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Text: Outgoing President Izzy Wright ’25’s remarks during Maryville College Commencement exercises on May 3, 2025

Photo of outgoing Maryville College SGA President Izzy Wright speaking at the Maryville College Baccalaureate service on May 2, 2025.
In addition to delivering the traditional remarks during Commencement 2025, outgoing Maryville College SGA President Izzy Wright was also tapped to read Scripture passages at the previous afternoon’s Baccalaureate service.

May 6, 2025

Isabella “Izzy” Wright ’25, who served as president of the Maryville College Student Government Association during her senior year, delivered the traditional welcome remarks from that office to the Class of 2025 during MC Commencement exercises on May 3, 2025. Here is the full text of her remarks.

Hello friends, and welcome to the Maryville College Commencement where we will honor and celebrate the graduating class of 2025. Thank you all for gathering here on this beautiful (not rainy) morning. Before we honor the graduates, we would like to honor those of you present: the families, friends, loved ones, and those watching online from afar for the love, support, and dedication that has helped us on our journey to finally touching the covenant stone and sitting on this lawn today.

For those of you that don’t know me, hello friends! My name is Izzy Wright and I have had the honor and privilege of being the 2024-2025 Student Body President. Since starting here at Maryville College in 2021, I have greeted every room I’ve entered, started every meeting I’ve led, and begun every mass email or text chain with that phrase. Because, I don’t care if we’ve met each other in passing at Pearsons, spent late nights studying in Thaw together, or you were my Day One and we got Dunkin coffee together. I am proud to leave this place with all of you as dear friends.

As we gather here today in this theater surrounded by our friends, family, professors, mentors, and loved ones, please take a second to savor this moment and save it from the funny tricks of time. Let all of the turmoil, stress, and anxiety from finals wash away to leave behind joy, pride, excitement, and anticipation tinged with anxiety that you might trip on stage, or the sadness of knowing we will be parting ways with friends dear to our hearts.

College is described as the best time of your life, and that is because even though there is the dedication to our degrees, we also make life-long friendships. Look around, because you are surrounded by the people that will attend your major life events from your weddings to your funerals. We as the Class of 2025 have gathered as a whole for one last time. After this, we all throw our caps, take enough pictures to last a lifetime, pack up our cars, and part ways. Where did all the time go? Only yesterday we were hoisting each other up the 60-foot alpine tower after meeting for the first time 24 hours prior, laughing way too loudly in Pearsons and getting made fun of on YikYak, and waking up to the sound of bagpipes from an across-campus sporting event.

I am so happy that I have been able to run around Pearsons lawn playing laser tag with you, enjoyed a crazily named Maryville College beer around a bonfire with you, and done my best to advocate for your voices in SGA. But, it’s time to learn how to say goodbye. Although our time as Maryville College students is ending, this is only one chapter in the books that are our lives! We are eternally Scots by God, orange and garnet will float forever, and my heart will always be in the highlands.

Congratulations to each and every member of the Class of 2025. I am beyond excited to see us go out and do good on the greatest possible scale.

Maryville College is a nationally-ranked institution of higher learning and one of America’s oldest colleges. For more than 200 years we’ve educated students to be giving citizens and gifted leaders, to study everything, so that they are prepared for anything — to address any problem, engage with any audience and launch successful careers right away. Located in Maryville, Tennessee, between the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the city of Knoxville, Maryville College offers nearly 1,200  students from around the world both the beauty of a rural setting and the advantages of an urban center, as well as more than 60 majors, seven pre-professional programs and career preparation from their first day on campus to their last. Today, our 10,000 alumni are living life strong of mind and brave of heart and are prepared, in the words of our Presbyterian founder, to “do good on the largest possible scale.”