My name is Emily Warren,

and I am a PhD student in psychology.

P-h-D student.

That has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

It means I got my shit figured out.

(Laughter)

Well, I may be the most atypical grad student you'll ever meet.

I did something that most people would not advise you to do.

I applied to graduate school on a whim.

Why would I do such a thing?

You see, I did it because I had an expectation

that maybe I would find some missing part of myself

by being back in school, by being on a path,

a path that led to anywhere, other than moving back in with my parents.

Did it work?

No!

I haven't found some missing magical part of myself,

but in my past two years of graduate school,

I have learned something that I think is more important and more valuable

than any class you'll take as a PhD student.

I'm on stage today not because I have all the answers,

but because I have a question.

How many of you have ever felt the need to find yourselves?

A lot of you.

Me too.

We are driven by this need, this expectation,

that our all important purpose in our adult lives is to find ourselves,

that our latent selves are just out there somewhere,

waiting to be discovered.

Huh!

I think that makes us treat the present moment like a placeholder.

A lot of people will talk to you about their biggest fear,

so I'm going to tell you mine.

My biggest fear is reaching the end of my life

and realizing that I was never awake to any of it,

never in the present moment,

because I was so focused on what I should be doing,

or where I should be going.

A life spent constantly searching for who I'm supposed to be,

instead of learning about who I am.

I'm here to tell you that there is no such thing as finding yourself

in the way that we have come to believe.

It's a story, a story that we've made up for ourselves

under the guise that we are meant to do a certain thing,

or to be a certain way.

It's the expectation that one day

the unruly strands of our lives will bind together

and point us in the right direction.

Finding yourself is nothing more than a myth,

and believing it is doing us a disservice.

Why?

Because it inherently implies that we are lost.

So, how does this myth manifest in our lives?

We jump around a lot: between jobs, between majors,

between relationships, between visions of who we are meant to be.

We train our eyes to be constantly looking outward, never inward,

and completely lose sight of who we are and what we're doing.

There is a beautiful wilderness trail here in Claremont,

we call it "the wilderness loop."

Just a short time ago, I went on a hike on this trail with a friend.

We spent hours trekking up and down those dusty hills,

but afterward, I couldn't remember any of it,

not the sights, not the sounds, not the smells.

I had been so fixated on myself,

worrying if I was on the right path in life.

And where did I end up?

At the end of the path, right back where I had started.

If we keep jumping around, out of fear, out of self-doubt,

we are never going to land, and it's the landing,

the grounding ourselves in our experiences,

that allows us to gain our footing as wobbly or clumsy as we may be.

So, how do we land as a student of psychology?

Here are the skills that I think are critical to taking charge of who you are

and where you're going.

We need grit!

It just sounds so bad - in a good way.

"Grit" is a concept developed by Dr. Angela Duckworth

from the University of Pennsylvania.

Grit is the tenacity to keep going in the face of challenge.

It is the humility to admit that this is really hard,

and we are not going to be good at all of it.

We need tolerance.

Being okay with not knowing if this is what you should be doing,

not knowing exactly where we're going,

but being confident in our ability to make it work.

So, the next time you find yourself struggling with a decision,

or worrying if you're on the right path,

I want you to get your grit on.

Be tolerant with yourselves.

Let go of the expectation that you need to find yourselves

or figure things out perfectly, right here, right now.

My hope for you is that you allow yourselves to be fully engaged

in your experiences, whatever they may be.

Use them to collect data on yourselves.

As Bob Evans has shown us tonight:

"You don't need to be a psychologist to become your own researcher."

As Vanessa has told us:

"Pay attention to who you are and what you're doing."

Build your capacity for self-awareness,

for I firmly believe that path will never lead you astray.

It is going to be dusty,

it is going to be uphill,

but it is going to be worth it.

Thank you.

(Applause)