Student Government President Rafael Gilboa's 2026 Academic Convocation address

Student Government President Rafael Gilboa, a fourth-year software engineering student, addressed the crowd at the Gordon Field House during RIT's annual Academic Convocation ceremony on May 8. The full text of his speech is below:

Life after graduation is scary. There’s not a single graduate in this room who can tell you with certainty what their life is going to look like even one year from now. There’s not a single one of us who could honestly claim that we haven’t been stressed about what life is going to be like after we leave this campus. All of us have been nervous about the uncertainty and change that the future brings as we pass this major milestone.

But we’ve all felt like this before. There is one question that every high school senior hates to be asked. God, I remember the pain of being asked it for the millionth time. “What’s next year look like for you?”

I hated that question. We all hated that question, because even once we did know where we had committed, we still had no idea what our first year of college would really bring. How we’d make friends, what we would do for fun, how we’d afford anything ever, what it would be like moving somewhere new, no longer getting to stay in the places and with the people we’d grown so attached to for so long.

All those worries sound familiar. All high school seniors face those same pressures, but not all of them choose RIT. You’re at a tough school. You had, or could have had many options to choose from for college, and some of those schools were definitely easier.

We chose RIT because we knew it would be a challenge, because we knew that even with all the unknowns that this new world would bring, pressure makes diamonds baby, and that we could rise to the occasion. We got to RIT, moved in with roommates either strangers or friends, and we dealt with the notable but distinct challenges that each of those arrangements can bring.

Starting out, we all dealt with advisors helping us figure out our first semester calendars that were unnecessarily full of 8-ams. We witnessed the unending, unrelenting energy of our Orientation Leaders doing the hamster dance and our RAs leading ice breakers, all of them trying to show us that this was a place worth loving, and that the weirdos sitting next to us were worth becoming friends with for the rest of our lives.

As the weeks went by, we had great days, where all our homework got done quickly and our new friends were all free to hang and the right visiting chef was in the dining hall. But we also had rough days–all of us did. Difficulties we knew were coming and those we had no way to brace yourself for. Days where we weren’t sure that we wanted to stay here, maybe even how much less difficult life would be if we did actually go to that easier school.

The hurdles to graduation were no joke. But even in those moments, the ones where the easy path seemed so much more appealing, all of you didn’t quit. You stuck with it. You knew it would be hard, and it was, but you didn’t shrink away from the challenge, you grew from it. When the economy worsened and the co-ops dried up, you struggled to find a job, yes, but you still found a way to meet your requirements.

When your deadlines got too much–you missed some, sure, but you learned to do better next time, to talk to your professor person to person, and yes make a convincing excuse or two.

When you joined clubs and teams and orgs from intramural hockey to phi delt to quiz bowl to find friends, you took on their leadership roles to help leave them better than you found them. When your school affected your life, and your life affected your school, you found balance in the chaos, or at least found a way to keep going just a little bit longer and get the support you needed. When all your dining dollars ran out, and all you had left was Gracie's swipes, you found literally anything else you could eat and you survived off of that as long as you could. Classes filled before your enrollment date and work was overwhelming and group projects were sometimes with the most confusing people in the entire world: you were pushed to your limits, and yes you struggled, but you never gave up.

You knew that hard times were ahead, and looking into that future, you saw a lot that you could worry about. But the future came, you were there, you were ready, and you more than succeeded.

Now, as we look to what's next, we have so many of the same worries we did back then in high school–but now with even more pressure behind them. We don’t know what the future holds other than that we are graduating into an incredibly tough world. I chose to start a career in software engineering mid-AI revolution, of course I’m nervous about what life will be like after this.

But I also see something that I hope you can see too. You’ve all been uncertain about the future before and you’ve still chosen the more challenging path, you’ve known hard things were to come and you’ve still been able to thrive. Yes, the post-college world is maybe tougher now than it’s been in a long time, and yes, RIT has been tough in so many ways. And not despite that toughness, but because of that toughness, I know that you are more ready than anyone for everything that's ahead.

You are joining the ranks of one-hundred-and-fifty thousand RIT alumni, made up of CEOs and Inventors and Directors and Artists and Builders and Doctors, and now Astronauts too, you have earned your place among them. They have taken their struggles and lessons from their college experiences and turned them into immeasurable success and fortune and fame.

And now, with everything that we’ve gained, with every struggle that we’ve overcome, every friend that we’ve made, and every lesson that we’ve learned, it’s our turn, the future is now, and we are all prepared.

Thank you for your time, thank you for the honor of getting to be your student government president, and most importantly congratulations to the class of 2026, we are ready for what is to come.