If there is any one signifier of maturity, perhaps it is the way we react to change. Although most, if not all, members of the NYU Abu Dhabi community are used to shifting sands in our academic, social and extracurricular lives, this semester is a harbinger for the most defining transitions for our university. We need to manage these transitions well if we want the first formal footprints on our permanent campus on Saadiyat to be steps in the right direction and our last steps leaving Sama to reflect our gratitude to this place and this community appropriately.

For seniors, this means more than just letting go or stepping away from the community that we have spent so much time and energy developing. It is tempting, certainly, to focus on our last firsts in this community, the first capstones, grad school and job applications submitted by the senior class, rather than our first lasts: the last classes we take, Student Interest Group meetings we attend, Candidate Weekends we see and not-endless-after-all existential emails with administration. After years of confronting gaps — structures yet to be built, places unexplored or resources untapped — we can find relief in the notion that it will soon no longer be our responsibility to simultaneously live and invent the student experience at NYUAD. But none of this diminishes the fact that it is still our responsibility, and our last formal opportunity to shape this community as students, to step down in the right way.

In many ways, the transitions are already occurring. Juniors, sophomores and freshmen alike are leading SIGs, running the student government and developing interest groups, policies, practices and communities of their own. The force of this truth made returning to NYUAD feel more like discovering a new home with better furniture — in some cases literally — than returning to the coop from which we flew. But the task is not yet over, and there are some niches that only we can fill, both in classes and as informal leaders of the community. The fact remains that while our capstones and careers may be foremost in our minds, we cannot afford to lose sight of our first lasts, lasts that mean more to the community we are leaving behind than any academic, theatrical or administrative contribution.

No experience can substitute for having seniors from whom you can learn what to do and, perhaps more importantly, what not to do. Maybe we are forgetful of the importance of this role partially because this role was entirely unoccupied for the duration of our studies here, with the exception of several NYU New York RAs and GAFs. It would be a shame to add neglecting our last chance to shape this community to the list of detrimental side effects of our “four-year-senior” mentality, which may have been necessary initially. If unchecked, however, this mindset may now limit our ability to pass the torch.

Ask any leader and they will tell you that there is a whole art form to giving the right tasks to the right people, an art not only to ensuring that the job gets done, but also to inspiring further growth. Good leaders don’t just manage their teams well; they manage their legacy, a legacy that starts now, paradoxically, with following in SIGs instead of leading them, with attending — maybe even silently — committee meetings, padding out institute events and, no matter how unimportant it may seem, reading and preparing for classes.

 The Greeks, from whom we inherited the academy after all, had a proverb: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” In the era of NYU’s Global Network, we would do well to remember that a university matures when seniors support leaders, infrastructures and development in a community in which they will never study.