Excerpts from the senior speech of Aarti Rana '06 at commencement dinner, June 2, 2006.

Fill-in-the-Blank

It happened last November, while we were deep in our work, and this tented moment was on the distant horizon. It happened on TV--which I doubt any of us were watching--on Jeopardy!, in a category called “College-Podge”. For $800, a contestant selected this clue: “This Vermont school chartered in 1925 boasts that its graduates have resumes as well as diplomas.” The answer, of course: “What is Bennington College.”

It’s an answer that is also a question: What is Bennington College?

Whatever it is dear class of 2006, we’ve lived it and are living it for one last night. We’re on the threshold of being the graduates Bennington will boast of. … As Jeopardy! pointed out, we’ve got our resumes, and we’ll get our diplomas tomorrow. So we’re all set for that “world-out-there” except for one small thing: a cover letter. Yes, a cover letter, to elaborate and explain. But also to “cover,” as in “wrap.” Like wrap-up letter. A letter for this ending that tells the experience thus far and proposes another beginning.

So here it goes:

Applying to the world at large. Attention: Human Resources.

To whom it may concern,

I am writing in application for the position of [fill-in-the-blank]. I am graduating tomorrow from Bennington College with a B.A. in [fill-in-the-blanks]. I am interested in working/being/playing/doing in the [blank] sector/school/world/company/adventure, particularly at the intersection of [blank] and [blank]. In my undergraduate studies, I have focused on [blank]--

Ah. Big blank. That’s a Plan-sized blank and you’re on your own for filling it.

Beyond the bunch of us, few know what a “Plan” is. We can’t tell them either, not collectively, for it’s been different for all of us. A plan is a frilly star to sail by when you’re out at sea. In it, you answer difficult questions like: “How do I want to live?” or “What fascinates me?” and furthermore, “What will I do about it?” A Bennington education is a “design-your-own” model, a kind of “choose-your-own-adventure” which we authored in conjunction with our many advisors--they were faculty, friends, art and texts. We wrote plans for our Bennington lives: The classes we took, the professors we worked with, the books we read and the books we didn’t, whether we made our work in colors or vinyl, with clay, in the lab, on a computer, distilling, developing, rendering, delivering….

So remember: You’re qualified to plan. Write it in your cover letters: “I can plan; have planned for four years; am now in the habit of planning.” They’ll never know you mean something far more fascinating than the word “plan” as they understand it. And we can write, “I am an innovative thinker.” Haven’t we all witnessed a friend after a shower-induced clarity, still sudsy and thrilled from inventing a perfect line, solving a problem, finding a most apt metaphor that sets all other thinking into place, bursting in to report it. … Think what we’ve been doing these years: beings students and friends, partners in projects, while juggling work in at least four classes.

You might say, “I can multi-task.”

There has been a lot to let go of. You know, this “design-your-own” model of education was also a “this-object-will-self-destruct-pretty-soon” kind of thing. We might have arrived at Bennington knowing up from down, even if it was a long list of subjects in our pockets: “I want to study creative writing, and art, and be an artist, and you know I’ve never tried science but I bet I could, and music, yeah, I play a little guitar.” Then suddenly, our ideas strode ahead while we scurried behind them. Was it in sophomore year that we were overgrown with new possibilities but still under-grown in our actions? So we signed up for everything. We had growth spurts. We had growing pains. Could we handle it all? We wondered. Will it always be like this? We wondered.

“I can adapt to shifting goals” is what we should tell them.

We came here to study [blank/blank/blank], changed our minds, changed them again. We found new notions of up and down, left and right, and these too became old. Our ideas were chrysalises, or were they blocks and bricks, foundations turned ashes, or something organic, something fill-in-the-blank, making some structure we couldn’t name, and yet named a hundred times over….

I discovered Bennington on-line a few days after applications were due. The course listings made me teary-eyed. I called immediately. I pleaded, “I might have fallen in love but I’m not sure yet so, in the meantime, will you let me apply late?” I was so nervous I don’t remember much except this: That the man on the other end of the phone said, “Sure.” Sure. Just like that. “So..should I have my application in by…mid-January?” I asked. “Sure,” was his reply. And that’s the moment I stepped onto the Bennington college campus.

For many, this journey began before we physically landed here; so it isn’t about to end with our leaving. I’ve heard other stories, of serendipity and of accident. A lot of falling: in love, or chance, or rapture. Fill-in-your-own-anecdote. Even in a cover letter. We’ll sneak in our style, our individual mojo--like we’ve been sneaking it into essays throughout this place as we learned to work not to our notions of good or bad, but towards understanding. We turned our passions into an education. And we’ll write that:

“I have turned my passions into an education.”

Speaking of beginnings and blanks, there was one that was both beginning and blank for each of us. It was the “Describe Yourself” card. A postcard sent out by the college to prospective students: It is a framed, blank space with one instruction: Describe Yourself. A command that is also a question. That was the first cover letter, or wrap-up, that we wrote at Bennington. Describe yourself, it asked. And we answered freely. Perhaps with a photograph, a drawing, or words: “What is brown hair. What is musician. What is a potter. What is Jamaican or Alaskan. What is student.”

Whether or not we were embarrassed by how we filled in that space, whether or not we thought outside the blank, let’s think now: How can we describe ourselves?

Our time has been book-ended by blanks: that card and tomorrow’s uncertainties.

What has happened in between the two book-ends? If asked to describe ourselves now, would we, as if in a game of Jeopardy, find ourselves answering with still more questions? Or are we done with descriptions? And on to the doing.

To begin, we’ll write to the world-at-large: “Thank you for considering my application. I look forward to working with you.”