Throughout his time as a campus leader, USF Student Body President Sumit Jadhav regularly participated in USF World鈥檚 international stole ceremony, often sharing with the audience his own journey from feeling lost as a new international student on campus to finding his path as a university leader.
Sumit Jadhav urges a room filled with graduating international students to understand
the scope of what they have accomplished.Last week, Jadhav reached a milestone of his own, graduating with a master鈥檚 degree in financial analytics and delivering remarks at one of the ceremonies that resonated deeply with the campus community and both current and future international students.
In recognition of Jadhav's leadership and thoughtful reflections, we share a transcript of his remarks at celebrating the important and lasting contributions international students make to the USF community as they pursue their academic and professional goals with dedication, resilience and determination.
鈥淟ook at this room.
Every single person here made a choice that most people around them never did. You left home. You crossed borders, oceans, and time zones, with a suitcase, a dream, and probably a family back home hitting refresh on your location.
Think about the odds for this moment.
You had to be one in a million who even dared to try. One of 70,000 students accepted to USF. And of all of them, you are the ones who came from somewhere else entirely, built a life here from scratch, and made it to this stage.
That is not a small thing. That is extraordinary.
And none of it happened alone.
Proud parents Dr. Subhash Jadhav and Dr. Manisha Jadhav joined their son at a USF
World stole ceremony. To the families watching from back home, on a phone screen propped up on a kitchen counter somewhere in Lagos, London, Mumbai, Mexico City, Manila, S茫o Paulo, Seoul, or Singapore, this moment is yours too.
You sent your child across the world on faith. You took the calls at odd hours. You celebrated every small win from thousands of miles away.
This sash is for you as well.
鈥 I know what that journey looks like because I lived it. I came from a small town in India. When I landed in Tampa, I didn't know anyone. The accents were different, the food was different, the weather was aggressively different (it was better). Things that would have felt like real challenges once, navigating a new country, building friendships across cultures, finding your footing in a place that didn't quite feel like yours yet, became second nature. Because you adapted.
You grew. And what once felt foreign, became home.
That is the quiet superpower of every international student in this room.
You didn't just earn a degree. You did it in a second language, in a foreign system, thousands of miles from the people who raised you.
Every exam you sat, every paper you submitted, every networking event you walked into alone, it all carried extra weight that most of your classmates never had to think about.
That is the quiet superpower of every international student in this room. You didn't just earn a degree. You did it in a second language, in a foreign system, thousands of miles from the people who raised you.
And you carried it anyway.
USF has given us a lot. We have celebrated milestones together, watched this university earn its place in the AAU, and we are now watching a stadium rise from the ground on this very campus, a symbol that this university does not wait to be told it is ready. It just builds.
As you leave today, wearing this sash, remember what it represents. It is not just the flag or the color of the country you came from. It is the courage it took to leave it. It is the family that believed in you from across the world. It is the friendships you built here, people from entirely different corners of the globe, bound together by the shared experience of choosing USF.
You are not just graduates. You are a global citizen. And the world needs more of those.
Surround yourself with people who want to see you grow. Build a web of friendships you can fall back on. And never let the distance between you and home make you forget the people who made this possible.
Have faith in yourself. You have already done the hardest part.
Congratulations to the international graduating class of 2026.
Be bold. Be proud. Go Bulls.鈥
Students from 109 different countries were among this spring's USF graduates. USF World celebrated their achievements, along with hundreds of family members who had traveled from abroad, in two stole ceremonies at the Marshall Student Center in the days before commencement ceremonies.