Kat Largent is seated third from the right.
On Wednesday, April 26, 2017 we gathered to celebrate the BIC graduating students of 2017. As part of the banquet, Kat Largent was chosen by her peers as the female BIC student to represent her graduating class and was invited to offer a few words to her fellow graduating seniors. We hope you enjoy reading her remarks from that evening’s festivities.
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What an honor! I remember freshman year, the upperclassmen in the Honors Residential College gave me the mock award of “Most BICly BICer”…I guess some things never change!
I’ve worked a lot of those prospective student recruitment events, Invitation to Excellence, Distinguished Scholars Days, Premiere, you know the ones. I had the pleasure of working as a student representative for BIC this last summer. The question I both loved and hated to get was the one all parents had (well, at least, besides, “what the heck is the B-I-C?”)
That question was: what is your favorite part of being in BIC?
I loved the question because it was an open invitation to get up onto the BIC soapbox and wax poetic about all the amazing features of this unique program.
I hated it because it was so hard to condense everything I wanted to say down to one idea.
The answer I usually came up with? The community.
Because, when I elaborate on it, I get to reference the bonding that happens the night before a New York Times assignment is due. I get to talk about the support network set up through fantastic peer instructors. I get to assure parents the advisors they’re talking with are so genuinely sweet and interested in seeing their students’ success, whether that means pursuing the examined life or not. I get to brag on what I term “the most incredible amalgamation of professors this university has to offer” and their genuine care for and interest in their students.
I think you all will agree when I say that BIC has done something for us each, on a very individual, personal level. Or we wouldn’t be here at ANOTHER send-off farewell event for seniors. We’ve chosen to come together one last time as a community of scholars, of dreamers, of future doctors and business people and teachers and homemakers.
Across all these divergent futures and possibilities, I see a common thread that binds us together.
We are deeply, inexorably fascinated with what it means to be human. We are seekers of truth and justice, and we believe in the possibility of a better world. And I know that there is a better world to come because all of you are in it.
Our little community has meant so very much to me the last four years and has completely transformed the way I look at the world and those who live in it. Thank you, my dearest BIC community, for shaping not only my college experience, but the many chapters yet to come.
