‘Say yes to the thing that scares you,’ commencement speaker tells Seattle grads
About 280 students received advanced degrees during Northeastern Seattle’s commencement ceremony on Thursday at Benaroya Hall.
Maizhou Yuan insists she is an introvert.
But her experience at Northeastern University Seattle was so “life-changing” that Yuan felt she didn’t mind stepping out of her comfort zone to share her story as the student speaker at commencement on Thursday night.
“I wanted to speak up on behalf of my fellow graduates,” Yuan said in an interview. “I met a lot of people who changed my mind and introduced me to new concepts, and we experienced a lot of very real things together.”
The Seattle commencement ceremony was held on Thursday at Benaroya Hall, with approximately 280 graduate students crossing the stage to earn master’s and doctorate degrees in a range of subjects, from computer sciences to engineering to economics.
“You have all chosen to invest in yourself through education, setting the stage for your exciting future,” said Rebecca Steffenson, associate dean of the Seattle campus. “That investment has paid off. Congratulations!”
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Yuan emphasized the importance of community in addressing her fellow graduates, describing her first impressions of Seattle, making friends by hosting dinner parties with her roommate and making “the entire city … our classroom.”
“We came here searching for our future,” Yuan said. “Along the way, we found each other. And that, my fellow graduates — my beloved friends — is more than enough.”
Commencement speaker Sangeetha Visweswaran, vice president of engineering at Microsoft, emphasized the growth that students had undergone during their studies. She began her speech by asking students in the graduating class to stand if they had left their homes, if they had crossed time zones, learned a new culture and stepped outside their comfort zones. Overwhelmingly, the students were on their feet.
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“Every one of you here did something hard to make this moment possible,” Visweswaran said.
She related her own challenges growing up in a 690-square-foot apartment with six people, where privacy “just did not exist.”
But she told graduates that this environment taught her to focus — no matter whether cricket matches were blaring, tea was being served to a visitor, or more — and that they too should never forget their own unique story.
“Every one of you has strengths that make up your story,” Visweswaran said. “Carry those roots with pride, but give your wings the freedom to grow.”
Visweswaran also told graduates to be brave enough to be a beginner “again and again” and to always choose the opportunity that broadens their world.
“Say yes to the thing that scares you; that’s where growth happens. That’s where opportunity lives,” Visweswaran said. “Go build something that only you can build.”
And as each graduate proudly crossed the stage, shook hands with university leaders and posed for pictures, they were prepared to do just that.
Yuan, a participant in Northeastern’s Align program that offers students without a technical background an opportunity to earn a master’s degree in computer science, did co-ops at Amazon and at the online payment company Stripe, where she will also start as a software engineer in June.
