LEWISTON — Bates College welcomed 502 new students Tuesday at the annual convocation ceremony, at which President Clayton Spencer told the first-year students to “ask the big questions.”

She urged them to seek answers about their individuality, interests, passions and ways of connecting with others so they might contribute to larger purposes.

“Don’t expect to find big answers,” though, she said. “The truth is that the answers to the biggest, deepest and most fundamental questions in life don’t come packaged as big and deep and fundamental answers. They sneak up on you.”

She offered three suggestions.

“Live your life from the inside out,” she advised. “As you develop your talents and your awareness of them, your choices will become clearer.”

“Get your hands dirty,” Spencer said. “If you’re trying new things, you’re learning things about yourself and the world that will make you useful, build your confidence and ultimately shape both your identity and your marketability to the outside world.”

Illustrating her point, Spencer told about visiting Museum L-A when she first came to Lewiston as the eighth president of the college last year. She recalled how impressed she had been with the museum’s oral history of Richard Courtemanche, a hand-sewer in a Twin Cities shoe shop, who described how he learned to do the work, and how he came to love it.

“(Courtemanche’s) passion did not precede the engagement with work; it emerged from the doing,” she said.

Her third suggestion to the members of the Class of 2017 was to “own your work.”

Work is fundamental to who you are and who you will become, she said. “And I hope you realize by now that you have been working all of your life.”

Spencer concluded her talk, titled “Some Thoughts on Work,” with a suggestion: “The more you are able to align your work with your authentic interests and talents, the less it feels like work and the more it feels, simply, like living your life.”

The convocation ceremony was live-streamed on the Internet, reflecting the college’s effort to keep family and friends around the world involved in the students’ lives.

Uncertain weather forced a decision to hold the event indoors at Alumni Gymnasium instead of on the college’s historic Quad. Faculty members and administrators in academic regalia led the traditional and colorful procession to music provided by the Portland Brass Quintet.

Bates College Class of 2017, by the numbers:

271: Number of men.

231: Number of women.

47: Number of students from Maine.

6: Number from the Twin Cities.

43: Percentage from New England.

58: Percentage from public high schools.

25.5: Percentage of minorities.

5,243: Number of applicants for the class.

1,267: Number offered admission.

Source: Bates College

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