Graduation address: Dr Christiane Helling
Wednesday 27 June 2018
Vice-Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen, new graduates.
I would like to offer my warmest congratulations to all our new graduates. You have done it! You have come a long way since you arrived here in St Andrews, and we are immensely proud of you.
Today is a special day. It calls for a moment to pause, to reflect, and to celebrate your achievements. For it has been a long and sometimes rocky path to reach this moment, one requiring talent, hard work, and determination. The University staff have supported you on your way. But not only them. The encouragement and understanding of your friends and families has been indispensable for your happiness here. They have been there to praise your achievements, to celebrate your successes, to support you through the challenging moments. So, give your loved ones a huge and heart-warming hug. Celebrate what you have achieved with them.
Dear graduates, you are now about to start a new episode in your life. Here at the windswept east coast of Scotland, you have received an education from one of the three leading universities in the UK. You have worked conscientiously and with diligence to reach this moment. You have learned, thrived and enjoyed your time here. But let me remind us all that education is not only about the facts and figures. It is not only the knowledge in our specific subjects. Education is something much wider, a broadening of our viewpoints, an opening of the mind to new ideas. It is the accumulation of wisdom passed down from our ancestors, a treasury of ideas and reason from centuries gone by, and those still to come.
Education is also about:
- how we approach our lives,
- how and if we fight for our ideas, but also
- how we define heroes and friends.
You are the next generation to leave this university as graduates. You leave for a world that changes fast. But you have received some of the best education possible, and what is more, you are confident in applying the wealth of knowledge you have gained here. You are able to defend fact against fiction, truth against falsehood, what is right against what is easy. With your skills, you now have the tools to make this world a better place.
Twenty-two years ago, one could have claimed that fiction was at the heart of my research area in astrophysics, the study of extrasolar planets. But courage and skills helped us as a community to prove that exoplanets are no fantasy: today we know that about 4000 planets exist outside our own Solar System.
Our present technology does allow such extraordinary discoveries but, as yet, we are unable to travel the vast distances of space to reach them. Maybe one, or many of you, our new graduates, will help humanity to fulfil this century-old dream of reaching a distant world. Or perhaps something similar from your own wish list.
My wish list for you is the following:
Firstly, be courageous. Go out into the world and change what can be changed. Second, be open-minded. Look around you and marvel at the beauty of the planet we live on.
Let me now come to the end by paying tribute to one of the brightest and most humoristic minds of our times. Professor Stephen Hawking, a cosmologist from Cambridge, once said: “Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet… however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. It matters that you don't just give up.”
Having achieved a degree from our University proves that you have learnt to walk with your own feet. Now, look up to the stars and walk to the stars.
Dr Christiane Helling
School of Physics and Astronomy