Maria B. Hristova (’26), AUBG Presidential Medalist and Valedictorian of Class of 2026, shares a personal reflection on her AUBG journey and addresses her fellow graduates:
“I don’t have a dream.
That’s about the worst thing you could be thinking when you are graduating high school.
That’s what dashed through my mind, lunching with friends, Winnie-the-Pooh blue late-September sky above me, my eyes flipping through a catalogue of colors, trying to match them to the patterns on the sycamore leaves dancing to the breeze of my senior year.
It made me shutter, uncomfortably pulling at the protruding pieces of skin around my nails as I sat squished in the auditorium at the student university application assembly.
It kept me up at night, months on end, my consciousness wandering to existential questions that kept it hovering a bit above my body before being lulled and surrendering to sleep.
How had I let this happen?
To fully grasp the crushing weight of this thought for me, you need to know that I come from a very competitive high school. And I loved it, really. It taught me this immense drive to strive for more, to do better, to learn from my peers and their determination. But the competitive nature it was built on seeped through everything: grades, clubs, language mastery, social work, sports achievements, debate championships, science competitions. And then the homestretch: university offers rankings. Which, in a non-statistical, romantic language translates to: who’s got the best dream? And that stretch of race track usually takes place on an international playing field.
I don’t regret choosing to stay home but when I was back at that auditorium and the college counselling team was announcing our class’s success rates in the big names abroad, I felt like I had fallen behind.
I wasn’t going abroad.
And that meant that I was probably going to lose the race.
And that thought scared me to death.
“No.” My mind said, in that adrenalin-y, panicky, must-not-let-that-ship-sink demanding squeal. “You need to get back on track by the next benchmark evaluation—postgrad.”
How was I to accomplish that?
Emulating the high school valedictorian seemed like a strong strategy.
So I did the most communist-y thing I’ve ever done: in June 2022, I drafted a four-year educational plan. It saw me finish university with two minors and two majors, or three majors, a thesis and a capstone project, honours, 4.0, valedictorian. Following my idol’s example, I added 5 clubs to the mix, with plans on position advancements to use for my CV there as well. Cause I’d beat the hell out of the college triangle to get my name associated with Oxford.
This notion was the only thing in my field of vision and I sacrificed much time and resources in its name.
Until December 2023, when I ended up on the same bus to Sofia as an upperclassman of mine. We spent the entire time getting to know each other and naturally, being not particularly-acquainted students, much of that time was spent on the topic of school. Upon hearing my plan and my “success” in executing it so far, they gave me that wide-eyed almost-unnoticeably nodding expression of: “Oh my god, I’m stuck on a bus with a crazy person.”
Jokes aside, “wow” was the word they used.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I just think it’s kinda great how we have access to so much,” they shared, describing to me the wonder of taking a class absolutely unrelated to your field of expertise, or learning something on a whim, getting to grab stuff from politics, maths, psychology, lit. Getting to be curious, actually curious
I don’t know how many of you have ever had an eye exam but that moment felt like the instant the doctor puts a corrective lens on those glassless prescription frames. The world was so crispy clear not in meaning but in perception, in vividness, in sense.
The image I’m describing wasn’t instant. It was constructed through a lot of subsequent reflections. Reflections, which led me to the conclusion that this was probably the most defining moment of my undergrad career.
Because it gave me the courage to say, I get Economics, but it’s just not my thing, and drop it.
It made me realise that as much as I liked all of the clubs I was in, there were only a couple of them that I felt a need to keep.
It pushed me towards embracing opportunities I wouldn’t have even seen on the side of the spotlight-narrow route I had prepped for myself, academically, socially, personally.
Come this September, I got stuck in an existential crisis. I think at least some of us might share that experience. It becomes particularly acute at points of precipice, senior year being an example of such. So I was thinking a lot about what these experiences were and what they meant for me. What marks they had left. The lens I chose to use to look at them through was our orientation-favourite quote: AUBG is the place to be.
Had it been?
Here I could give into the nostalgia that has been my constant companion for the past year and bore you with a slightly less stereotypical version of: I met the greatest people, I learned so much, it was the best time of my life, a place unlike any other.
But that’s not an accurate reflection of what I experienced.
I can use the platform I’ve been given to pinpoint every flaw in the system that I’ve noted meticulously and give you a strategic education plan and institution manifesto, which charts our course for the next 10 years.
As much as I am concerned with that, I am not sure the audience beams with impatience at the prospect of me yapping away about this particular passion of mine. I’ll send you the work in an email.
So I’ll give you my retrospection on things, the one I came to as I walked my favourite stretch to Bachinovo park.
AUBG hadn’t been the dream. Cause I didn’t have one, remember?
But, in observing the lines, freckles, and star-constallation of tiny moles on my skin, I realised that it had been the place where dreams come true.
For, you see, when I was about 8-years-old, I really wanted to play in a band. And, although quite briefly, I got to do that, 14 years later, playing the music of my favourite symphonic metal group growing up, in the company of the best of musicians.
When I was 17, I was the biggest fan of the Turkish Romcom series Erkenci Kus. The main characters of that show worked in an advertising agency as a copywriter and idea-generator. Wouldn’t working at a place like this be so exciting!, I thought letting my mind wander further than the COVID-claimed confinements of my home. Fast forward four years and I was interning at a creative production studio, copy- and screenwriting.
At 19, I attended a Bulgarian photographer’s exhibition on the Henro pilgrimage, scouring a room filled with images of temples and stamped clothes. Gosh, I turned to my best friend, imagine walking these paths! And I did walk them, in May 2025, scorching Shikoku sun, great company, and the promise of a day full of people who gave as much as they could, even to a stranger like me.
Does that mean that AUBG has always been the dream?
I wouldn’t know, that’s for the Fates to decide. I subscribe to an idea a friend of mine shared in 2022. It might not look it, but life knows the way. And it does, cause what matters is life introducing you to the right people.
But Maria, you might say, everybody says that.
That doesn’t mean it’s a lie. It’s cliche, yes. But, God, did I meet the right people. The ones that welcome you with open arms. The people that make you take hold of your life, that inspire you with their kindness, their generosity, their curiosity, their zest for experience and adventure. These people were professors, who became friends, who spent indefinite time debating international politics or genealogy tests, sharing apple-cinammon tea and talking about which streets to avoid in Naples or how to survive in Namibia. They were members of staff, who would stop whatever they were doing to make sure I reach the office I am looking for, or wait for me to finally finish working on a documentary at the MacLab way past 23:00. They were peers, who became my teachers in life, like that upper classmen, or friend who would wait for me to come down a mountain alone in the dark to make sure I’m okay, who would hold me when I’m down in spirit, make me laugh in our forced banter, or bring me breakfast from Lelya Krasi at 00:30 in the morning cause they knew I was up working.
These people are my idols. And I am so privileged to have them in my life. I hope all of us have them, recognise them and remind them of their immense power, and cheer them on as they make headway in fulfilling their dreams on or outside of our AUBG campus. AUBG itself I task with keeping their spirit (and those that continue to be here after us) safe, carefully gathering them, as they have in the past, to create a force of nature on this campus, a community of game changers, ones that care and act in that care together.
Okay. I’ve given you all an assignment. Now time forces me out of our little AUBG bubble and into the big real world, stripping me of my student armor and asking me the big question once again: what’s your dream now?
I don’t have a dream.
That’s about the worst thing you could be thinking when you are graduating university.
That’s what dashed through my mind, dining with friends, the fluorescent Canteen lights flickering, counting the seconds to my last student club’s budget assembly.
And that made me tremble, for a while.
But I think I’m growing less scared of the uncertainty. Because I have met the right people, who are familiar with this nervousness and have taught me to see it as a sign of trepidation. Because the world is so big that there are mountains of things in store for us. Because I am sure we’ve already dreamt (little dreams, darling dreams) and life’s taken note and lined them up for us. Because we’ve dreamed and achieved before. So dream still and dream big. And if you don’t have a dream now, that’s fine too. Life will find a way, regardless of how obscure and in recognition of how profound, and you will wake up, realising that dreams have come true.”
