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Text: Maryville College senior class President Hannah Lee ’25’s Baccalaureate remarks to the Class of 2025

Photo of Maryville College senior class President Hannah Lee, speaking at Commencement 2025
Senior Class President Hannah Lee ’25 also spoke during the following day’s Maryville College Commencement exercises.

May 6, 2025

Hannah Lee ’25, president of the senior class of Maryville College, delivered the traditional remarks from that office to the Class of 2025 during the Baccalaureate service held on May 2, 2025. Here is the full text of her remarks.

Can you believe it? We’re actually here. After four years of laughter, struggle, growth, and a whole lot of caffeine, we’re about to graduate!

Honestly, standing here today feels surreal. It’s like we blinked and suddenly we’re the ones in the caps and gowns.

Let’s take a moment to rewind, to that first week on campus. Some of us came wide-eyed and excited, some nervous and unsure, and some still trying to figure out how to do laundry on our own. We were strangers sharing classrooms and now we’re practically a family.

Do you remember that overwhelming mix of emotions we felt during those early days? The excitement of finally starting our college journey. The freedom of living on our own. And yes — definitely some fear. Fear of messing up, fear of not finding our people, fear of not being enough.

But here we are.

We’ve already done it once. And we did it in a time that tested our patience, our flexibility, and our sanity. We survived uncertainty. We adapted to online classes, juggled responsibilities, found joy in the smallest things, and held each other up when it got hard.

We’ve built resilience. We’ve learned how to communicate, how to lead, how to collaborate, and how to keep moving forward even when we were unsure of the next step. We’ve formed friendships that became lifelines and made memories that we’ll carry forever.

Tomorrow, we’ll walk across that stage and step into a new chapter. And no, we might not have a perfectly mapped-out plan. But we do have everything we need. We have strength, knowledge, heart — and each other.

So, Class of 2025, hold on to those connections. Remember the lessons, embrace the unknown, and never forget how far you’ve come. You are ready — even if you don’t feel it yet.

Let’s go into the world with courage, curiosity, and the same hope we carried into our very first day here. We made it through together — and we’ll take that spirit with us wherever we go.

Thank you, Maryville College. And thank you, Class of 2025.

We did it.

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.”