Amanda Blue Gotera
Class of 2009
Herrick Chapel
Grinnell College
9 a.m., May 17, 2009
Thank you so much, all of you, for being here. Four years ago I came to Grinnell knowing certain things. I knew that I would be an English major and I knew that I was going to eat breakfast every day. And I knew that I was too shy to dance in front of other people ever. And four years I'm an enthusiastic anthropology major, who hasn't been to breakfast more than twice a semester since about 2006, and who dances even in the pasta bar line. The things I knew about myself and about the world had changed so much in my time at Grinnell in surprising and wonderful ways. I've been thinking a lot about these sort of things. Not so much about the pasta bar, really, but about the impact that this place makes on us.
I don't think I'm alone at all in the whole "changing while at Grinnell" thing. I think we all came to Grinnell, into this town, into this place, into each other, and I think this place kind of got into our bones. I've been trying to think of a lot of different examples of how this place got into our bones, and there were so many things. Last night while I was sitting up, physically trying to write this speech, my neighbor and friend, Sarah ___, who's been doing debate since high school, came into my room and gave me some Frosted Flakes and said that I only had to pick one story.
So, my one story is about the loggia and people who aren't familiar with that word, the loggia is a covered walkway that connects the dorms on this college campus and on certain parts of campus you have a room on one side, you have a hallway on the second floor and you can get off onto the loggia. And the way that Grinnell has gotten into my bones when it comes to the loggia is that as soon as the sun comes out at the end of winter, the first thing that comes into my mind is that I need to find a window on the second floor of a building as soon as possible, and I need to get out onto the loggia immediately. And it happens every single spring and every single warm day. I don't think that that instinct is going to go away very quickly.
I think that Grinnell changes us in wonderful ways and I think it's been doing that for years and years and years for generations of Grinnell students. I had a conversation with John ____ earlier this year. John ____ graduated from Grinnell in 1963 and a couple weeks of ago there was a thunderstorm, we've been having thunderstorms very frequently lately, there was a thunderstorm and I was going into the JRC and he was sitting outside the JRC on a step drinking some Grinnell Blend coffee from the grill, and *indecipherable* he told me a story. He said that when he first got to Grinnell, he spent his first semester becoming what he called an "earth child," that he kind got really into nature. Which, it happens to all Grinnellians, and that there was this huge thunderstorm and he went out into a cornfield somewhere and ran around in the thunderstorm naked for a number of hours, and in the following weeks came down with the worst case of pneumonia. And he had this pneumonia until March, I believe he said, until March of that school year. I ask him if he regretted running around in that cornfield naked in the rain, and he gave me this look like I was crazy. He was like, "Regret that!?!"
And I think that is what exemplifies what is wonderful about Grinnellians, and that means that it's actually really breaking my heart to have to leave all of you. We're here today, and if you're like a lot of Grinnellians, I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going to land in the next couple of years. The plans I made sort of fell through, and for the last couple months, feeling like I didn't have a plan, like I didn't have a solid ground to plant my feet on was really scary. But I was forgetting something really important. I was forgetting that I spent the last four years building a different kind of foundation. Even though I don't know what kind of job I'm going to have next, because God knows I don't have one of those lined up, I know some other really important things. I know that I need quick winters and long summers. I know that I always need a really big bag to take books home from the library. I know that I'm happiest hearing and telling stories especially when I'm in the sun, especially on South Campus. I know that I need to be a part of a community that reaches out and helps others. I know a thing or two about self-governance, I know that I want a house full of good people and a vegetable garden in the back yard, and I want to eat meals late into the night with my friends. I know that if the situation arises, I would run through a cornfield in the rain, probably naked.
And I think that somehow in the last four years, during classes and during dinners and during walks downtown to the Farmers' Market to buy potatoes for soup, I think I figured out how I want to live. I'm a little cloudy on the logistics, and the specifics and the job title, but Grinnell has taught me to be okay with that uncertainty. I'm okay with the chance of pneumonia, and that's the price of Grinnell. Because of this place, because of this community, because of you, at Block Party on Friday, under an umbrella, in a cold drizzle, I was trying to explain something like that to Sara ____ who graduated a year ago. And she rubbed my shoulders and said, "Amanda, don't ever let anyone tell you that it's not okay to be uncertain." And that reminded me of what my friend Emma said to the rest of our anthropology seminar a couple weeks ago when we were all collectively despairing over the future. She said that not knowing what comes next can be kind of beautiful. I am uncertain, and I'm so hopeful, and I cannot forget to thank all of you enough for that. Thank you.
