On May 19, 2025, Advait Jukar ’11 delivered the commencement address on the Great Lawn.
By Advait Jukar ’11
May 27, 2025
Watch Advait Jukar's commencement address.
Good morning, and thank you for that wonderful introduction, President Bilger. And thank you to the Trustees, Faculty, Staff, Parents, Friends, alumni, and of course, the class of 2025. What an honor it is to be here in front of you, 14 years since I was right there in one of those seats! Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I would be up here on this stage, in my green wizard robes, addressing you all.
I have to admit that I was a little taken aback when I found out that you had chosen me to be your commencement speaker. But, it is such a great honor, and I thank you. It’s easy to feel like an imposter when you’ve been asked to address a bunch of Reedies, let alone Reedies at commencement. What am I, a 35-year-old paleontologist (not like Ross from Friends), going to tell you about life, or new beginnings? Have I even experienced enough to give you any sage advice? I spend most of my days thinking about the deep past; what do I know about the future?
I let myself steep in that deeply uncomfortable feeling, and ultimately decided that what I can share with you is my own journey through new beginnings, what I learned along the way, and why I think the educational experiment that is ÐÓ°ÉÊÓƵ is so vital now more than ever.
I came to Reed in 2007, majored in Biology, went on the graduate school, got a PhD, added to the statistic that a lot of Reedies go on to get PhDs, and then got a bunch of research jobs before becoming a curator. Seems pretty pre-ordained, right? Like the standard model of how things are supposed to work? While it might seem like my path to this career was a nice linear progression, real life is seldom like that.
I learned how to be a scientist here at Reed, studying frogs with Bob Kaplan, and spent two glorious summers on a mountain in Korea conducting ecological experiments. And no, they weren’t fossils; these frogs were very much alive. It was only after some encouragement from Steve Black in biology that I decided to pursue graduate school in paleontology. For some reason I thought that it was all I was going to want to do—much to the joy of frogs everywhere.
Well, life has a way of complicating things. I didn’t get into a single PhD program I applied to, but I did get into a masters program in West Virginia. I decided to take the plunge, as terrified as I was. If I thought the culture shock at Reed was bad, boy was I not ready for West Virginia. ÐÓ°ÉÊÓƵ six months in, the feelings of trepidation crept in. Had I made a grave mistake? For a number of reasons, I made a decision that year to quit paleontology and go back to my ecological roots. I just didn’t think I had a future in the field. So, I found my way to a graduate program at George Mason University in the DC suburbs.
But before I got there, my advisor in West Virginia took us on a museum trip to the Smithsonian, where we stayed at the Curator of Dinosaur’s home. I asked if I could help out at the museum even if I wasn’t pursuing paleontology, and he took a chance on me. That serendipitous meeting changed everything because it opened the door to the National Museum of Natural History where I eventually found both formal and informal mentors for my graduate education. And clearly, the pull of paleo was too strong.
After completing my masters in Environmental Science and Policy on the ecology of Caribbean coral reefs, I started a PhD (weirdly enough in the same program) on the impact of Deep Time climate change and humans on mammal communities in my home country of India, and North America, with mentors from both the Smithsonian and Mason. People will take chances on you because they see your potential, even if you might sometimes doubt your own. Every one of my mentors did. Your job is to show up, learn as much as you can, and make the most of those chances.
My time as a graduate student at Smithsonian helped me land a postdoctoral fellowship there, and that of course, prepared me for my next postdoc at Yale—this time in the Anthropology Department of all places. I was there during the pandemic years. Covid threw a wrench in my research. I couldn’t travel, or do anything that I had proposed. But it just so happened that the Yale Peabody Museum was undergoing a wholescale renovation, and they were looking for a fossil mammal expert to help them develop their galleries. I was at the right place, at seemingly the right time. Even though the uncertainty of the pandemic meant that I couldn’t conduct the research I wanted to do, it allowed me to design and develop my first museum exhibition.
I say all of this to hopefully show you that career paths are not always linear. Serendipity, luck, and timing play a huge role in where you end up and what you end up doing. You never know where life will take you. You don’t know what the future will be like. You might have a vague idea, but life has a way of taking you down winding paths. The thing about new beginnings is that they’re always filled with uncertainty. So embrace the uncertainty. Control what you can, let go of everything else, and make the most of the opportunities that you are given. Oh and of course, whatever your journey is, always find a way to pay for the life that you want for yourself. Your parents will thank you for that.
Another truth: I haven’t done this alone. I couldn’t have gotten here on my own and neither could any of you. So, take a moment to celebrate everyone who helped you get here—your parents, friends, professors, partners, pool hall managers, and favourite baristas who always knew your order; your community.
I wouldn’t have made it to Reed had it not been for my family. My mum found out about the school in a book about college that change lives and thought it was perfect for a weird kid who didn’t quite fit in to the way things are done in India. But, I nearly took it off the list of colleges I applied to. It was far away on the west coast, and we didn’t have any family nearby. It was a scary thought to pick up and move to a very unknown part of the United States. But, I did have an uncle in academia, who knew about the college and Reedies and convinced me that it’s worth keeping on the list. And they were both right. I found my people here at Reed, and my calling as a biologist, as I imagine many of you did as well.
Your community matters. We are a social species. Indeed, research has shown that the key to a happy life is to have and maintain strong relationships. I met some of my best friends here at Reed, and we still keep in touch and reminisce about the HA party we crashed during O-week, late nights trying to crack Epsilon-Delta Proofs, catching frogs in Korea, or setting up pre-thesis parade parties in bio. The joy that I get from hanging out with old friends, or making new ones far outweighs the joy I get from any academic accomplishment. I have also been lucky that several of my former professors have become close friends, and I am sure they will for you. So, cherish the friends you have made here; they will last a lifetime.
As you move on through life, your community will grow. You will accumulate mentors, friends, and chosen families. But what’s hard about these journeys is that you might have to leave some of these communities behind. It is a feeling that, I, as a third culture kid, someone who left his home and culture in India and found many other homes and cultures here in Portland, and further away in Washington DC, New Haven, Tucson, and now in Gainesville, know all too well. But, my community in India, here in Portland, and everywhere else I’ve lived had my back then, and I know I can count on them now. And in my experience, Reedies do look out for each other, even if they are decades apart. So, be intentional in your relationships, whatever form they may take. Make time for each other and be there for your own. That’s one of the secrets to a good life, even if it is a life spread out over space and time.
Reed is a special place where you learn for the sake of learning, which is pretty rare these days. I got lucky and found a pretty Reed-esque job as a paleontologist (once again, not like Ross from Friends). I think about shovel-tusked elephant relatives and giant dinosaurs, get to dig in the dirt, and then work on fossils in one of the largest collections in the United States. It’s also a very interdisciplinary field, or at least the way I do paleo is. I draw on perspectives from ecology, evolutionary biology, geology, anthropology, statistics, chemistry, history, economics, and the arts to make sense of the past. How much more Reed can this field get! I hit all the Group Requirements. Throw in field work, and there’s my PE credit.
But in all seriousness, the reason I say that it is a very Reed field is because when people ask me what the application is of what I do, I take great joy in telling people that often times, there isn’t any, except for the pursuit of knowledge. I actually get to live the Life of the Mind. I get to work with long-extinct animals and ask questions about who they are, how they evolved, and how they interacted with each other. It’s pretty esoteric and that’s fine.
I think the pursuit of knowledge is a fundamental aspect of our species, likely going far back into our lineage as it emerged from the Great Rift in Africa. Reed instills in all of us a love for this fundamental pursuit. And this is core to the ethos of the educational system here. And while everyone today seems to be obsessed with the artificial, you are all experts in using your own intelligence to interrogate and analyse; and criticize and synthesize the ideas that shape this world. We are all comrades in this quest.
A Reed education was the key to my success in graduate school and after. It gave me the tools to think broadly across disciplines, pivot between fields, and find gaps our knowledge and ask interesting questions to address them. I believe that it will be instrumental in yours as well. There are very few places where we have the luxury of living the life of the mind, but this luxury is precisely what allows us to be adept at navigating the nuances of this increasingly chaotic world.
But this way of thinking is becoming increasingly scarce. Trust in institutions like ours, and the importance of scholarship and expertise is being eroded. In fact, reality is itself being questioned by political chicanery and the human experience is being automated by tech hubris. In such a world we need more Reedies like you—people who are driven to find a greater truth, who do not fear complexity, who champion an ethical way of being, and who embrace what it means to be human.
The tools that you gain from a Liberal Arts education at Reed–critical thinking, effective communication, reading between the lines, the ability to form an argument, and a pretty damn good bullshit detector will be more useful than ever as you are bombarded with ever more information.
And so, I challenge you all, as you embark on your new beginning, to think about how will you use these, now hopefully, self evident tools to make yourself, your community, your country, and your planet a better place? How will you take the Reed ethos with you on your own journeys?
Thank you, Love Reed, and Congratulations!