Commencement remarks by ASU GPSA President Nicole Mayberry fall 2021

Remarks delivered by GPSA President Nicole Mayberry at the fall 2021 Commencement ceremony on December 11, 2021 and published here with her permission.

Welcome to commencement and congratulations to the class of 2021. My name is Nicole Mayberry and I am the President of the Graduate and Professional Student Association and a PhD Candidate in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society. I am also a proud alumnus of Arizona State University where I have also attended for my bachelors and master’s degrees.

Commencement means the beginning of something, or to start. I’ve always thought this a rather funny term for graduation which, in my experience, has often felt like the close of something when it instead signals rhetorically at least the start, the beginning.

It was Plato who once wrote “the beginning is the most important part of the work.” When I first encountered this quotation, I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of it. How could the start of something be the most important step in a process? Was it not the work itself that was the final product that held the most value in any endeavor? At university, the thesis, the dissertation, the credentials, the fancy hat, all of these final products, are these not what we are all here for—what holds the most value?

What I’ve come to learn, or how I have learned to read this quotation by Plato is that it does not suggest that the start is the most valuable in terms of overall worth, but rather because of what it demonstrates; it demonstrates a type of courage.

Starting something takes courage. Starting a graduate degree? Courage. Starting a degree in a place, a country new and unfamiliar to you on your own? Courage. Starting a graduate degree as a first-generation student not sure if you genuinely don’t understand a concept or if the people around you are operating on generational knowledge? Courage. Starting a graduate degree as a student-parent? Courage.

Submitting a paper to a journal. Daring to read the comments from reviewer number two and still resubmitting. Starting the thesis, the dissertation, starting the next chapter of your work when you open your computer and feel utterly overwhelmed when facing the task of just writing one word, one sentence—courage.

All of these starts, added and built on one another, to get to today. This moment. This accomplishment. And now, together with one another, you start again.

Today celebrates the beginning of something new—a new challenge. And after the celebrations dwindle down, the new and exciting projects you will take on begin. The start of the next chapter and the application of all you have learned and the person you have become or developed into in these past years at ASU, the most important work begins now and ASU has prepared you well. Your training has helped you face this work boldly and unabashedly with a unique type of courage.

Congratulations to each of you on this very special and celebrated occasion. Go Devils!