Spencer closed her Kent State commencement address by quoting Ralph Waldo Emerson, leaving the graduates with an image of pioneering rather than following. Throughout her speech, she had urged them to resist comparison, embrace the messiness of life, keep reading voraciously, and let their unique curiosity guide them. This closing quote crystallized her message: the graduates' paths would not look like anyone else's, and that was exactly as it should be. Their job was not to follow existing roads but to forge new ones — and to leave those trails visible for future generations to follow.