Baccalaureate

“While all of us graduating will go off on distinct paths, we should be cognizant that we always form part of a greater whole and that all of us do have the ability to improve the lives of those with whom we share community, whether that be a place like Andover or the entire world. So, whatever that path may be, we should go about with a sense of purpose—one that doesn’t just serve ourselves individually, but that in some capacity also serves everyone else around us.”

SALVADOR GÓMEZ-COLÓN ’21

School Co-President

to the section for suits that would fit me (I was 13 and by then I was already fairly big and tall) and I began to work my way through the options, trying on the jackets, standing in front of the three-way mirror as my mother sat in a chair and my father stood behind her, clearly anxious to get this over with so that he could drop us off at home and still make it in time for his first patients back at his office. When I finally decided on the suit that I wanted, I remember turning around to my mother and asking her what she thought. She paused, took a deep breath (and surely at some point let my father know that it would be best if he did not engage!), and then she said, “It is your decision.” I still remember the look on her face, which I did not think much of at the time. We purchased the suit and a white shirt and a matching tie, and rushed home.

Well, as we were unpacking our boxes this fall after we arrived here in Andover, I found that suit among the boxes. And, graduates, it pains me to acknowledge that this is the jacket of that suit…I confess of all the personal matters that I have revealed in speeches and editorials and conversations in my professional life, this suit jacket was by far the most difficult to reveal.

So why am I telling you about this suit on such an important, glorious day—your day? Because my hope is that you will not forget this suit—or rather, the ideas connected with it. I know that for many of you, your minds are being flooded with memories of your time here, and my guess is that on a day such as today, you are focusing on the good memories, and that is natural. I am sure all of you can conjure up scores of great times that took place here—perhaps that moment when the beauty and meaning of a poem clicked in your mind with the guidance of a gifted and committed teacher. Or the time you aced that hard calculus examination after having begun the term firmly believing that you would surely fail the class. Or that soccer game against Exeter when everything and everyone worked together and Andover beat Exeter, again. Or maybe that time in Paresky Commons sitting with a group of close friends, laughing at some inside joke when, for one perfect moment, you realized you were completely happy.

Many of us are inclined to forget as much of the unpleasant past as we can and look toward the future. And many of us who are not inclined to forget negative events from the past often ruminate and obsess on them in a destructive, unhelpful way. Of course, there are memories of bad times that are in an entirely different league and to deal with those, you may need help—from a friend or from a therapist or other professional. But the vast majority of negative memories don’t fall into that category; they are just ordinarily bad, and I want to make a special case for remembering and trying to understand those difficult moments, the times you were embarrassed or sad or hurt, but in a constructive way. Remembering the good times is relatively easy; keeping the bad times in a healthy way is harder. I want you to remember and even cherish the not-sogreat things, which for many may require more of an effort. I want you to remember your ugly clothing.

Now, when I chose this suit, I never imagined that I might one day look back and cringe. But there were many moments in my life when I knew without question that something ugly was in play. Some of those difficult times were of my own making— times when I simply made a mistake (this suit!) or underestimated how much studying was needed for that final exam or when I knew with sudden clarity that someone I thought of as a friend was not actually a friend. Sometimes, those distasteful suits, those tough, bad times were not a result of my choice. I began my medical internship at a large, urban academic hospital just as the AIDS epidemic was exploding. Being so close to that epidemic allowed me to see how it brought out the worst and also the very best of ordinary people. That experience had a profound influence on how I grew as a physician and a person.

There were many other times when I found myself in a difficult place and wondered, “How the hell did this happen? Why is this happening to me?” The extraordinary experiences that all of us have had as a result of the pandemic and all that it wrought surely falls in this category. I wonder if we will forever think of our lives as being divided into before-COVID and after-COVID. No matter how near or far the death and devastation of the pandemic has been to each of us, surely all of us have had times over the past 18 months when we just wanted to stand and scream: NO MORE!!! And not just from the pandemic. Think of those minutes watching any of the horrible videos of police violence against people of color or even seeing the videos of one of the sacred symbols of our democracy being overrun by domestic terrorists. Well, I want you to try to preserve and even care for those difficult memories along with the wonderful moments. I want you to bend the corners of those pages in your mind. Because some of your most important times of growth in life are those tough times or those bad decisions or the times when you were made incredibly uncomfortable by something that you read or saw or heard. Those ugly-clothing moments may be among the moments of your greatest insights and transformation. Perhaps even more importantly, those moments in our lives are essential reference points that allow us to look into our own past and find empathy for someone who is before us in the present by reminding us that we, too, had tough moments, some of our making and some not. Remembering our own bad moments is key to nurturing empathy for others in their bad moments.

Among the many things that you have learned here, you have learned to think clearly and deeply and decisively with the guidance of this incredible community. When you look back on your difficult moments—perhaps especially the ones that you did not choose—I hope you will think about how they affected you and probe how they can help you think about who

“We’re better, truer, and more courageous versions of ourselves because of everything we’ve been through together. This family is one that we’ll return to at various points in our lifetimes. Our Andover anchor will hold us steady and guide us as we continue to find our ways into the future, and to find our ways back home to each other... remember that your voice alone is strong enough. But together, we are a force to be reckoned with.”

MEGAN CUI ’21

School Co-President

you are and what you want to become. I hope that some of those moments—along with your Andover education—will lead you to think about what role you want to play in our beautiful and deeply flawed world, where it is so easy for any of us to be caught in the net of a troubling time.

I know you are well prepared to look at those difficult moments along with the lovely moments because your Andover education has taught you that there are rarely easy answers to the important challenges we face as individuals or as a society. Your education has taught you to embrace the glorious but often difficult, complex truth of the human experience—and of your specific human experience—to embrace that hard truth over the easy lie, the facile distortion, the comfortable but ultimately illusory path that does not tax your mind or heart too much.

Many insights about your experiences here, especially with respect to the pandemic, may not be apparent for some time. It may be many years before you are able to place your experiences into that broader context and truly understand those difficult moments. For some of you, it may be something that you said or did that may have caused harm, intentionally or not. Sometimes, we look back and see those difficult times as inflection points, bends in our lives that may only be apparent with the distance of time. Or we may have thought that difficult time was a clear turning point in some way and then we look back and see that it really was not. It was just a tough moment of time and life more or less continued as before. While I continue to be deeply embarrassed that I chose and wore that suit (which I only wore one time, I swear!), what I think of mostly now as I look at that jacket several decades later is my mother’s face with that look when I asked her what she thought. I suspect that many family members in this audience can recall moments like that moment with my mother. That look on her face surely reflected a few seconds of a tough conversation in her mind, telling herself: choose your battles, let him learn for himself what he likes and doesn’t like, it is not my suit, he is becoming an adult, let him learn who he is. That look that was followed by those four simple words: it is your decision. A simple fact, but also a choice as a parent to allow me room, even room to exhibit what now appears to be extraordinarily bad taste. I now value that my parents in so many ways allowed me room. And I will try to remind myself of that suit when my own children do something that bothers me but is not fundamentally important or when I must face a decision about someone who has made a mistake, as we all do, sadly, with some regularity.

Finally, I am a realist, so I must also warn you that there will be times when you go foraging in that bag of difficult memories and even with the wisdom of age, with deep critical thinking skills, and the understanding of the accumulation of the good and bad experiences of decades of life, all you will find is an ugly piece of clothing, and you will just have to shake your head and laugh. But there is value in that as well—in being able to laugh at the absurdities of life and just let your soul wonder how you got over, to borrow the phrase from the gospel song.

Now, let me end my comments on another piece of clothing from that same zippered bag in the basement of Phelps House. I include this partly in fairness to what would otherwise be your only impression of my parent’s sartorial influence. At the bottom of that big bag, I found one piece of the next really important suit I bought probably six or seven years later—I did not like suits for a long while and avoided them assiduously. I believe that I was in medical school at the time, and I think it was an “interview suit.” I only found the likely never-worn vest—grey hopsack, speckled with holes from moths, and tucked still in the pocket was the neatly cut out label from when the pants and jacket were tailored: 100% wool, 43 Long, Brooks Brothers. Now clearly something happened between these two suits—and it wasn’t just the change in style of the moment.

The distance between these two pieces of clothing reflects a period of change in who I was and how I understood the world and my place in it. It reflected an evolution in my thinking about how I chose to present myself and even about who I was as a Black, gay man entering adulthood at a time when there was only one person of prominence I knew of who was a Black, gay man—James Baldwin (and I knew I was clever, but I was no James Baldwin!). These two pieces of clothing tell a long, complicated story of some of the ways in which I grew up at a particular time, in a particular place and community. Despite my embarrassment with that first suit, I think that both pieces of clothing reflect who I have been and who I am, and I now cherish them both. And I so admire my parents for letting me make that journey for myself, mistakes and all.

So I hope each of you is leaving this place transformed from who you were when you arrived and that you carry with you all the bits and pieces and curves and stretches of that transformation, the good moments and the bad. I hope that in your Andover journey you have both expanded your knowledge of this huge, incredible world and your knowledge of who you are and who you want to be in that world. I hope you will come back to this lovely Andover Hill regularly. I hope that in the future, when the time is right, you will in whatever way you can help us provide the same opportunity that you have received to future generations of students eager to learn and grow.

You are the first class that I have had the privilege of speaking to at Commencement in my time as head of school here at Andover, so you will always be a special class for me. Our interactions have been limited by masks and distance, but I hope each of you knows that I have seen you and I will remember you. In spite of every challenge that has been thrown before you, you must know that you are remarkable and fortunate in so many ways.

I leave you with my greatest hopes and my best wishes. 