May 20, 2017
Honors Program Reception student address: Brian D. Zied ’17
Brian D. Zied ’17 (Glen Rock, N.J.) was one of two students chosen to speak at the Liberal Arts Honors Program Reception on Commencement Weekend. He graduated summa cum laude as a computer science major with an English literature minor. He earned the award for having the highest GPA in the computer science concentration at the Academic Awards Ceremony. Zied also was a member of the Dirigo Leadership Honor Society and Chi Alpha Sigma, the National College Athlete Honor Society. He was a member of the Friars’ men’s track and field team. He has accepted a job offer with IBM in New York City.
Good morning Dr. Lynch (Dr. Stephen J. Lynch, professor of English and program director), Dr. Fournier (Dr. Suzanne J. Fournier ’77, associate professor of English and associate director of the Honors Program), Liberal Arts Honors Program faculty, distinguished guests, parents, and my fellow members of the class of 2017. I’m very grateful to be able to speak on behalf of my classmates this morning to reflect on the blessings we received as members of the Liberal Arts Honors program at PC. We all learned more from each other’s thoughts and opinions than I think we could have possibly imagined — through discussions in seminar and late night study sessions in beloved Club Phil (the library). However, when we approached some of the esoteric and periphrastic reading selections handpicked by our professors, we really needed to turn to the big guns to get some help. One such time, we tackled the verbosity of the poem “Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey” under Dr. Eric Bennett’s instruction in my first semester of sophomore year DWC.
“Tintern Abbey…” was written in blank verse by British poet William Wordsworth in 1798 at the tail end of the French Revolution, a conflict which moved and resonated with young people across the European continent and abroad. On a tour of the Welsh countryside with his sister, Wordsworth reflected on a scenic overlook that he had already visited 5 years prior. He discusses how his previous experience has affected his view now, as well as how he might feel upon visiting the countryside again in the future. Overwhelmed by sensory experience and his own emotions, he attempts to make sense of the nostalgia and others sensations he is confronting. Wordsworth ultimately feels that he is a “living soul,” capable of seeing “into the life of things,” sensing the power of human memory and intuiting the interconnectedness of nature.
Thinking again about Wordsworth’s own self-discovery, I’ve realized that the Liberal Arts Honors program has enabled us all to have our own “Tintern Abbey”-like experiences. The courses we have taken have given us the power to be our own “living souls” seeing “into the life of things.” At the conclusion of our four years (compared to Wordsworth’s five years), we are now able to sit back, and not only enjoy the view of our college experience, but also realize how many things we learned were interconnected. We were all Wordsworth at one time or another, using words to take us to places we could have never gone before. We have come to a greater understanding of our world around us. We have been minds at work, reading and learning and capable of using our past experience to inform our understandings of the present and the future. We have built up our own ideas, traced other perspectives, and grasped at the abstract.
“Tintern Abbey” was not a very big deal when it was published, but came to be recognized as the most memorable poem of the whole Romantic Revolution. Similarly, I think that we are only beginning to understand all that our honors courses and professors have been able to offer us. Whatever the future holds, we have been awakened to the power of human intellect and our own learning experiences.
Congratulations to the class of 2017 and to everybody who made their past 4 years possible.
