First of all, I'd like to thank all the families, friends, alums who are here, and remind them that although us graduates might be emotional basket cases today, it means the world to us that you are all here.

Wow, it's been quite the week. After 7 days of no work, (some) sunshine, music, better-than-average food, and partying with no worries, we probably remember a similar week at Hamilton, a milestone of Hamilton firsts... orientation. I remember other milestones of Hamilton firsts: first Bundy party, moving into a Dunham quad, first Glen party, the first time seeing the Buffers, first taste of the diner's honey mustard... but I don't remember that first week. I wasn't here. Look in the freshman facebook. I'm not there either (though I?m not entirely sure that's a bad thing).

This is something many in my class know, but yet some don't and even many professors don't: I transferred into Hamilton after spending my first semester at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Don't get me wrong ?I liked Canada, and I like Montreal, and a nameless, faceless, pre-professional University with 30,000 students sounded, as so many other things do, like a great idea at the time. But it certainly wasn't the school for me, and soon I started looking for pretty much the opposite (well, except for the fact that it was buried under freezing snow most of the year?that's the same here). But when I got to the Hill, and walked into Michelle LeMasurier's Calc II class, though I was terrified I knew I'd picked right this time. Everyone picture your very first class here -- can we all even remember?

Thinking about my second chance at picking a school really made me understand how lucky we, and I mean everyone here, really are to have had the choice to attend Hamilton, whether it was easy for your family to send you here or, like mine, a struggle that will continue.

One of the reasons we are so lucky is that all of us, from this point on, have the luxury of choosing what we want to do with our lives our jobs. Our time here has prepared us for much, our degree opens many doors, and we are fortunate to be able to choose between, say door # 1 and being a doctor or door # 100 and going into the Peace Corps.

But what ones will be take? Hopefully, if we choose wisely, the paths that will lead us to become the people we want to be, and not someone we would really rather not spend time with. We get to pick what our lives look like. Paraphrasing Nietzsche, we get to be the painters of our own self- portrait.

Regardless of who we become, we can always make the wise choice. We can choose to use business practices that don't exploit, and economic policies that do not subjugate or discriminate. Lawyers, you'll have the choice to value justice more than profits. Scientists, you can have your work be good for people and the environment, rather than contribute to our mutual destruction. We can all choose to raise our families well, to make us, and them, good people rather than not. And we can do all of this daily.

Now I am a philosophy major, so I suppose it's inevitable that Aristotle creeps into this. He thought that "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit." Or, if you like poetry better, recall the words of the 13th century poet Rumi, who wrote, "Let the beauty of what you love be what you do." I would add "and who you are."

As we stumble through the next few years, we should say to ourselves... "Selves, will I like this person I am becoming?" Or "Am I someone I would like to sit down and have a beer with?" Hopefully we'll all be able to say yes.

In a way, we've all already started doing this, and now just have to continue without the Hamilton bubble. We leave many behind though ? as the class of 2005, we walk away from here in just a few minutes, but the people who got us through won't be coming with us. This is our last chance to take the time to thank the people who chose to give us their time.

Now, we are almost there and soon President Stewart will be handing out the diplomas. .. and whether you'd agree with the Grateful Dead that, "what a long, strange trip it?s been" these past four years or, in the words of the Indigo Girls, "we have our papers, and we'll be free, our time here is over but not forgotten.

Finally, I leave everyone with a cheesy, but I think fitting, quote from the Dave Matthews Band (and yes the Buffers sing it too): that it "turns out it?s not where but who you're with that really matters." We are leaving Hamilton the place, but we don?t have to leave the people who made it for us. So whether the next step is heading home for a bit, trekking around New Zealand, bicycling around the planet, working in D.C. or jumping into grad school, let?s remember our friends and our College, and keep them close. Good luck everyone.

-- Alexandra Sear, the 2005 James Soper Merrill Prize Winner