Thomas Lyons ’26: “The Future Is Still Big and Blank and Near and Wide”

In remarks to fellow graduates at Wesleyan’s 194th Commencement Ceremony, Class of 2026 Commencement Speaker Thomas Lyons ’26 looked back on his and his peers’ undergraduate experiences, articulating how the search for knowledge seldom means finding clear conclusions in predictable places.

“…Learning isn’t site-specific—it’s not actually astrophysics or ethnomusicology,” said Lyons, a major in the College of Social Studies and co-editor in chief and executive editor of the Wesleyan Argus. “Those are just the ways we translate our excitement for the world…How wonderful, to recognize that we can be unsure together?”

Lyons made the following remarks during Wesleyan’s 194th Commencement Ceremony on May 24:

Hey everyone. A couple weeks ago, my friend told me this story:

It was his last day in French class, and the professor was conjugating the final tense on the board.

“There,” he said. “That’s it. You’ve done it all. You’ve learned French.”

I love that conclusion. That you can finish an unfinishable task. That at some point, in some classroom, on some stage, someone shakes your hand and says, “Good work here. You’ve done all you could do—go home now.”

When I got to Wesleyan, I imagined that culmination. That all our learning would define itself in one discovery. That a professor would reveal what we’d been working towards all along.

Spoiler alert: They didn’t. Or maybe I was out sick. Or at Millers. Or sledding.

Decades ago, when I was a freshman, I applied to transfer. I think I was lonely and unsure, and college seemed big and blank and wide. Searching elsewhere felt like an easy option.

I was looking for a decisive answer to some big questions: How can I make the best of this short while? What to do with time here—time still left? I was looking for someone to choose for me—to say, “Kid, this is it!” But instead of transferring, I hung around here for years, and read lots of books, threw parties, fell in love with my friends, and stayed up late, woke up early. I didn’t transfer, and I didn’t get a single answer. Instead, I got many—long and slow.

We all did. Got answers at the dining hall, overhearing snippets of someone’s thesis. Got answers in novels and articles and good sentences that moved us to tears. Dostoevsky taught me that no one wants to be in charge, but that we must choose responsibility anyway. Discrete math taught how to prove something—fully, completely. Jazz workshops taught me to arrive prepared and to be surprising. Friendships taught me to linger in conversations, to dance wildly in the rain, to hug. We got answers at dinner parties and dance parties and kitchens and theaters and classrooms and libraries. Got answers, really, when we stopped consuming ourselves with the questioning. When we stopped dissecting the bird trying to find the song, as John Craigie sings.

Because what I think now is that learning isn’t site-specific—it’s not actually astrophysics or ethnomusicology. Those are just the ways we translate our excitement for the world.

Wesleyan is an education in earnestness. It's incredible, really, all the people you get to be in college—to read novels in the morning, to host potlucks during lunch, to run in the afternoon, to play music, to write essays at night. How wonderful, to recognize that we can be unsure together?

The future is still big and blank and near and wide.

We get to pick now. We have to pick now. Isn’t that awesome? Isn’t that terrifying? Because we just got here. We’ve barely figured out how to do this thing! This week, I’ve been living off of cereal and scavenged fruit. I’m still figuring this out.

Or maybe, what’s really scary, is that it feels like we do know this place. Finally. The good classes, the Swings specials, how to celebrate our friends. And after all of that work, all of that world-building, we have to leave now?

But you never really finish, I don’t think. Yeah, at some point you finish a book. A class. A major. You graduate. At some point, this point, on some stage, this one, someone shakes your hand and says, “Go home now.”

And then you wake up the next morning, and you take down your posters and put them into boxes, and all of your plates, and all of your bowls—and you leave this place. But still. Four years from now, a Wesleyan-away, how we’ve chosen to live will continue to shape us. We can keep playing in bands. We can keep learning French.

“Whatever it is you do,” someone told me recently, “whatever it is you do, you should do it far and deep. Pretend it’s the real thing, even though you know it might not be.”

Whatever it is we choose, class of ’26—whatever job or not job, whatever adventure or misadventure—let’s believe it’s the real thing. After all, there’s nothing left to do but go experience it. Thank you.