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Arielle Tenor of Luxemburg is a two-time University of Wisconsin Oshkosh alumna. In 2018 she completed the Accelerated Bachelor of Nursing program and in spring 2021 graduates with a doctor of nursing practice. Tenor currently works as a registered nurse at Aurora BayCare Medical Center in Green Bay. After graduation, Tenor is excited to leverage her new experience and degree to achieve her dream of caring for patients and managing their acute and chronic health conditions as a nurse practitioner in an intensive care unit.

The following is the speech Tenor delivered during the 8 a.m. ceremony as part of UW Oshkosh’s 147th spring commencement. 

♦ ♦ ♦

Arielle Tenor

To our distinguished UWO faculty and administrators, proud parents, friends, honored guests, and most importantly, my fellow graduates: I look out at this entire audience today with the utmost admiration, fondness and gratitude for what each of you has done to support us just by being here today.

I will be perfectly honest that I contended greatly with how to adequately put into words the struggles that we have overcome throughout our doctoral journey, especially within the context of the unprecedented global struggles with which we have been faced due to the COVID-19 pandemic. These countless emotional and physical struggles were not only felt in our occupations as nurses but equally in our academic endeavors. For many of us, it brought a startling and unexpected halt to clinical rotations with an unknown date to be resumed, a constant fear of how we would fulfill the necessary clinical hour requirements to graduate, and for those who were able to continue their clinical rotations, an undoubted conflict between remaining in clinical while also trying to remain healthy and safe.

I could speak ad nauseam to the multitude of physical and emotional tribulations that we have all experienced as a result of this pandemic, but instead, I choose to reflect on what we have learned from this unbelievable journey. We have each chosen to place ourselves on the front lines of some of the most torrential battlefields of today. By choosing the professions of medicine and health, we have made ourselves the guardians and healers of our patients.

It is more clear than ever that our patients and their families need us to be more than just practitioners of medicine; our patients need us to become healers … physical and emotional healers. Even more difficult than putting on our white coats everyday, this challenge requires us to remove the white coat. It requires us to truly listen to and be fully present with each and every patient. To hear each patient so we can learn the unique experiences, preferences, cultures, and goals that give them strength and inform their decisions. In taking off our white coats, we will learn what gives each patient their will to persist, endure, recover, and survive their ailments. These experiences will also enrich our souls each and every day of our future practices. Thus, we must pursue our calling with the utmost commitment to caring for our patients and their families fully and holistically. And when we are confronted with exceptionally trying days where we begin to doubt or question this commitment, we must recall this sense of shared humanity and the intrinsic dignity of each and every soul. We must remember how enriched we become by removing our white coats.

In the words of Nora Ephron, “Your education is a dress rehearsal for a life that is yours to lead.” I am confident that I speak for all of us when I say that no amount of education could have aptly prepared us for what we have experienced over the past year. However, I ask that each of us reflect today on where this dress rehearsal will take us. How will we use the elite education that we have received at this university to continue making an impact every single day in the lives of our patients and our communities? How will we, in our future practice, inspire courage where there is despair, bring comfort where there is pain, and constantly strive to advocate for those who are unable to do so for themselves? Will we remember to always ask questions and to never stop learning? And lastly, how will we remind ourselves each and every day to remove our white coat in order to become the best healers that we can for our patients and ourselves?

Classmates, we must take the greatest amount of pride in how far we have come and have faith in all that we have yet to accomplish! Although, we cannot assume all of the credit, as this day would never have been possible without our devoted faculty, family and friends. Faculty, you have instilled in us the highest standards of excellence that we will strive to achieve in our future practices. You constantly bestowed your confidence in each of us despite the uncertainties that we held for ourselves and our futures amid the pandemic, and you worked around the clock to make constant accommodations to ensure that we received the most exceptional education possible.

Lastly, to our family and friends, your patience, understanding, and unconditional love and support has allowed us to dedicate ourselves completely to the seemingly endless hours of studying and clinical rotations. You have helped us to cope with the responsibilities of our personal lives and our constantly evolving professional and job obligations, while concurrently encouraging us to further our education and pursue these advanced degrees.

So here is to our remarkable faculty, our considerate loved ones, and to the extraordinary strength and ability that we have discovered in each of ourselves! May we always remember this unbelievable journey that brought us here today.

Thank you.