Delivered May 28, 2026
My final FYP mark was a B; I don’t know how the hell I’m up here.
I feel like it’s good to start with that caveat to let you know what you’re in for, because this is not going to be a very intellectual address.
Graduates, supporters, professors, and administrators, thank you so much for being here today. My name is Jenna Olsen, and I am a Bachelor of Journalism Honours student. I can’t explain how honoured I am to be up here today and how nervous I am to have the opportunity to address a room full of the most intelligent people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting.
I’m going to do my best to avoid making too many inside jokes, but that would be insincere to the King’s experience because King’s is literally just one big inside joke. It’s a totally singular, inexplicable experience that is impossible to understand unless you’ve lived it, and it’s that kind of exclusivity that allows our school to get away with charging the most expensive tuition in the province. FOMO is a powerful drug.
On behalf of the graduating class, I’d like to thank all of the incredible King’s professors and teaching staff who taught us everything we know, answered relentless questions, put up with their students’ weird parasocial relationships with them, and marked assignments that were often turned in far past the due dates.
I’d also like to thank this year’s grad committee, Satish Patel, Maria Meagher, and Michelle Day, who, despite being incredibly busy finishing their degrees, stepped up to plan everything for grad after they found out no one had signed up to do so. They planned everything in two months when past grad committees had like six months. Thank you all so much.
I’d also like to thank President Bill, who made all of us feel part of the family the second we stepped onto the campus. Bill knows everyone’s name and takes the time to learn everyone’s story. He is the everyman’s president. Always eating in the dining hall and eager to break bread with students. Always giving students the opportunity to meet with distinguished alumni by hosting dinners that feel more like literary salons inside the president’s lodge. And always being the champion of positive change on campus. He will be sorely missed. It’s an honour to move on from King’s alongside you, President Bill.
I’d also like to say a big thanks to someone who I don’t believe is here. And that is Michelle Wilband, who I’m confident our FYP year certainly wouldn’t have survived without. Michelle was our FYP student support coordinator, and we needed a lot of support. She was the only person with the power to grant essay extensions when we were in first year.
As a B FYP student, I contacted Michelle quite frequently. Both on my behalf and as the ghost writer for friends in need of extensions. Most of those emails came in at around 4 a.m. on Monday morning, because back in our day, FYP papers were due at 9 a.m. on Monday morning.
Immediately following our FYP year, they had to change the decades-old schedule to make papers due at midnight on Sunday night, because our class sent so many of these middle-of-the-night requests.
Because I’m not ready to leave this place, I decided to make a last-ditch effort to extend my time, the only way I know how, by writing an extension request email for Michelle Wilband.
Dear Michelle,
I am writing to you today to request an extension on my time at King’s.
Unfortunately, things have taken a turn for the worse and extenuating circumstances have arisen, preventing me from graduating today and leaving behind my home for the last four years and the people who’ve become my people.
I am not requesting an extension because I am out playing manhunt in the quad, or ringing the chapel bell, or climbing onto the roof of the Bay’s.
I am requesting an extension so I can play one more game of pool in the Wardy, go to one more midnight mass, spend one more spring afternoon on the steps of the library, and have one more hang at Plato’s.
Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated. You are my only hope.
Thank you so much for your time.
Jenna Olsen
If anyone has Michelle’s contact, please pass along that message. She has about five minutes to get back to me.
I came to King’s because I wanted to be a travel journalist. My only goal in life was to permanently be on the road, living out of a suitcase, and I figured journalism was a solid route to that. But after coming here, my plan changed, because it became impossible to envision my life without permanent roots in a tight-knit community, where you can’t walk around without running into two of your best friends, three of your mentors, and eight people you barely know but genuinely want to stop and talk with for 20 minutes. This is a place of deeply entrenched love, respect, and care for others, and that’s what sets King’s apart. That’s what makes King’s grads so special. Because apart from raising bright, deep, and diverse thinkers, King’s creates great people. People who will drop everything (often an assignment that’s two weeks past due) to help a friend or go on an adventure with someone just because they happened to be in line for the galley at the same time.
Teaching us to be good people is the mission and thesis buried within FYP that lays the foundation for our degrees, the way we think, and ultimately, the people we become. Above all, FYP teaches us that since the dawn of the written word, people have thought the way we do, cried the way we do, and loved the way we do. Because above being the study of philosophy, literature, history, and religion, FYP is the study of people. FYP deeply ingrains empathy and understanding across millennia, and across this campus, raising grads that can’t help but be good neighbours, good friends, and good people.
Whenever I’ve had the pleasure of meeting King’s alum in the wild, no matter how long it’s been since they stepped foot on this campus, we’re able to connect right away and talk limitlessly until some external force ultimately intervenes. And that’s not because we read the same texts (which change a bit every year) or know the same people (this happens even with people who were here decades before I was—though no matter how long ago they did FYP, everyone I’ve ever met has also been taught by Tom Curran). King’s alumni are able to connect because we share the same values of respect, generosity, going out of our way for others, devotion to understanding the perspectives of our neighbours, and commitment to having a good time despite the horrors of the world or the state of our essay.
Above all, King’s instills an understanding of the impact we have on the world around us and a deep commitment to making it better. And that’s partially because these texts that people wrote thousands of years ago are still changing our lives and minds. I know they changed mine. Through changing our personal worlds through its teachings, FYP and King’s inherently teach us that the actions we take create change, raising students who can’t help but go into the world and do just that.
I truly believe that the purpose of life is to help others and have a good time. That’s what King’s teaches us, and that’s now how I try to live my life every day, inside and outside the Quad.
Thank you, King’s, for forever shaping my life and giving me truer friends than I ever could’ve imagined.
Considering I haven’t heard from Michelle yet … I think it’s time to move on. I love you all, I miss you already, and I’m beyond honoured for the opportunity to represent our class. I’d better see you all at The Local tonight!