President Obama’s Commencement speech changed my whole outlook on my Rutgers career

As I’ve written about before, I haven’t always been proud to be Rutgers student. I was born in New Brunswick and grew up and Piscataway so Rutgers has been nothing close to unique for me. I’ve never exactly had a lot of enthusiasm for a school where 70 per cent of seniors in my high school’s graduating class ended up or whose football team was the pride of the state. Rutgers is certainly an institution of great student and faculty accomplishment and rich history, but to me it has always just been Rutgers, the university in my backyard.

But all that changed when it was announced that President Obama had accepted our invitation to speak at commencement.

Suddenly, I was proud of where I was going to school. Like the kind of pride that makes you brag about obnoxiously on social media. Rutgers to me was no longer my “last resort” school, it was now a place where amazing things could happen – not that they haven’t always been happening here, I just never cared to look. As a rising sophomore watching the livestream of President Obama speak to the Class of 2016 at High Point Solutions Stadium, how I viewed my school was altered. I realized that Rutgers University is a place considered worthy enough and unique enough by someone as accomplished and revolutionary as our sitting President to visit and speak to, a first in Rutgers history. How awesome is it that of the three universities President Obama chose to speak to during commencement season this year, our very own Rutgers University is one of them? And on our 250th anniversary no less.

And regardless of whether or not you support President Obama’s policies or the heavy political themes of his speech,  a person who holds high office is now holding us as Rutgers students up to high standards.

“I’m confident that you can make the right choices – away from fear and division and paralysis, and toward cooperation and innovation and hope,” he said yesterday. “And precisely because I have so much confidence in you, I’m not going to spend the remainder of my time telling you exactly how to make the world better. You’ll figure it out. You’ll look at things with fresher eyes, unencumbered by the biases and blind spots and inertia and general crankiness of your parents and grandparents and old heads like me.”

I’m not even close to graduation yet, but I can still take something from President Obama’s words. A lot of people don’t take millennials seriously, or think we’re as capable as past generations. But to have someone like the President put his faith in us to continue to lead the world to progress honestly means a lot. It’s loaded. And as someone who admittedly didn’t try as hard as I could have freshman year, I need to try harder. Not just to make my parents or even the President proud, but make myself proud. Even if I don’t end up being the people who 3-D print prosthetics or draft new kinds of legislation, I can look at my own abilities (and future degree) and use those to help make the world at least a little better, and what better place to do it than revolutionary Rutgers University?

According to a university-wide email from university President Barchi, “a representative of the White House stated that no university has been as well-prepared for a Presidential visit as Rutgers was,” and commended the hard work of the students and staff members that helped make Commencement a success. And yeah, I’m gonna be excited about that, too. Because now we have no excuse to sit back anymore, to be doormats at our own university.

For me that starts with not groaning when I talk about Rutgers to friends and family that don’t go here, because I should be proud to be a student here, I should be proud to be associated with a place so awesome. There’s always going to be a few setbacks like President Obama said (he was clearly referring to the RU Screw), but we can get through them.

Addressing the Class of 2016 in one final point before ending his speech, the President said: “Throughout our history, a new generation of Americans has reached up and bent the arc of history in the direction of more freedom, and more opportunity, and more justice. It is your turn now to shape our nation’s destiny, as well as your own. So get to work. Make sure the next 250 years are better than the last.”