LSA Graduating Seniors 2026: Persistence Pays Off

As a high school senior, Celine Fawaz toured U-M’s campus with her older brother, a junior in LSA who was studying neuroscience at the time. When she was admitted, she committed to attending the school. “Best decision I’ve made in my entire life,” the political science major says.  

Fawaz had planned since she was a child to attend Harvard, but she now sees that wasn’t the right path for her. In fact, she already planned to attend LSA when she received a rejection letter from Harvard—something that would’ve surprised her younger self. 

It didn’t take long for Fawaz to jump straight into campus life at LSA. Shy as a child, she grew up a half hour away from U-M in Dearborn Heights, where she focused mostly on her studies. College offered a springboard into a new kind of life. “It felt like a brand-new start,” she says. “I could craft myself into whoever I wanted.” 

On her first day of classes, a young woman named Val Morales tapped her on the shoulder and asked if she was in the right place for their COMM 102 course. One thing led to another—they made a plan to attend the annual Festifall event on campus together—and they are now best friends. “She’s my platonic soulmate,” Fawaz says. “She’s genuinely everything to me.” 

Fawaz began working at the Office of Multiethnic Student Affairs, leading welcome tours for students of Arab descent. Welcoming strangers to campus became part of her campus identity, a dramatic departure from her childhood timidity. “If I liked somebody’s sunglasses, I told them I liked them,” she says. “I talked to everybody—for people touring the campus, I would offer to take a picture for them.” 

As she progressed through her political science coursework, Fawaz decided she would take an even bigger risk: participating in Michigan in Washington, an LSA program where students from all disciplines with an interest in public service spend a semester in Washington, D.C. Fawaz had dreams of going to law school and exploring the city, so the first night she was there, she started to cry. “‘Am I actually here? Is this real?’” she remembers thinking. “That same night, my roommates and I all sat together and had dinner. It was the first time I felt a little New Girl vibe.” 

This fall, Fawaz will attend University of California, Berkeley School of Law—her dream school. She aims to pursue medical malpractice law with a pro bono focus in youth public defense. Her interest in public defense stems from her experience with Survivors Speak, a nationwide organization currently helping an inmate at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Working with Survivors Speak “shows me that, while I’m not an attorney yet, I can still impact people’s lives.” 

In spite of all of her success at LSA, Fawaz says it hasn’t always been an easy journey in college. While on her quest to challenge herself, she decided to take a game theory and politics course with George Tsebelis, Anatol Rapoport Collegiate Professor in the Department of Political Science. The course qualified as an upper-level writing requirement; the final grades were derived from two major papers. 

“I absolutely bombed,” Fawaz remembers. “My first paper failed.” She sat in the Michigan Union crying, thinking it was the worst day of her life and wondering how her GPA would recover enough for her to get into law school. With the help of some of her friends, she snapped out of it. She went to office hours—and she leveled with Tsebelis.

“I’m struggling so hard,” she told him. “I don’t want to fail your class, but I’m also confused.” Tsebelis offered to help, and she showed up at office hours for weeks until she got an A on the second paper and an A in the course overall. 

“When I came into LSA, everybody around me felt like the smartest person on planet Earth,” she says now. “I feel like I never heard anybody talking to me about the fact that they failed.” She tells the stories of her failures along with those of her successes, as they are all a part of her journey. 

“Yes, I’m doing all these fun, cool things, but before I got here, I failed; then I cried on the front lawn when I didn’t get my internship, and I scared away a tour group,” she reflects, laughing. “I cried next to the Cube and spun it three times for good luck. It was 90 percent tears and 10 percent cheers.” 

She thinks of the young Celine who first stepped foot on the Diag, filled with wonder and promise. “I just felt so at peace at Michigan,” she says. “It felt like I belonged.”

Photo by Doug Coombe