As you think about your long ago arrival and imminent departure, I want you to remember that a high quality education and the opportunity to attend Harvard is not within the reach of most children in the United States.
There just is no on-line substitute for hugging an old friend, for watching her age gracefully, for talking late into the night with someone who knew your secrets and dreams before kids and mortgages and obligations.
I'm not advocating retreat or isolationism. Travel. Help others. Engage on the largest issues if you can. But think of yourself as part of something that is unimaginably bigger than you are.
We firmly believe that Harvard students should never have to compromise their academic goals to pursue their extracurricular ones—or their extracurricular goals for their academic ones, for that matter.
We are reminded that when Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore were admitted to Augusta National Golf Club, the decision to do so was far from unanimous, but it was the right thing to do.
What matters is to believe, to know, that a single act, a small gesture, can make a difference—and will make a difference—often in ways that you never could have imagined.
