Maha Afif (’25) was the Student Speaker for the 31st Commencement Ceremony. Maha graduated with a major in Political Science and International Relations, and minors in European Studies and Spanish. Known for her intellectual curiosity and global mindset, she served as Lead Mentor in the MentiFY Program, Secretary of Phi Beta Delta, and an active member of Model EU. A Spanish tutor and multilingual speaker, Maha is passionate about civic education and cross-cultural dialogue. In 2025, she was honored with the Outstanding Student Leader Award. She also received the Best Paper Prize at the Student-Faculty Research Conference Fellowship of the Mind – a recognition of her academic excellence and impactful scholarship.
Dear President Ensign, trustees, faculty, staff, families, friends, guests and most importantly; dear Class of 2025,
Today, we stand at the edge of a chapter we wrote together, sentence by sentence, through sleepless nights in the library, passionate debates in the Dean of Students’ office, laughter echoing in the Skaptopara hallways haunting the Residence Life Team, and moments of quiet resilience when our world felt too heavy to carry alone.
Four years ago, we arrived here as strangers. We came with different luggage. Some had tiny backpacks and others giant suitcases, but all stuffed with hopes, snacks from home, and a stubborn belief that we’d figure it all out, fueled mostly by our grandmothers’ sweets and sheer delusion. I arrived from Morocco, eyes wide, anxiety high, unsure of what I’d find. What I found was a community. A mosaic of stories, backgrounds, and dreams, united by something extraordinary: the courage to become more than who we were when we got here, regardless of our luggage size.
AUBG is a place where borders blur, not just between countries, but between academic disciplines, personalities, and paths. We have shared classrooms with future diplomats, software engineers, filmmakers, business tycoons, and scholars. We survived group projects, shared notes in at least three different languages, and built friendships that feel like home in any country.
We are shaped by difference and bound together by something deeper and greater: intellectual curiosity.
That’s the spirit of the liberal arts. That’s the soul of AUBG.
Here we didn’t study what to think, we learned how to think. We crossed disciplines and cultures. We have computer science majors who learned to debate Plato, and a political science student (standing right in front of you) who learned to code in HTML. We learned that truth is complex, that nuance matters, and that knowledge isn’t something earned, but built, together.
Let us be honest and not pretend that our class’s journey was graceful all the time, it sure wasn’t. Some days were hard, lonely, and overwhelming. But we showed up for each other. We stayed up late in the lobbies, prayed before presentations, cried when Excel crashed, danced to the beats of four all-campus picnics, and just kept going.
Now, as we take our next step as students, I want to talk about our word: community.
Community is what we built when we chose to be kind even when it was easier to be distant. It is what we nurtured during team-buildings, during finals week in BAC, or late nights on the lawn, and through every small moment of mentorship, and every “you got this” text. It’s what makes us more than a graduating class, it makes us a legacy.
We are walking away with degrees, yes, but also with proof that in connection lies strength. That leadership isn’t about the loudest voice, but the most compassionate heart. That community isn’t a simple checkbox, it’s what drives progress.
We are stepping into a world that needs healing. A world that needs more empathy, more listeners, more bridge-builders. And although your diploma might not say it, yet we all share one certificate: bridge-building. We can build bridges not just between ideas, but between people, between struggles, and between histories.
So, as we step into the unknown, whether that is grad school, a job, or the terrifying thing called “adulthood” in general, I want you to remember this: you already have everything it takes. You have already built a community in a place as unique as AUBG. Now go and build it wherever you land.
Before I close, I want to say thank you, not just on my behalf, but on ours. Because no one made it here alone. To all the people including my own mother, who called before every exam, who stayed up worrying across time zones, who prayed for us harder than we studied, this is your moment too. To the families and friends who sent care packages, reminded us to eat, and believed in us when we couldn’t- Thank you. These diplomas are as much yours as they are ours, except that we lost a lot more sleep than you did.
To our faculty, and staff – you have been our second family. You held space for our loudest laughs and even louder breakdowns. Thank you for teaching us what belonging feels like.
And to my fellow graduates, thank you. For being someone’s first friend, someone’s support system, and someone’s reason to stay.
Be bold, be kind. Be principled.
And one last thing, ten years from now, I hope we come back.
I hope we stand together in front of the time capsule we curated. And I hope we open it with nostalgia, and with pride. With stories of what we have built, of what we have healed, and of what we have given back.
Because memory is not about holding on, it is about passing forward.
Thank you and congratulations Class of 2025! And because no commencement speech is ever complete without it: We made it.
