Sukanya Baichwal 

Good afternoon, esteemed faculty, Class of 2023, our friends and families. Congratulations! We made it! It is with great pleasure that I stand before you today, as your commencement speaker, feeling immensely proud of all of us.  

Thinking makes us decide! Decisions make us act! Actions transform us! Transformations make us evolved! Every significant chapter in our lives begins with a simple thought, filled with massive apprehensions. Overcoming them and realizing that thought into reality takes courage and belief that we will make it through with flying colors.  

My journey also started with that one thought of pursuing my master’s degree, creating a riot in my head on the hows and the whens and the whats. These reservations turned into conviction as I researched The University of Texas at Dallas. Every piece of information that I gathered led me to UT Dallas. 

With a mighty zeal to accomplish an undertaking, I knocked on the doors of UT Dallas on my first day of classes and so did each one of us on our first days. We thought! We decided! We acted! 

Let me take all of us down our memory lanes, when we first stepped into this magnificent locale for the first time, the first time we all admired the stellar premises of this university, our first homework, the first time we mustered some courage to ask a question in our class, the first word of praise from a professor, the first time we befriended someone sitting next to us, and so many other firsts. We had a beautiful set of firsts at UTD, didn’t we? But did we stop at firsts? No, we didn’t! 

We had the most fascinating days here, with each day bringing in a gush of new challenges and mind you, these challenges came with deadlines. With every homework, every exam and every project, we grew better every passing day. A special mention of admiration to the curriculum and the faculty support that not just made us realize our potential, but they gave us an opportunity to grow our potential and outdo ourselves day in and day out, deepening the knowledge in our respective courses.  

I want to take a moment and express my gratitude on behalf of all of us, to all our professors and the teaching staff for having taught us the true value of knowledge and the wonderful realm of opportunities that we can build on our own with this knowledge. 

On top of it, UT Dallas gave us incredible resources in terms of learning materials and a brilliant infrastructure. All of this empowered us in a way that not just nourished but enhanced our personalities. We transformed! 

Now that I open the floodgates of memory, beautiful moments pass my mind. Moments spent sharing a good laugh with our friends on this campus, those spent studying for an exam, frantic moments just before a deadline, participating in hackathons and winning them, too, engaging in and contributing to different clubs at UT Dallas.  

And in all these moments, we evolved! We evolved to become better people armed with academic brilliance and everything UT Dallas has given us to enhance our individual selves. We will always cherish all that we have learned here, at school, and continue evolving because after all, this learning will last for a lifetime! 

Today, we are celebrating this day with our friends, professors and loved ones. Without their support and encouragement, this wouldn’t have been possible. Thank you, to all of you.  

I want to thank my mom Shailaja Baichwal for always being an inspiration to me, and for always telling me, “Never lose enthusiasm despite whatever curveballs life throws at you.” I want to thank my sister Meghana Baichwal for always being my guide, my friend and my confidante. Also, my father, who is not with us today. I know he will always look after me from wherever he is and is proud of me.  

Once again, I congratulate all of you, for having achieved a massive feat and climbing the rung of graduation on your career ladder. Here’s wishing all the very best to all of you. Thank you.  

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Sukanya Baichwal is an international student from Karnataka, India. She is graduating with a master’s degree in computer science, specializing in data science. She takes a keen interest in the applications of computer science and technology and how they solve real-world problems. She has participated in hackathons and was a winner at UTD HackReason 2022. She also has worked on several projects in her specialization. She interned at Amazon Robotics this past summer as a software developer. She has been an orator all her life and has pursued public speaking through the UT Dallas’ Toastmasters’ club, holding officer positions and conducting open house events. She is currently an area director at Toastmasters’ International, District 50. She has always had a penchant for dancing and is currently learning an Indian classical dance form called Kathak. After graduation, she plans to work at Miracle Software Systems Inc. as a programmer analyst.