Although May 18, 2016 dawned gray and cloudy in New York City, a little inclement weather couldn’t dim the excitement of over 1,000 students poised to walk across the stage at Radio City Music Hall and receive their diplomas at SVA’s 41st formal commencement ceremony. As Provost Jeff Nesin said in his welcoming remarks, graduation is perhaps “the oldest continually observed secular ceremony in the western world,” and both reverence and joy were on display today in abundance.

The program opened with an address from BFA Computer Art, Computer Animation, and Visual Effects student Christina Faraj, who reminded everyone gathered in the audience that, despite the many personal struggles they all faced, “We all did it—and we did it together!”

A Brooklyn native, Faraj worked three jobs in high school in order to enroll in SVA’s Pre-College Program. A brief few years later, she won a coveted Pixar Studio’s summer internship and after graduation, she will move to California to take a full time position with their studio. Although that is for many the dream job, Faraj made it clear that today is only the beginning for each and every graduate in attendance. “Continuously ask yourself,” she beamed at the audience “what’s next?”

Next up at the podium was MFA Photography, Video and Related Media student Yi Yi Lily Chan. Like so many of the incredible students at SVA, Chan’s life had already taken her around the world—from Hong Kong to Toronto to England to New York—before she enrolled at SVA to fulfill her dream of being an artist “who responds pertinently to herself and her times.” In this “incredibly bombastic” moment, she encouraged her fellow graduates to “treat the world like ambient music; to listen with our unique sensibilities; to judge less and be a sponge; to take in a sea of notions” and, just when they think they know it all, “to question it and keep learning.”

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