Musings of a Scholar — Part 1.

Victor Tan
Jul 28, 2017 · 3 min read

I remember my graduation as if it was yesterday.

I remember looking at the face of the residential master I had not seen for three years: Did he even remember my name? Here he was looking me in the eye again after three years of separation, as if he had known me for all this time when we had walked such separate paths:

I had begun to think even years ago about this moment and how I had thought it would never arrive, about how the diploma would might never actually exchange hands between the school and myself and that the whole process would end up proving to be some sort of a charade — But here he was, he handed my diploma, and the affair was over.

I could talk for ages about what I felt about that and what that degree symbolized, but there are too many words to say, too many days that I spent in Chicago reflecting and thinking and musing about things symbolic, whimsical, and important alike.

I completed a four year college degree in the United States with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics. Commemorating this event, my university President, Robert J. Zimmer, declared everyone who was graduating on that day to be a member of the “fellowship of educated individuals”, a designation that caught on, went viral, sparking a social media fire of snarky graduation profile pictures declaring membership in this new-found cult.

Proud of myself, and walking out from the podium from the graduation line in which I stood to shake Andrew Siegel’s hand and to gladly leave from the public eye, how I held my diploma into the world… An official member of the “Fellowship of Educated Individuals”.

What a gleaming sun it was that day.

They say that graduation day is meant to make you think about all the privileges that you had when you were alive, when you were well, when things meant something to you and when there was the fire of an intellectual happily burning away within your soul.

I think about it now, and I recall the fire of those days.

All those days learning from someone smarter than me.

All those days of speaking to people who knew what I wanted to say or think.

All those days of having experiences I never imagined being fulfilled being given to me in short order.

Thinking back, everything just seemed to happen in a perfect sequence, with no intervention necessary from my part — By virtue or ordinance of divine will that was held on my part: How I had come to America, how I had fought against all these struggles and all odds sometimes against what I could believe:

That I am here is an product of hard work, blood, sweat, tears… And unimaginable luck.

So, here’s why that degree’s important to me now, and why I will cherish it.

That degree was four years of traversing the oceans across the sky every time I wanted to go home.

That degree was four years of going wherever I wanted, damn the time and damn the circumstances.

That degree was four years of going through the most intense education that this world could provide and four years moving between having faith with myself to losing it, to getting it back in droves.

That degree is a symbol of my relationship with America: One forever set down in stone that will always show to me the intellectual debt that I owe to all our forefathers.

That degree is a symbol of my being free from the debt of foolishness, forever yoked to the cause of intellectual truth:

It is forever a gift from a government that had chosen me from amongst my peers, granting me an honor that I can frankly say that I feel that I do not deserve and for which I am forever grateful.

But now it is time to let that gift multiply, and my prayers are simple: That it may bear much fruit in service of mankind, and the advancement of my country.

If there shall be lightning, I shall gladly be the conduit.

Victor Tan

Written by

University of Chicago Economics ‘17.

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