Sheza Habib

I would like to take a moment to welcome all the esteemed professors and faculty, beloved friends and family, and distinguished guests and graduates.

I want to begin by thanking Mama and Baba, my number one supporters. You both have fostered confidence and passion in me to work hard and pursue my dreams. Thank you for your unconditional selflessness and your countless sacrifices that opened many doors for me to grow and succeed. I hope I make you as proud as you both make me.

I am deeply honored for the opportunity to acknowledge the extraordinary circumstances under which I congratulate you all today. We have faced so many historic events that greatly affected our lives. We might even be missing some loved ones we wish were here to see us graduate, which makes this a bittersweet moment. But we have managed to remain perseverant.

Scientists estimate that the last time a comet greatly impacted the world was 66 million years ago. But, as I stand here today, before graduates who will dedicate their lives to stretching the limits of our imagination and breaking the bonds of science, I realize that, realistically, this statistic could not be more wrong.

I see hundreds of Comets sitting before me who have impacted the world. There are Comets who increased accessibility to brain health discussion in a stressful COVID-19 world that was transitioning from inclusive in-person connectedness to isolating digital faces on screens. I know a Comet among us who advocated for nutrition and emergency services amidst a catastrophic winter storm. I have seen Comets who realized the glaring lack of health literacy during an ongoing pandemic and created initiatives to improve health education access in Texas. There are Comets here who supported and stood up for our peers during heightened economic, racial and ethnic injustices. Through acts of kindness and awareness, we Comets resiliently impacted our world in numerous ways during our years at UT Dallas.

Today, I want to celebrate us. In the face of the impossible, we remained inspired. Hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard. Though we might not always have some innate talent to revise the unthinkable events we have faced, our time here has gifted us the ability to work hard to rethink how to make a difference and foster our growth.

Our years here have been full of juxtapositions that did a complete 180 on all of us. Yet, nevertheless, we persisted. And I think that is very telling of the exceptional character UTD is lucky enough to have.

As we sit here today, we reminisce about how exciting it was to begin our time at UTD and not know how it would end. I now understand that it was a privilege to get annoyed by things that seemed so minute. It is quite amusing that the trivial things that once frustrated me, I now find I deeply miss.

We would huddle together after exams to create office hour gameplans after professors had enthusiastically told us that this exam would be super easy! We wondered if we had accidentally poisoned ourselves in the lab or simply needed to recalculate our percent errors. Our whole world would come crashing down when we forgot to sign into a virtual class that took attendance. We would often contemplate our lives as we got stuck behind the long traffic lines of cars leaving campus at night.

As I look into the crowd, I am certain, having had the pleasure to learn beside so many of you, that everyone walking across the stage today will positively impact this earth. What’s the difference between a point in time and a moment in history? What tells us that now will be different? Maybe the question isn’t what, but who. Maybe the difference about now is you.

What you see in yourself is what you see in the world. This graduating class’s shining resilience and Comet spirit stand out when difficult obstacles came before us. COVID-19 pushed us all in unthinkable ways, yet we refused to give up: not on ourselves and not on each other. UTD helped us forge paths where none had existed before and create new opportunities in an uncertain new world.

I see many graduates sitting before me who will continue to shape our communities and innovate in their respective fields. Nobody changes the world alone, and nobody does not change the world at all. As we progress in life, we must continuously ask ourselves not if we will change the world but how to create the change we wish to see. Because if there’s one thing I know about UTD Comets, it is that we are definitely going to change the world for the better. And I look forward to changing it with you.

Congratulations and good luck, Class of 2022!

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Sheza Habib is graduating with bachelor’s degrees in neuroscience and psychology, with BBS major honors distinction and Collegium V honors. She joined UTD in fall 2018 and received an Academic Excellence Scholarship with Honors and was a member of the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College. She has been involved in several UTD organizations including the First-Year Leader Program, the Freshman Mentor Program, University Emergency Medical Response, and also served as CV honors teaching assistant. She was an undergraduate research assistant at the Texas Biomedical Device Center and at the Center for Advanced Pain Studies, where she studied the neurobiology of memory and migraine, and even received an Undergraduate Research Scholar Award. Habib spearheaded numerous local, national and international projects that aimed to improve access to quality education and health care. She works with many NGOs and nonprofit organizations to further develop refugee camps around the world. She and her Collegium V peers worked with the Center for BrainHealth to create the Global BrainHealth and Wellness Initiative ― the first undergraduate peer catalyst for brain health in the United States and a semifinalist in the Big Idea Competition. After graduation, she plans to enter the health care industry with a focus on global health and policy.