Graduation address: Dr Bettina Bildhauer

Thursday 26 June 2014

Chancellor, colleagues, graduates, ladies and gentlemen.

It is a great honour to be able to address you all today and be among the first to say congratulations to our brand new graduates, and to our honorary graduates, Sir John Eliot Gardiner and Gayatri Spivak. You have earned this one day that is all yours. Congratulations also to the families and friends, and to my colleagues in the different departments of the University, who have supported our new graduates along the way. Let us celebrate together!

Graduation days are my favourite days in St Andrews. It always seems as if the whole town is invited to a wedding. So many people in festive spirits, taking pictures of each other, smiling, bickering, hurrying, all dressed in their finery, or at least in these frumpy but very special gowns.

So what does graduation actually mean? It comes from the same root as grade or degree, from the Latin ‘gradus’ or step. I cannot help but think that it is a bit ironic to call what has been happening on this stage today ‘the stepping’, when many of us have been mainly worried about not tripping up in our fancy shoes. But if this is the day of the step, let us run with it. Graduation is called a step probably because it originally meant taking a bachelor’s degree, as the first step on the way to a Masters or Doctorate, until even Masters and PhDs became known just as degrees, as steps rather than final destinations. And I think this is apt: however long you have studied, whichever degree you are graduating with, it is only ever just a step, a preliminary stage. Yes, this is a big day, yes, the graduates among you are supposed to leave the bubble, go out into the so-called real world, get amazing jobs and make lots of money. But many of you will not have a clear sense of what you want to do with your lives or where you might be going, and that is no bad thing. (Back me up on this one, parents.) You might even be considering taking another degree, another step, just to see where it takes you and if there is a clearer path ahead after that – we would welcome you back with open arms.

There is something reassuringly provisional about the academic world, about all its degrees and research; it is always open ended, never satisfied with answers, always just a step, not a destination. The blogger Jenny Lawson, also known as the Bloggess, captured this sense of preliminarity when she rechristened the whole year 2013 ‘the library’. She says: ‘Maybe it’s insanity, or maybe it’s just me, but somehow I think we all need a year in The Library. A year where it’s safe to make mistakes. A year where it’s okay to have to escape and stare out the window without someone asking you when you’re going to get back to work and fix your life. A year of getting lost in dusty, forgotten corners, and a year of finding the want. (The want to leave. The want to play. The want to shrug off the dreams and walk out in the sunlight. The want to pounce on 2014 with glee and rapture.)’

If you have not found that want yet, do not worry; but if you have had your time in the library in 2013, step out and do not be shy! You new graduates are now the people with the wide horizons, those who have got at least one degree, and that means a new degree of understanding, too. You have studied modern languages, film studies, philosophy or social anthropology. You can analyse what is going on, you have the frameworks to see the values hidden in a Hollywood film or in a news programme, to see how politicians’ rhetoric spins things, to see how the British worldview is only one of many. You have not just graduated, but you have become finely graduated instruments yourselves, attuned to measuring small degrees of change in your environment. You have got the training and sensitivity to be able to sense if public opinion is about to shift, if there are new kinds of texts and films, new kinds of arguments, new values emerging.

It baffles me how much what counts as normal has changed since I was born and even since I graduated, especially in the areas of equality of women and gay people. Male homosexuality was still a crime in Germany just 20 years ago, and yet, very soon, here in Scotland it will be possible for two men or two women to get properly married to each other. But there also seems to be a widespread shift towards nationalism – English, Scottish, French, German – that I as a German find deeply worrying, because the lesson from German history is that nationalism will always create outsiders and develop into xenophobia. Many of you will disagree with me, but this is why it is so important that you graduates take your role as graduated instruments seriously, that you sound early alarms when something concerns you. You are the opinion makers now. When you have got something to say, step forward.

Whatever steps you take in whichever direction, rest assured that St Andrews will always stay with you. We might think of the University as an institution, as the Schools, the courses, the buildings, the website. But it is not: it is a community of people; it is an ever-changing hive mind. Every year, a bunch of fresh new St Andreans step in, and every year a bunch step out, as you are doing today. Like a body that is constantly shedding cells and growing new ones, the University is always changing while always remaining itself. In the same way, most of you will leave St Andrews now, but it will always stay part of you. For you new graduates, the experiences you have had here, the people you have met, the things you have learned, the books and boyfriends, the bops and bake sales, the all-nighters and the happy days will always be part of who you are. St Andrews, being the amazing community that it is, formally recognises this by making you lifelong members of the General Council. Stay in touch, via this Council, via social media or by coming to visit. We will always love to see you back, whatever steps you take in the meantime. All the best! Thank you.