faculty, family, friends, and fellow graduates, good evening. i am honored to address you tonight. on behalf of the graduating masters and doctoral students of washington university's school of engineering and applied science, i would like to thank all the parents, spouses, families, and friends who encouraged and supported us as we worked towards our graduate degrees. i would especially like to thank my own family, eight members of which are in the audience today. i would also like to thank all of the department secretaries and other engineering school staff members who always seemed to be there when confused graduate students needed help. and finally i would like to thank the washington university faculty members who served as our instructors, mentors, and friends. as i think back on the seven-and-a-half years i spent at washington university, my mind is filled with memories, happy, sad, frustrating, and even humorous. tonight i would like to share with you some of the memories that i take with me as i leave washington university. i take with me memories of the midwestern friendliness that so surprised me when i arrived in st. louis 8 years ago. since moving to new jersey, i am sad to say, nobody has asked me where i went to high school. i take with me the memory of a more successful graduate student effort, the establishment of the association of graduate engineering students, known as ages. started by a handful of engineering graduate students because we needed a way to elect representatives to a campus-wide graduate student government, ages soon grew into an organization that now sponsors a wide variety of activities and has been instrumental in addressing a number of engineering...
