Seniors have responsibility to serve

This is my final column for The Daily Princetonian. In a few weeks, I will graduate with the great class of 2005. I will walk out FitzRandolph Gate no longer a student, but an alumnus. Even now, it sounds foreign.

I arrived at Princeton nearly four years ago, on a hot day in September. I unpacked boxes, said goodbye to my parents, tried desperately to remember names. To say that I was younger then would be an understatement.

My classmates and I have grown up together in the intervening four years. We have listened and studied, questioning our most basic beliefs and becoming impertinent enough to offer our solutions to the world's problems. We have tried to break the rules that have served us so well, making mistakes and having more fun than we ever thought possible. We have lost loved ones and fallen in love. We have planned for an uncertain future. We have built a family out of friends.

As we graduate, we must remember to earn this education. We must take the lessons Princeton has taught us into the world beyond gothic buildings and iron gates. A common complaint about Princeton students is that too many of us become lawyers, doctors and investment bankers. Surely, this complaint is shortsighted. Imagine the investment banker who demands ethical behavior from his colleagues. Imagine the doctor who serves on his community school board. Imagine the lawyer who sees an unjust law and works to change it. Imagine the world they could create.

This is our charge: To never stop asking questions, to carry forth the kindness we have encountered here, to serve. This is how we earn the opportunities we have been given. We have studied under renowned scholars and shared our lives with the best and the brightest of our generation. Now, ready or not, our four years are up.

We are entering a world that could use our help. We began college watching the Twin Towers fall on television, offering comfort to classmates whose names we had just learned. That was almost four years ago. Today, we live in a world that is smaller than ever, that faces unforeseen threats. We live in a country that is deciding what equality, privacy and justice really mean. In our time here, we have questioned leaders brave enough to stand before us. We have learned to protest. We have voted. There is so much more we can do.

Leaving college is more than a little frightening. This is my home. These are the people I care about most. And no matter how long I delay writing my Dean's Date papers, being a student is what I know how to do best. It is easy to be intimidated by finding a job, applying to graduate school or navigating the dangerous waters of the New York real estate market. It would be easy to think that because we are so young, because we have so much left to do, we cannot yet make a difference in the world. But if Princeton has taught us anything, it should be that we can make a difference now. We can push the envelope, broaden our horizons, embrace our school's motto of service.

Princeton is not like other schools that one attends and then leaves. Though I will graduate in a few weeks, I will be a Princetonian forever. I envy the Class of 2009 as they prepare to join this community. I envy them the fear they will no doubt feel when they arrive here, the first encounters with new friends, the ideas that will strike them like lightning. I even envy them the all-nighters and the senior thesis they will somehow finish despite the odds. But my four years here are over. I leave confident that my classmates and I will earn the privileges bestowed on us by this community, that we will earn the friendships we will always share. I leave with respect for those who have come before me and hope for those who will come after. I leave grateful for a remarkable education. Katherine Reilly is a Wilson School major from Short Hills, N.J. She can be reached at kcreilly@princeton.edu.