Below is the text of Melissa Nobles’ remarks, as prepared for delivery today.
Wow, thank you Emily and Andrew! Emily Jin on vocals and Andrew Li on saxophone, and their fellow musicians!
Class of 2025! Look at you, you’re looking really good in your regalia! It’s your graduation day! You did it! Congratulations!
And congratulations to all of your loved ones, all of the people who helped support you.
Your parents, your brothers and sisters, your aunties and your uncles, and your friends. This is a special day for them too. They are so proud of you!
A warm welcome to the loved ones who are here with us today on Killian Court — they’ve come here from all over to celebrate you!
And a special shout out to those who are watching from afar, wishing they could be here with you in person!
Class of 2025, you’ve made a lot of memories during your time here: from classes to crushes, from the East Campus REX build to the Simmons ball pit to Next Haunt, from UROPs to the Hobby Shop, and from the Outfinite to the Infinite!
So, I’d like to take you back to the fall of 2021, when you arrived here at MIT.
You traveled from all parts of this country and the world — from 62 countries, to be exact — and landed right here in Cambridge. Together, you became MIT’s Class of 2025.
And you arrived on campus — all bright-eyed and beaver-tailed — after missing a lot of in-person high school rituals, a lot of the high school experience. So, you were extra eager for college, and, more specifically, super excited to be MIT students!
Although the campus was officially fully open for the first time since the Covid shutdown — students, staff, and faculty were all here in person, with Zoom taking a back seat to meeting in real life — there were still a lot of protocols in place.
You had to get through all the Covid tests because we were still testing. Do you remember those Ziploc bags?
You swabbed and submitted attestations because you wanted the keys to unlock doors to labs, classrooms, and all the experiences that make MIT, MIT.
And once you gained access, you discovered a campus that was shiny and welcoming, yet dusty after being mostly empty for a long while. And there was no manual for how to reanimate this place.
You didn’t flinch.
You chose MIT because you like to solve problems, and your inner beaver came out to bring the campus back to life, to make it a home.
You were curious, you surveyed the landscape, and you started to dig into the past in order to build your future.
You sought out seniors, the Class of 2022, to read you in, to show you the ropes, and they really came through for you. They felt the urgency of their limited time left on campus, and they taught you “how to MIT.”
You also pored through archival records of clubs, soaking up history to guide you forward. You filled in the gaps by speaking with faculty and staff and alums. You evaluated the options, decided what you wanted to revive and what you wanted to scrap.
And true to your nature as MIT students, you launched new stuff. You innovated and invented.
And you built communities, from FPOPs and orientation through 8.01, 18.02, your HASS classes, and your p-set groups.
You built communities in your dorms and in your sororities and fraternities.
You built communities through your sports, through your hobbies and through the arts.
You built communities all across campus.
And you learned that building communities is not always easy and quick. It takes effort, patience, and a willingness to listen to and learn from others.
But, in the end, it is so worth it because you’ve met and made friends with really interesting people. Some with similar backgrounds and others from very different backgrounds. And from that interesting and diverse group, you’ve identified your crew — the people with whom you’ve shared not only interests — but your dreams, your fears, your concerns, laughs, and tears. You’ve made real connections — connections that lead to a lifetime of friendship.
And over the past four years, right before our eyes, you’ve demonstrated the enduring value and power of higher education to change lives.
Throughout your time at MIT, you ideated, prototyped, and tested. You created new knowledge, waded through ambiguity, worked collaboratively, and, of course, you optimized.
Now, on your graduation day, we send you on your way with enormous pride and hope.
But at the same time, we are sending you out into the world at a very difficult and challenging time. It’s a time when we all are being asked to focus on traditions that we should honor and defend. It’s also a time calling on us to create new traditions, better suited to human thriving in this century.
It’s a time when the issues are big, the answers are complex, the stakes are high, and the paths are uncharted.
But, Class of 2025, you are prepared to face these daunting conditions. In the words of one of your classmates: MIT taught the Class of 2025 to have “confidence in your competence.”
You are ready to assess your environment, diagnose what is stale and what is broken, learn from history, apply your talents and skills, and create new knowledge.
You are ready to tackle the toughest of problems! You are ready to shape the future.
And while you are doing so, I ask that you keep MIT’s values and mission at the center of your efforts: to be bold and imaginative in tackling these big problems and to do so with compassion and generosity.
Now, more than ever, we — meaning the world’s people — need you to lean in.
Once again, Congratulations Class of 2025!
