Student Commencement Speaker Spotlight: Adena Norwood

April 24, 2025 - Emily Jodway Patyna

Adena Norwood has known since her senior year of high school that she wanted to commemorate her future graduation in a special way. She felt that it was only right to wrap up her four-year college experience with a bow on top, standing up and recognizing not only her accomplishments, but those of her peers as well. It is very fitting of her personality that she would also want to bring attention to the feats of her fellow College of Social Science graduates. 

“I’m a major extrovert. The work I do is because I love other people. I have the opposite of a draining social battery- if I don’t talk to a new person every few days, I feel ill,” she explained. 

The title of Norwood’s speech to the Class of 2025 is ‘Don’t Forget to Breathe.’ She is speaking to both her classmates and herself when she offers this reminder. Although it may sound cliche, she truly wants to emphasize the importance of having those ‘stop and smell the roses’ moments and taking time to realize the value of their accomplishments, both big and small. “My main goal is to reassure the graduates, you’ve done something huge,” she said. 

For Norwood, Michigan State was the perfect home away from home- not too far from her family in Maryland, but far enough to feel like she was truly headed out on her own for the first time. The daughter of a naval engineer, Norwood’s family moved around frequently and had lived in Michigan for a while. Michigan State had been on her radar, and upon applying, offered her financial funding that made attending an out of state institution possible. 

“I’m a conglomeration of all the great people I’ve met and the organizations I’ve been a part of,” Norwood says, when asked about her mentors throughout her time at Michigan State. She gives credit to those in the Anthropology department, Women’s Leadership Institute, Social Science Scholars Program, Delta Phi Epsilon professional sorority and the Honors College for guiding her along and offering spaces of support and refuge. As a high achiever in high school, Norwood was terrified at first to reach out to important faculty members and upperclassmen to ask for help. But she credits the act as one of the most important decisions she has made. 

“Everyone talks about leaning on your community for support, but I’d never seen it in action until I got here,” she said. “Each time I felt vulnerable enough to ask for help, or to delegate, I got it back tenfold, and it empowered me to give it back to the people I leaned upon at these moments.”

Norwood will graduate with a degree in Anthropology with a minor in International Development. In high school, she aspired to attend law school and one day be a judge. But she also realized that doing paperwork and poring over court documents would not get her close enough to what she truly wished to be surrounded by- people. She discovered that on an anthropology track, she could immerse herself in community-based research and still be involved in public policy decisions. She hopes to one day work as a foreign service officer, assisting government organizations in finding solutions to the refugee migration crisis.

“I love being where I’m not supposed to be,” she explained. “I love having an excuse to do that. It means I can join a community and interact with a new environment that I wouldn’t have the opportunity otherwise to interact with.”

One of these community-centered projects she is particularly proud of is ‘The First 30,’ a partnership with Citizens for Prison reform that examined the barriers and limitations of individuals returning to society after being incarcerated in Michigan. Norwood was able to speak with previously incarcerated individuals to compile research that may eventually be supportive in creating programs better tailored to helping each individual and their unique needs upon reentry into society. The Social Science Scholars program will continue the study in her stead. 

When asked about the impact of the Scholars program on her college experience, Norwood credits the organization and its director, John Waller, for giving her the tools and motivation needed to persevere throughout her college journey. “I’ve been motivated to do things that seem unlikely, and I’ve succeeded in them because of people like that,” she said. Another such group that supported her along the way was the Women’s Leadership Institute, a mentorship group for young women leaders, led by Amanda Guinot Talbot.

“It was about so much more than professional development; it gave me that space to calm down and be heard and be supported and hyped up by other amazing and professional women, and that was widely important to me.”

Being a supportive figure amongst the WLI Student Cohort was especially important to Norwood as a young Black woman. Before Michigan State, she attended an all-female, predominately Black college preparatory school in Maryland. Being at MSU was at times a culture shock and a learning curve, and finding individuals with a similar shared identity helped with the adjustment.

“I’ve learned so much about myself, what my identity means to me, how I communicate that to others, and how identities can be wildly different. It’s made the whole experience so much more exciting,” she said.

To Norwood, being a Spartan means defying expectations. As she found out herself, the collegiate experience offers hundreds of different avenues for a student to take, and sometimes the more unorthodox route will be the one that leads to the finish line. 

“Michigan State students do not go the course. They do it their own way. I think it’s very important for me, as a Spartan, to do things the way that I see is best,” she explained. “I wanted to do international relations, but I wanted more flexibility. I wanted to do my research through an ethnographic lens. I didn’t do it by the book, but it still made sense to me. I was told a lot, ‘That doesn’t make sense. Do it the right way. Do it the way that makes sense.’ Spartans don’t make sense and they get it done.”

Going off-script to accomplish her goals came as a surprise to Norwood- as she prepared to come to Michigan State, she was hoping for a typical ‘big, midwestern school’ experience. She even had a ‘College Must Do’s’ bucket list. But her four years have been different in all of the best possible ways, none of which she could have predicted, and have taught her valuable lessons about embracing change.

“Applying that mindset to all of my goals, instead of drowning and suffocating and thinking, ‘I guess I can’t do what I wanted to do,’ I started thinking, ‘I can do this, just differently,’ and I have gotten everything done. Maybe in a different shade, or a different color, but it’s still what I set out to do. It’s really reassuring to me that I can still get it done, even if it’s different than the first draft.”

As her time at Michigan State draws to a close, Norwood is reminiscing on an inspirational quote that has brought her comfort and supported her throughout her four years as an undergrad. 

“Maya Angelou once said, ‘Ask for what you want, and be prepared to get it.’ And it’s worked for me. I love it. It’s important to me, and when I actually set myself up expecting to submit that application, to earn that scholarship, to get that acceptance to grad school, I’m prepared when I do get it- and I always do, the ones that I remember- and those are the only ones that are important.”

Photos by Cameron Warren