President Bloom's Introduction of Adam Dalva '08
Good Morning! I am pleased to introduce you to Adam Dalva, who was chosen by his classmates to be their senior class speaker.
Adam will graduate this morning with High Honors in English Literature and Art History; with a passion for unraveling the subtle complexities, and bases of appeal, of works of literature, art, and film, and with unfolding talent as an exceptional writer of fiction.
He loved Swarthmore at first sight and has loved it ever since — his faculty, his fellow students, its rigorous academic challenge, and its nurturing atmosphere that together awakened his capacity for literary analysis and creative work.
Energized by a semester in Siena, Italy, he debuted as a creative writer with two-dozen columns in The Phoenix, under the pseudonym "The Real Old Prospector." In them he prospected for yet unearthed experiences of Swarthmore life that produce stress, and perhaps short-lived neuroses, and responded with an apt and, in his words, "snarky" humor that offered warm connection and therapeutic relief to his Swarthmore readership.
His continuing creative work explores surrealism, stream of consciousness, and the mini-narratives that run-on sentences can produce. His latest piece is designed expressly for his classmates as the antidote to post-graduation trauma.
At Swarthmore Adam also found time to produce his own radio show, to play intramural basketball and ultimate Frisbee, to tutor high school students, to work for the Obama campaign, and to engage addictively with his fellow students in the meaningful conversations at the heart of life here, and of the enduring friendships that emerge.
Following graduation Adam heads to New York or, maybe Berkeley, perhaps, to a stint in journalism, then probably to graduate school in either English Literature, creative writing, or film; but his great dream is that in 10 years he will be a successful fiction writer, whose words touch the world.
He has brought to this community an exuberantly imaginative mind, a finely honed analytic and aesthetic sensibility, a contagious personal warmth, and a wonderful talent for offering others — through his art, his insight, his humor, and his care — a fuller love of life.
I am delighted to welcome Adam Dalva to the podium, as the speaker for the Class of 2008. Adam!
