Senior Speaker: Economics

A message from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences:

Each year, our graduating students in every major select a student to speak on behalf of their area of study. Because we are a large college, the time allotted to our ceremony does not allow for each speaker to appear on stage. However, these speeches have been recorded for your viewing pleasure. 

At its core, our College supports open and free inquiry and debate about the most weighty and consequential subjects that face us all. Each student was given a minute to speak on whatever topic they think will be meaningful to their peers. Some of the contributions are lighthearted, others are serious, and some may inspire some people and conflict with the values and beliefs of others. But that is the nature of free inquiry and debate: it should challenge us and make us think. We are proud of every one of our graduates, whether or not we agree with the views they express here. 

Transcript: 

First order of business: We graduated!

Second order of business: For those of you who don’t know me, I somehow survived being a dual degree in Economics and Mathematics, which means I’ve spent the last few years being humbled on a regular basis.

And here’s the thing - being surrounded by people who constantly made me feel like the smallest fish in a very big sea? It turned out to be one of the greatest gifts.

Because being a small fish means you’re swimming with brilliance. It means your ideas get sharper. Your questions get better. Every time I thought, “Wow, everyone here is so much smarter than me,” what I was actually experiencing was growth. In economics, we learn about opportunity cost: the idea that every choice means giving up something else. Over the past four years, we’ve all given up sleep, free time, and probably a lot more to be here. And math taught me something too: growth is rarely linear. It’s messy, it looks exponential at times and nonexistent at others. But if you zoom out and look at the function over time…the trajectory is undeniable.

Tonight, we might feel small again. The world is big. Careers, grad school, uncertainty - it’s a lot. But we’ve been small fish before. May we keep choosing big seas. And may we remember that sometimes, being the smallest fish means you’re exactly where you’re meant to grow.

Congratulations class of 2026! We did it.