Celebrating the college experience

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat Tara Taylor

You enter your second semester as a college coed, realizing that five out of every twenty people on your wing are "taking a semester off;" that there are more professors that actually deserve esteem than the few who receive it; and that the kid who sat next to you in English 101 was coerced by his parents to attend school when what he really wanted to do was be a cabana boy at a tropical resort.

Disenchanting? No, it is just reality, and part of the life experience I have gained from the University of Arizona. It is what I treasure most.

Sure, I have received a terrific scholastic education and feel very well prepared to enter the dregs of a graduate law program, but I am not sure that this is the most important part.

College is all about the naive freshman you started out as, and the earthly individual you became; it is a definition of diversity because anything you want to experience can be found in this place we have each called our home.

As President I learned some people care, and most people don't; but it's all about believing in who you are and what you stand for. I am proud of a lot of the things I helped to accomplish this year, and have learned from the many mistakes I made as well. I knew students should not pay a fee to have a student union.

I prepared, I believed, and with the help of many we won. I know I'm strange, but this excites me and there are things that probably excite you that bore the heck out of me.

The University of Arizona showed me that it's all relative. It is supposed to be this way and this is how life should be. If we were all passionate about the same things what would the world become?

Celebrate all that is unique about each of us, but take the time to find out what we have in common too. Open your mind and your heart to the people, places and things you never thought possible; because that is what you did your first day here.

Leave this place the way you came, with excitement and a new lease on life. I already know one common bond we will share for the rest of our existence: That we were and always will be Arizona Wildcats. It might sound cliché, heck it sounds down right cheesy, but it's the truth. You will never find a time in your life filled with more trials and tribulations, so relish in the fact that what you created here, is everlasting. Enjoy today, enjoy life, and live for what you know to be happiness.

Congratulations graduates, you have made many people proud and deserve every bit of praise you receive on this special graduation day.

After all, we are the last class of this century and the University of Arizona was wise enough to save the best class, the class of 1999, for last.