I come from a small town in central Indiana, the kind of place where you can see corn fields from your bedroom window and everyone seems to know each other. It probably goes without saying that moving to New York was a major adjustment in countless ways.
Before I got to Fordham, I hadn’t yet experienced the joy of a late-night deli sandwich and had no idea you could get it even cheaper if you paid cash. I had never taken a public bus before participating in Urban Plunge my first year. I didn’t realize that in New York, not everyone smiled and said “hello” to the people they passed on the street.
Of course, I knew the city would be different from my hometown. Certain social, cultural, even spatial changes were to be expected. What I didn’t completely anticipate was how deeply this new environment would change me.
A couple of weeks ago now, I walked out of Dealy Hall after my last ever class as a Fordham undergraduate — a night class about autofiction with Professor Daniel Contreras — and tried to take stock of these changes. As I left the building, I was struck by the sight of the moon hanging low in the sky, huge and staggeringly bright as it peeked out behind the clouds above the Keating Hall bell tower.
I took a walk around Eddies, looking at the lamp-lit benches and trying to picture all the sunny September afternoons spent lying in the grass with my friends. I thought about sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with my classmates to watch the solar eclipse two springs ago. I thought about the sunsets I’d watched from the windows of Walsh Library, and the pink and orange that coated the horizon as my roommates and I listened to music, talking and laughing, on the balcony of our off-campus apartment.
I tried to remember the person I was in my first year. I thought about my first classes at Fordham: theology with Dr. Harry Nasuti and philosophy with Professor Dana Miller. I thought about all the late nights spent writing papers in Bishop’s Lounge in Queen’s Court and how difficult my first college exams were. I thought about all the people who had helped me get through it.
A great deal has changed, indeed.
The moon looming above Keating that night reached its full moon phase on May 1, just a couple of nights after I initially noticed its presence. The moon changes, too.
For centuries, people have looked to the moon and its phases for wisdom, guidance and direction. They have relied on its predictable cycles to help them tell time, decide when to plant crops and guide religious practices.
This May, we get two full moons: the first has already passed, and the second — a blue moon — will happen on the last day of the month. Right in the middle of these lunar bookends is the new moon, when the moon’s sun-lit side is facing away from us, rendering it essentially invisible. May’s new moon just so happens to coincide with today, commencement day.
To put it frankly, I think it’s pretty poetic that the new moon falls on our graduation. It feels like the perfect symbol for the day, which marks the start of a new phase in a lifelong cycle of experiences and growth.
People go to college for a lot of different reasons, but ultimately, the goal is to learn. This endeavor includes learning about ourselves, even when it’s hard. I think one of the most difficult things a person can do is to really know themselves, to know what they want and what they’re capable of. Sometimes I think I can see the full picture of who I am, and at other times I feel that my “self” is as invisible as the new moon.
As I prepare to leave Fordham, though, I feel strongly that my time here has helped me start to figure it out. I have become a more competent, more thoughtful, more compassionate person than I was when I stepped onto campus four years ago. I see myself as I am now reflected in the incredible friends and classmates that surround me. It is not the clearest image, but it is taking shape. This, too, will be a lifelong process.
Tonight, after all the commencement speeches and family dinners and congratulatory toasts are over, I hope you’ll look up and maybe keep an eye out for that invisible moon — it’s up there somewhere, I promise! I hope you’ll take the opportunity to start this new phase with some self-reflection: What do you want? What are you capable of? Where do you see yourself in all of this change?
The answers might not be visible right now, and they, too, may change with time. But they’ll be there, waiting to be discovered over and over again.
