Bryn Athyn College Alumni Magazine Spring/Summer 2018 | Page 7

CLASS OF 2018
Biology major Marian Harding Sesay
Speaking as valedictorian for the Class of 2018, human society major
Dan Uber inspired the crowd with reflections on the beauty of change,
the power of knowledge, and the importance of personal choice.
Human society major Ahmai Cole
were their accomplishments? What were their fail-
ures? How often do you think of them? How much
have you changed from them?
….
Our ancestors thought the way they did so that
we can think the way we do. Their triumphs and
downfalls, their traditions and their advancements,
are our lessons and examples. Thanks to recorded his-
tory, we have the benefit of hindsight to a degree that
they could only dream of. All of the breakthroughs
in our history, from the discovery that the earth was
not the center of the universe, to the landing of a hu-
man on a heavenly body a quarter of a million miles
away, to the encapsulation of all of the computing
power needed to get him there within the confines of
a handheld device, have let us build upon the hopes
and dreams of the past. …We are an adaptive species,
constantly changing our outlook on the world and
ourselves. We are strong because we can change.
….
As a class, we have seen a new sports field and
two new dormitories rise from the rolling hills of our
campus. We have cheered on our field hockey and
women’s soccer teams in their inaugural matches. We
have watched our men’s ice hockey team garner na-
tional attention with three straight trips to the ACHA
National Championships, and then be elevated into
the NCAA. This is a very different Bryn Athyn Col-
lege, and we are a very different Class of 2018. We are
what we have experienced, and we are better for it.
….
Will we do better than those who came before? I
say yes. In the words of Emanuel Swedenborg as writ-
ten in Arcana Caelestia, passage 3854, “Every smallest
fraction of a moment of a person’s life entails a chain
of consequences extending into eternity.” Second by
B RY N AT H Y N A LU M N I M AG A Z I N E
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