Members of the class of 2013 participate in ‘first flight’ during convocation.

On Thursday September 17, 2009, the class of 2013 was formally welcomed into the BC community by author Anne Patchett. After reading Patchett’s engaging novel Run about an eclectic Catholic family living in the city of Boston, the freshmen listened to her speech in hopes of gleaning a few morsels of advice with which to begin their journey here at BC.

After the freshmen filed into Conte Forum, Father Marchese welcomed the class and advised the new students on the extraordinary opportunities at this university. He stressed that the freshmen will ultimately be the ones “building and shap-ing this community” as each simultaneously conducts a “journey” into him or herself.

According to Father Marchese, great literature like that of Anne Patchett prompts us to look inward at ourselves and outward at the influences we have on others. Just like Teddy and Tip Doyle of Run, we will soon discover our “collective and individual responsibilities,” consequently shaping ourselves through our responses to both success and failure. As the freshmen embark on their four-year journey at Boston College, they will sculpt their own “personal narratives.” Father Marchese closed his speech by once encouraging students to “go set the world aflame.”

Father Leahy then addressed the students. He said that the freshmen will be the ones to “give life to the BC community.” In addition, he stressed the importance of faith in our journey; not simply faith in God, but in ourselves and in our talents. With this notion clearly in mind, Anne Patchett took his place.

Patchett opened her speech by noting that, although she has done a number of commencement speeches, she believes that a first-year convocation is a better event at which to give advice. She rationalizes that her advice will actually be considered and used because convocation, unlike commencement, marks the beginning of a journey.

She then spoke of the novel that the freshmen became familiar with over the summer. Explaining the role of Catholicism in Run, Patchett maintained that her book is not about the religion itself, but rather about its role in the characters’ identities. She explained that we all are “mosaics,” that multiple elements come together to make us complex and unique individuals, just like those we meet in her novel. Subsequently, she urged the freshmen to achieve a balance of these “elements” and to develop all of their skills rather than focus on just one. Detailing her mistake in college of training only her talent of writing, Anne Patchett explained that “the desire to be best at something is in conflict with learning” and that we, in an effort to learn, must traverse the boundaries of our comfort zones in order to truly learn and become well rounded here at Boston College.

Because she has a nephew who just went off to college, Patchett had a great amount of stored advice to offer the freshmen class. She took just two minutes to make the most assertive statements that she upheld throughout the entire speech. First, she re-emphasized what Father Marchese had stated, that “college is an enormous privilege” and that we should take the gift very seriously. In addition, she proposed that “college is not the place [we] come to grow up,” but rather that we are already grown up. We now hold responsibility for ourselves, for our choices and for the consequences of those choices. Furthermore, she asked that we make decent choices, deal with our mistakes in admirable ways and “do [our] best in every aspect of [our] lives.” With these simple but memorable remarks said, she finished her words of aunt-like advice.

Returning to her discussion of her novel, she revealed that during her writing of Run, she strove to create a novel about “saving the world.” While meditating this idea, she tried to imagine the type of person who would be able to handle this feat. At first she believed a nonviolent religious leader, perhaps Gandhi or Mother Teresa would fulfill the requirements of world-saver. However, she ultimately concluded that a politician, a true political leader like Bernard Doyle, would be the one to unite our world in peace. Although many politicians have let our world down in the past, Patchett believes in “the good politician that could come and turn the world around.”

That said, she noted that we at Boston College will not all become the outspoken politicians who will set the entire world aflame because “not everyone is cut out to be a leader.” However, we each within us can help the leaders by “turning up the flame inside [ourselves]” and, as Teddy Kennedy once said, “each of us can work to change a small portion of events.” The accumulation of all those seemingly miniscule changes will, in turn, affect the world in a profound way.

To conclude her speech, Anne Patchett urged students to “shine light into the darkest places in the world” and harness this opportunity of great education to develop our skills and use them for the good of all.

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