from them.

So while I stand here today in front of you, I stand enmeshed in the things about this place—and about higher education more broadly—that have made me angry. Things that have frustrated me, disappointed me, and made me question what this space is and what it claims to be.

At the same time, however, I stand here today in front of you as the person I am because of Vassar and the people it has brought into my life. How I think, how I question, how I listen, how I speak—that has all been deeply shaped by my time at Vassar. The boundaries of who I thought I could be and what I thought the world could look like have been expanded in ways I could have never imagined when I first arrived here.

And I know I’m not alone in that.

I’ve had the privilege of watching so many of you grow and blossom over the past few years. We are not the same people we were when we first walked onto this campus. And we leave here not as finished products, but as people still becoming.

And so, the question I keep coming back to is not whether this place was good or bad, or whether it lived up to what it promised us. I don’t think any of those questions will ever come with binary answers. The real question is what we do with what we are leaving here with.

These past four years were not for nothing. I’ve been in your classes, attended the same lectures, done the same readings, and struggled through the same assignments. Our degree is not just a piece of paper. It is a testament to all the knowledge, skills, tools, habits, and lived experiences that have shaped us along the way. More than anything, our degree is power.

So go use it. Go challenge the systems you’ve learned to recognize. Go build the world you wish existed. Go seriously take the responsibility of having just experienced an education that so many people have fought for you to have, and so many people dream of having access to.

And do it with intention. Do it with care, do it with empathy—for both yourself and the people around you. Use what you’ve gained here to give back to the people who have given so much to get you here in the first place. To your families, friends, professors, mentors, communities, the people who believed in you when you struggled to believe in yourself. Because none of us got here alone, and whatever we build, whatever we challenge, whatever we change, will never be done alone either.

So yes, I do have rather high expectations for what comes next. Not because I think we have everything figured out, but because I’ve seen what this class is capable of.

What you did here matters. What you became here matters. And what you choose to do next will matter even more.

Congratulations, Class of 2026. Here’s to what’s to come.