Class of 2016 Honored at Senior Recognition Colloquy

On Thursday, March 10, PUC’s Colloquy Speaker Series featured no famous orators, renowned authors, or awe-inspiring filmmakers, but rather its own hardworking class of 2016. Seniors marched down the aisle at the beginning of the program, tassels swinging, in a “practice run” for the long-anticipated graduation on June 12.

After all the participating seniors were seated, professor of religion Young-Chun Kim played a brilliant special music, “Etude-Caprice Op. 18, No. 4” by Henri Wieniawski. Following the performance, vice president for academic administration Nancy Lecourt rose to present the senior class, recognizing the number of students graduating with each major, as well as the number of students who will graduate cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude. PUC President Dr. Heather J. Knight then introduced the Colloquy speaker chosen by the class of 2016: professor of communication Dr. Tammy McGuire, who was recognized as PUC’s Professor of the Year in 2011.

Dr. McGuire’s message to the senior class focused on the importance of the “in-betweens” of life, and how to not fall prey to the deadly disease of “senioritis.” She said it’s easy to get bogged down in the long, dull stretches of life between day-to-day realities and the big defining moments, such as graduation day. “Our lives as we live them are largely made up of these mundane, sometimes difficult spaces in between these grand moments,” she said. “The destination is what we strive for, and rightly so. But the journey—the journey is what we live.”

Dr. McGuire reminded her listeners that not every memorable moment is a positive experience. Some are tragedies. That’s why we have “to fight to live joyfully, and fight to live well in the in-betweens, and not to wait helplessly for graduation…to liberate us from senioritis. We must march through the in-betweens with courage.”

Dr. McGuire closed her address to the senior class, as they prepared to march out to end-of-quarter exams, presentations, and projects, with a slight paraphrase of the famous words of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock: “In all your in-betweens, may you live long and prosper.”