May 18, 2025
Tiffany Frey
Associate Professor of Biology
2025 Dickinson Commencement
Good morning! What a wonderful day.
Thank you for that lovely introduction, President Jones. I am deeply honored to be here today. To the Class of 2024, that’s right, I said 2024—thank you for selecting me as the recipient of the Ganoe Award for Inspirational Teaching. It energized and inspired me in ways I’m still discovering – truly the highlight of my career thus far. Congratulations to this year’s Ganoe Award winner. And most importantly, congratulations to all of you, the 2025 graduates—and to your families and friends who’ve supported you along the way.
As I prepared this speech, I found myself reflecting on my own college graduation, which was in May 2000. 25 years ago! That number hardly seems possible. I’m sure many of you feel that way about your time at Dickinson: How did four years pass so quickly? And the bad news is that many people feel like their perception of time speeds up with age. It is thought that the more novel experiences your mind is processing, the slower time seems to pass. As we age, we tend to have fewer new experiences, a stable routine. This allows us to chunk large spans of time together, which may contribute to the perception that time is moving faster. Ferris Bueller was right: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
Which brings me to a big question for you today:
How will you live this fast-moving life?
What do you want your life to look like 25 years from now—when you’re my age? What about 25 years after that?
I can’t answer this question for you. But I’d like to share two of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in the 25 years since I sat where you are now that may help you think about this big question.
- Continue to integrate and cultivate your interests, skills, and values for the rest of your life.
- Surround yourself with people who support your growth and in turn support the growth of those around you.
These might sound simple, but I promise they are not. Living with intention takes daily effort. We're wired to take the path of least resistance—which is an evolutionary tendency to conserve energy. But building a meaningful life means resisting that pull. It means putting in the work to shape a path that reflects who you are and what matters to you.
If we’ve done our jobs well at Dickinson, you leave here today with an appreciation for many disciplines. You likely have many interests—hopefully even more than when you arrived. What a wonderful gift. It means that you can find value and meaning in several different paths – and the beautiful thing is that you don’t have to have it all mapped out today.
From the day I graduated from college until this very day, my mind has remained open to various possibilities. Over the years I considered careers in research, medicine, K–12 teaching, law school, even starting a bakery—or a dog-walking business. (That last one still calls to me some days!). Some ideas faded quickly; others I came back to again and again. The truth is, my path was not linear, and it certainly wasn’t easy. But I now realize that the many choices I’ve made since college graduation that led me to where I am today—some seemingly small and maybe even subconscious—were based on my values and resulted in an integration of both old and new interests that I picked up along the way. Those choices led me to a PhD program that merged research and medicine—two of my early interests. Later, I discovered how to integrate my love of teaching and mentoring with training in the field of pedagogy and am still very much developing in this area and hope to be for the rest of my career. I made decisions that brought me closer to family, to home, and ultimately to Dickinson, where I get to do work that is deeply satisfying. And while I haven’t opened that dog-walking business yet, I do walk my dogs every day—and that brings me peace in a chaotic world. Would I be as satisfied with my life now if I had gone into patent law? Opened a bakery in a major city? Maybe. I would think about these alternatives more if I wasn’t fulfilled at this moment in time and I hope I would have the courage to pursue them. And I want you to have the courage to do the same.
The lesson is this: You don’t have to figure it all out at once. Keep taking the next best step that aligns with your interests, skills, and values while trying new things along the way. In addition to slowing down your perception of time, you may surprise yourself by trying new things. I never would have imagined enjoying some aspects of my career – including public speaking– when I graduated from college.
The second lesson I want share has shaped my life the most: Surround yourself with people who support your growth and in turn support the growth of those around you.
I realize now that while I love my field, the decisions I’ve made throughout my life and career had more to do with the people around me than the work itself. I don’t just love what I do, I love who I do it with and who I do it for, which of course is all of you. I’ve been shaped just as much by the environments I’ve worked in as by the work itself. I’ve been lucky to have mentors, colleagues, and students who offered guidance without judgment, who allowed me to change my mind and reimagine my future.
But I’ve also been in environments that drained me, where conformity was valued over curiosity. Those moments taught me, too. They taught me that there isn’t one “right” way to succeed—and that trying to control others based on your own success story rarely leads to good outcomes.
You’re starting from a strong foundation. A liberal arts education—especially at a place like Dickinson—teaches you to ask good questions, to listen deeply, to value multiple perspectives, and to believe in the common good. That foundation is so important because it will be your frame of reference for future experiences, particularly the ones you will have early in your life and career where you may not have the power to influence the environment. And while you may not have the power to change things at first, you do have the power to decide if you are in a place that values your contributions and that allows you to grow toward your next step – if not, have the courage to move on. And when you do find yourself in a position of leadership—be sure to create spaces where others can thrive. Be the person who helps someone else navigate their path by encouraging them to merge their interests, be their authentic selves, and build a meaningful life.
I want to end with a reflection. When I graduated from college in 2000 –25 years ago that sometimes feels like yesterday- the world was very different. There was no social media, no smartphones. The human genome had not been fully sequenced yet. I still printed out MapQuest directions and went to the library to photocopy journal articles. We hadn’t yet lived through 9/11, a global pandemic, growing political polarization, mass shootings that have become disturbingly common, and intensifying effects of climate change
In many ways, it felt easier to be hopeful.
And yet—I remain hopeful because of you.
There have been incredible breakthroughs over the past 25 years—marriage equality becoming law, the election of the first Black U.S. president, rapid medical advances like mRNA vaccines, CAR-T cell therapy for cancer, CRISPR gene editing, a greater cultural reckoning with injustice, and a generation of young people—your generation—demanding better.
Today, you graduate into a world that is breathtakingly complex. You are leaving college in a time of AI, deep global inequality, war, disinformation, a rapidly shifting job market, and immense pressure to “figure it all out.” You are also entering a world with extraordinary possibility—where new voices are being heard, where sustainability is more than a buzzword, where science and the arts are converging in beautiful and unexpected ways, and where you can connect with people and ideas across the world in seconds. You have tools, insights, and values that didn’t exist when I graduated. You have an education rooted in critical thinking, empathy, and a belief in the common good. And you have each other.
Thank you for all that you have done to make Dickinson a better place over the past four years and all that you will do to shape a better future.
Congratulations.