Baccalaureate.
2004-05 academic year is coming to an end. We finished final exams, and most of the students have already left including my roommate.
Today we had the Baccalaureate. It is the religious recognition of students窶� graduation here.
(Another graduation ceremony called Commencement will be held tomorrow.) The ceremony took place at the Sinclair Auditorium. It was like the worship in church; there were some anthems, hymns, worships and the sermon. I attended as a member of the Coe College Concert Choir, and we performed some religious songs. Some of the songs were conducted by the music major students. It was a so impressive ceremony.
I was so encouraged and enlightened by the speaker at the sermon. He was talking about the significance of the education mentioning the number of the people who can afford to go to universities and colleges in the United States. He emphasized that the students, in the real society, should make good use of the knowledge that has gotten during the college life, and from the religious perspective, taking advantage of their own experiences is in the same vein as the compassion that the Scripture and the God taught us.
Not only was the content of his speech noticeable, but he is also outstandingly a good speaker; he didn窶冲 seem to have used any papers, although speech was long. His sermon reminded me of the Martin Luther King Jr.窶冱 famous speech, and I felt he kind of intentionally performed in that way. He was getting enthusiastic more and more with the speech going on, and speaking was also getting faster and faster. However, his good point was that his speaking was still clear; it wasn窶冲 difficult to follow even for me. After the speech, applause did last for a long time. We were about to do standing ovation.
Since most of the students I have got to know here are first-year or sophomore, I don窶冲 really know any of seniors. However, although we have been in different colleges, seniors here and I have gone through the exactly same four years. I was kind of being empathetic.
When we were first year, we witnessed the September 11 terror attacks, and it had changed the world so dramatically. In addition to that, Afghanistan or Iraq etc, political stuff will be endless to mention. While Coe students have studied much harder than I do, my activities outside the class was so productive, and I窶冦 confident about that. I need to study hard as they have done in next two years. But I am sure that we both have had great days in this four-year life.
Congratulations seniors, and I hope we will play important roles in the future society.