Geography Commencement 2007
The commencement ceremony for the Class of 2007 was held on Saturday, May 12, in the Zellerbach Playhouse.

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Undergraduate Remarks: Chritina Hawkins

I’d like to start out by apologizing to my family. I didn’t tell any of them that I was giving this speech because I wanted it to be a surprise, but now I’m a little worried that at least one of them is having a heart attack right now… But now, where to begin? It’s hard for me to come up with a logical starting point for discussing geography, because when I think about it, a million commonplace, everyday things all rush to my mind at once, like plywood, bananas, or rolling green hills… However, this is not to say that I have spent my time as a geographer dealing with simple, one-dimensional subjects, but rather, it is a testimony to the fact that studying geography has changed the entire way I think and the way I perceive the world, including the ordinary things I encounter in my everyday life. But now I have to explain all of this in only five minutes, so, in the words of geography professor Curt Kuffey, fasten your seatbelts…intellectually speaking. This may come as a surprise, but geography is not just learning all the countries and their capitals. The heart of Geography is the study of the interaction between people and the surface of the earth. Or more simply, the study of the way that location affects human activities and the ways in which people’s actions affect that place. Thus, the study involves the world, including everything in it and on it and as well as how they are all connected to each other. This is because everything that you see or everything that happens does so because of a complex historical, economic, and political history that combine in a given place with a specific physical reality. For these reasons, in geography it is possible to look at one single object and discover the hidden world of global forces that all combined to create it, right there in front of you. As a result, for me, being a student of geography has taught me to see the whole world in a new way. I feel as if I had been staring into an optical illusion for years, and finally uncovered the image hidden within it. Now, that original picture will never appear the same to me again. Examples of this are all around us, right in our own neighborhoods, including San Francisco’s Chinatown. At first glance, you see a city, people, restaurants, and apartment buildings. However, you do not see the economic push and pull factors that drew the Chinese out their homelands and the subsequent systematic racism and exclusion that forced the Chinese into a segregated neighborhood. Today, the painful memories erased, it is a tourist attraction; a place to experience the richness and vibrancy of a different culture. Through this type of examination, geography goes deeper than the surface level, to uncover and examine this invisible past, and these global forces of economic and political policies that are all wrapped up into one reality. I look out at the world around me, not just at the things I’ve been taught in class, but all the landscapes, people, and objects I encounter, and I wonder about them. I think, “if these walls could talk… oh what stories they could tell.” For example, during my study abroad in Russia I would gaze at the McDonald’s restaurant on the corner of Karl Marx street, and wonder how these coexisting entities must proclaim the converging histories of two of the world’s great superpowers and recount the rise and fall of a modern-day empire. In this way, I have spent the last four years of my life discovering the hidden histories of everyday objects that I encountered all my life, but never stopped to think about. I’m sure that after learning in this manner, it will be impossible to ever look at a anything the same way again because in my world of geography, everything has a hidden story that can give it an entirely new meaning. From the ordinary things like shipping containers, and my graduation hat that says made in Mexico, to the extraordinary, like the US government’s appetite for war, the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and global climate change. We’ve seen these things in the store, or on the news, but I’ve seen them through the eyes of a geographer, and they appear completely different to me now. In the end, I would like to thank the professors who have opened my eyes to these invisible forces all around me and have helped me to think and question in an entirely new way. I’d also like to thank my family for their endless support, especially my grandpa, who has blessed me with the greatest of all gifts, an education. Finally, I’d like to thank the ones who made life great for me as an undergraduate, from pre-midterm study sessions to late night movies on the 5th floor balcony of McCone Hall. I’m talking about, of course…West Coast Pizza. Just kidding, I mean off course, my classmates. It has been a joy to learn with all of you. I hope that you will always keep your eyes open for the wonders you can see all around you, and your minds open for all those wonders that you cannot see. The best of luck to all of you! Congratulations!