Each year on Honors Day, a young BSC graduate is asked to speak to the students whose accomplishments are recognized and celebrated. Here is the text of the 2023 remarks by Rachel Buchan ‘15, edited slightly for length. 

Thank you to everyone for gathering here today to celebrate these remarkable students. I am so honored to be a part of this moment. 

So let me say it – you made it! After four really challenging years, you’ve made it to honors day – one step away from graduation. It’s such an incredible day – celebrating remarkable achievements, being surrounded by faculty and staff who are here to pause and cherish you – graduates who have shown so much hard work, who have persevered through difficult times – covid times and not knowing if your own college would make it – and you people still dug deep and have shown remarkable achievement. I am so proud of you.  

Standing here before you is a strange feeling. It feels like just yesterday I was sitting in your seats, and I think you should know upfront – in so many ways, I am still learning and figuring it out. But I have come to appreciate people who are open and honest about the things they don’t have figured out.  

That’s what most of my story is, and any other representation just would not be true. So in that spirit, I am going to share for the next 10 minutes or so my story and how it’s taught me what it means to live with honor (we are at honor’s day, aren’t we?).  

I believe to live with honor is to cherish life’s paradoxes or contradictions – academically, professionally, and personally. So what does that mean? What does cherishing the paradoxes mean? The best way I can describe it is through my story. 

My Story

What I mean when I say my story is really two stories – both mine – but that have often felt like contradicting identities at war with myself. Paradoxes, if you will. 

The first story is: 

I loved my time at BSC and graduated with a double major in psychology and religion with honors studies in music theory. In so many ways, I was the quintessential liberal arts student. I didn’t know what I wanted to do professionally, I just couldn’t stop learning and wanted to be abroad – so I applied at graduation for the Fulbright Program to teach English in Turkey. 

It was that time in Turkey that finally showed me what I want to do with my life. I was teaching in 2015 and many of my students were Syrian refugees. Their stories showed me firsthand the power of government to either help or harm people if not carefully stewarded – and how all my diverse interests could work together in a very liberal arts way. The arts and sciences, psychology, religion, music, international service – all these diverse disciplines are needed to foster good governance. 

I moved to D.C. after that and served with Human Rights First, on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, in the U.S. Congress, and in President Obama’s Office. I was nominated for the Rotary Peace Fellowship and moved to Australia in 2020 to earn a Master’s in Peace and Conflict Studies.  

After graduating in 2021, I moved home to Birmingham to serve with Mayor Randall Woodfin, and I currently love working on his economic development team to invest all these experiences into Birmingham communities.  

It has been a ride, and let me pause here to say one thing – keep your people close. Look behind you, there is a very dear man who was the 13th President of BSC and former Commandant of the Marine Corps – and that is General Charles Krulak. He is my adopted grandfather and there for anyone who reaches out for help. He has been behind every one of these steps I just described. He is here for me today and has been there for this school in more ways than can be counted. As he always says, you can pretend to care but you can’t pretend to be there. 

That’s one story.  

The second story, equally true is: I am from Birmingham, born into a conservative Christian home and homeschooled all 12 years of grade school. My parents are incredible people – my dad is even here to support me today, as he has been every day of my life. They gave everything they had to foster a happy and wholesome childhood for my older sister and me. I learned hard work and integrity from them, the importance of living according to values, and the importance of not taking yourself too seriously.  

This gave me a strong foundation that I remain grateful for. And it also had challenges, of course, primarily in my transition from such a sheltered environment to BSC and the bigger world. 

It was the first time I was around so many different perspectives and people. I expected people who thought differently would be bad people and their perspectives totally wrong. What I found instead were new, valid, and beautiful perspectives and incredible people who asked really good questions; had interesting experiences; and were kind and patient toward me.  

By sophomore year, I was in crisis. The very concrete worldview that I had inherited didn’t have space for the new people and perspectives I was encountering. I was desperately trying to resolve these contradictions to create a new integrated worldview that maintained my upbringing and also everything I was learning – but it wasn’t working. 

Cherishing the Paradoxes

A major breakthrough came near graduation that has been a guiding principle of me ever since and that I am bringing to you today – cherish the paradoxes. It came from the most unusual of places, at least for me a conservative Christian girl from Alabama. The breakthrough came from Hinduism class with Dr. Mark McClish, who is no longer with BSC but remains a good friend and among the most influential people of my life.  

This paper was on the classic Hindu text Samskara, which tells the story of a man, Praneshacharya, who is struggling himself to resolve conflicts in his life. This is an important story in Hinduism because it represents one of the religion’s core tenants – reconciling dualities that present themselves in every facet of life. For example, the tension between creation and decay; masculine and feminine; or practically in life, doing your dharma or duty vs renouncing the world to pursue enlightenment. Praneshacharya attempts to resolve these paradoxes, but life ends up teaching him that embracing the contradictions, rather than trying to resolve them, is the pathway. 

Now, you should know I earned a B+ on this paper – and in no way am I attempting to represent the diverse and beautiful philosophy that is Hinduism. So take this with a grain of salt; it is just what I took away personally and may be B-quality advice. [Not that I am still salty about that grade today.] 

But this paper helped me see for the first time that life is full of paradoxes and contradictions. They’re not bad. They’re not to be afraid of. They’re not even always to be resolved. They are where mystery and curiosity and beauty and growth and truth exist. They are what is real. They often exist at the edges of our humanity – what is not yet known.  

Questions like

• How to we live full lives with the contradiction of mortality?
• How do we love when loss and grief are inevitable?
• How do I honor my truth while opening my self to unbounded learning?
• Politically – how do I cherish new human life while fiercely advocating for the rights and health care of women? 
• Personally, as a daughter – how do I honor my parents while forging my own authentic path? 

I stand before you today, and I simply do not know the answers to these questions and questions like them. All I can say is yes: Yes to all these dualities and living out the questions. Many people say both can’t be true – you can’t be X and Y. You can’t honor your faith while being open to unbounded learning, for example. But to that I’ve learned to say, here I am. I am both. I won’t forfeit these realities or seeming contradictions – because they are within me. I embody them. I live them. And I see them in the people around me.  

Now, there is a choice. Many people ignore paradoxes, pick between them, demonize one or the other, don’t ask hard questions, or accept the easy answer. I get it – contradictions can be scary, you often lack security and feeling like you’re right. You will rarely enjoy easy answers. Admitting you don’t know is humbling – and sometimes I still don’t have the energy for it. 

But what I have found is cherishing paradoxes makes you an effective professional, an insightful academic, and a person of integrity. You will become more knowledgeable, more empathetic, more humane – a kinder and more effective person for yourself and community.  

Conclusion

That is why I believe that to live with honor is to cherish the paradoxes. But what does it mean practically for the BSC Class of 2023? I will leave you with six practical applications: 

1.  Be a lifelong learner at the paradoxes of life. Answer certainty with maybe. Ask the hard questions, even when the people around you are accepting easy answers. That’s where real contributions live to our city, country, and the world. 
2.  Don’t fear the paradoxes – whatever it is in your life, whatever part of you scares you or doesn’t fit or contradicts who you have been told you should be – that’s telling you something. Listen to it, sit with it, learn from it – don’t avoid it. That’s the hard work, and in my experience, it takes a lot of therapy and courage and determination, but it’s worth it. 
3.  Don’t let yourself be manipulated by politics – start realizing now that many dichotomies that society focuses on are false-contradictions. Dichotomies like this are motivated by powerful geopolitical parties that benefit from our society and world being divided and picking sides. Don’t let them win. 
4.  Always surround yourself with people who are different than you, who contradict you and your perspectives, especially communities marginalized. Who is not at the table, and how can you be a part of creating space for them to be there? 
5.  And in that spirit, don’t write someone off just because they hold a certain perspective. I am not saying you shouldn’t speak up for what is right. By all means, confront perspectives that are harmful and exploitative. But that is different than writing someone off. I know firsthand that there are good people who I love who hold opposite views from me – which has helped me in every policy negotiation, board room, and foreign country I’ve ever lived in. 
6.  Finally, believe in your story, even the parts that contradict, and be proud of what you have accomplished at BSC. Being a person from Alabama who is smart and thinking big and dedicated to benefitting society is interesting. It’s interesting to governments and employers and universities around the world. Many of you should be thinking about joining a presidential campaign in the upcoming 2024 election or applying to the United Nations. Think big – where would you go if nothing was holding you back? You belong at those tables just as much as anyone else. So let your story and perseverance at BSC strengthen you at times when you are not sure you can keep going for one more day.