Dear president, faculty members, honoured guests, families, and fellow graduates,
Good afternoon! I'm Chen Zhangjing from the Class of 2025 in Applied Mathematics.
As graduation approaches, I've been thinking a lot about the past four years—about this campus, our professors, our friends, and how much we've all changed. It's hard to say whether these changes come from growing older or from what we’ve learned here. Maybe we’ll never know, because university is precisely the place where growth, aging, and learning are deeply intertwined.
Academically, I’m still a little surprised by how much I’ve grown to love mathematics. When I first arrived at BNBU, I didn’t have any strong feelings about it. But through lectures, discussions with passionate professors, and two years of research in solid mechanics, I’ve come to enjoy not just the simple satisfaction of solving math problems, but also the persistence and long-term pursuit of research. That’s something I’ve learned from the people at BNBU—and from BNBU itself. In the future, I will continue my studies in applied mathematics at the graduate level.
Outside my major, BNBU’s liberal arts education helped me discover another subject that inspires me—sociology. People often say that great mathematicians tend to have a second love, to help them better understand society, often something like philosophy or sociology. I wouldn’t call myself a mathematician yet, but I do believe BNBU is a place to encourage this kind of curiosity that crosses disciplines. I’m also grateful that my interests and passion have been encouraged by my parents, and my teachers during the past four years.
Looking at the audience, I see my parents. Thank you for being here today, for inspiring me to follow the path of math, and for encouraging me when I felt the loneliness and pressure that come with the pursuit of knowledge. I also see many familiar faces—my classmates, my friends. Over these years, we’ve explored and worked together. I’m proud of what we, the Class of 2025, have done to bring us here—and I truly believe we’ll keep moving forward in our journey of learning, exploring, and questioning.
BNBU is not a place that teaches students to follow a standard answer. It’s a place that encourages students like us to raise questions—and to look for answers that are our own. Finally, happy graduation, from BNBU, the world is ours.
