It’s said a picture’s worth a thousand words, but how many words can tell the story of four years at Notre Dame? Seniors Elise Jordan, Scott Boyle, Jay Mathes and Mary-Kate Roohan used nearly 4,500 at this year’s Last Visit ceremony to capture the undergraduate experiences of the Class of 2012. Here, courtesy of Wordle, are about 200 of them.
During the 167th Commencement weekend that tied it all together, the University conferred bachelor’s degrees upon 1,973 graduates along with more than 900 graduate and professional degrees, 11 honorary doctorates and the 2012 Laetare Medal, which was awarded to former Catholic Relief Services president Ken Hackett. Commencement speaker Haley Scott DeMaria ’95 spoke of the debilitating injuries she suffered in the 1992 bus accident that claimed the lives of two other Fighting Irish swimmers, and offered comfort to a class that knows what it is “to lose a classmate in a very tragic way.” She called upon the graduates to celebrate life and its blessings. “Even in our darkest days,” she said, “we can choose the brighter path, the one of gratitude.”