As I prepare to graduate from Harvard this morning, I had some words I thought worth sharing:

I’ve been waiting half of my life for an owl, more specifically, a letter delivered by an owl, and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one here who’s been waiting. That Hogwarts owl has a really bad sense of direction; it is so very lost. Hogwarts was only on the pages of a book, but to a ten-year-old, and even to a twenty-two-year-old, Hogwarts, and the magic that exists there, are real.

I believe in magic. I can practically hear my parents groaning, wondering what kind of school they sent their daughter to. This is what you get for supporting a liberal arts education. I took the required science classes alongside my Folklore and Mythology classes.

Yet I still believe in magic. It’s not the magic of Narnia or Hogwarts or Oz or any other place we love to read and daydream about. It’s a much simpler kind of magic and far more extraordinary.

Someone once gave me a piece of advice that has stayed with me ever since: You don’t have to be trying to change the world in order to change someone’s world. The person giving the advice was referring to writing, that a novel about vampires could matter just as much, if not more, to a reader than a play by Shakespeare, a statement which feels blasphemous as an English major, but it is true nonetheless. You don’t have to be trying to change the world in order to change someone’s world. You just have to be. To me, that is magic.

We as people can change. We are not set in stone forever. We can change and be changed by other people. A smile as you pass by, a message over Facebook, a meal to catch up on life, a hug when there are no words at all. This is the magic that we possess, the power to connect to other people and through that, to do wonderful things. We have changed over the past four years and we will continue to change over the next four years and the many years after. You don’t have to be trying to change the world in order to change someone’s world.

Now some of us are planning on actually changing the world, but for the rest of us, we’ll just be. Abraham Lincoln said, “Whatever you are, be a good one.” A good friend, a good daughter or son, brother or sister, roommate, coworker, partner, leader – a good person. Be a good one. You don’t need to be a great one or the best one, just a good one. So that if you’re not out to change the world, you can still change someone’s world, even if that world is just your own.

I’d like to take a moment to recognize the people who have changed our worlds for the past four years. The House Masters, tutors, and staff who helped make homes for us. The professors, teaching fellows, and advisors who made learning exciting. Each other, our friends, who made the day to day worthwhile. And last but certainly not least, our families, without whom, we’d have no foundation to stand upon. Thank you all. You have changed our worlds for the better and I hope we’ve done the same for you.

All that said, if anyone does see an owl flying by with a letter in its beak, please let me know.

Congratulations, Harvard Class of 2017. The world is waiting for us.