Graduation address: Professor Thomas Neukirch
Tuesday 26 June 2018
Vice-Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen, and, of course, new graduates of the Schools of Divinity, English, and of Mathematics and Statistics!
It is a pleasure for me to deliver this graduation address to you this morning, but I am aware that this address is one of the last things keeping you from starting the celebrations with your family and friends and hence I will try my best to be brief.
The most important point of a graduation address is, of course, to say “Congratulations! Well done!” to you, our new graduates. After a lot of hard work, exam stress, intellectual and other challenges you have crossed the finishing line! I hope that any feelings of relief that you may have felt after your final exam has been replaced by a feeling of pride in what you have achieved – we, my colleagues on the stage behind me and I, certainly are very proud of you!
While you as the new graduates are the focal point of this ceremony, you will have been supported on your way to this day by family and friends, not only during your time at St Andrews, but also before you arrived here. I know from my own experience as a father how proud they will be of you and your achievement. Many of your loved ones have travelled to St Andrews today and are watching on from the galleries – many others might be watching this ceremony online. Please join me in thanking them for their support!
When preparing for this address I read some of the graduation addresses from previous years for inspiration and one recurring theme was that the speakers often reminisced about their own graduation. At first, I thought, this is something that I definitely cannot talk about in my address, because for me there was no graduation ceremony! But then I thought that maybe this story is worth telling because it provides such a sharp contrast to the lovely and elaborate ceremonies that we hold in St Andrews. I obtained my undergraduate degree in the 1980s from a university in what was then still West Germany. It took five or more years to complete the degree in my subject, which was actually Physics, and at the end one had to submit a Diploma thesis and then take four 30-minute oral exams. If one passed the exams and one’s thesis was deemed good enough, one could collect the degree certificate after a few days from the departmental office – with congratulations and a handshake by the department’s secretary. And that was that. What a difference indeed to what you and your loved ones are experiencing today!
Another recurring theme in graduation addresses is the attempt to give a glimpse into your future, usually accompanied by some advice. Well, the first thing that crossed my mind was a quote that, when I checked, seems to be attributed to more people than I had thought, among them Mark Twain, Niels Bohr and Yogi Berra - “It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future!” But, however uncertain the future might seem to you, you should look ahead with confidence due to the expertise, the knowledge and the skills you have acquired during your degree programmes.
All of you have learned how to analyse and tackle difficult and complex problems, in some cases literally involving chaos, and to think critically. This gives you an excellent foundation to succeed in whatever you choose to do. The advice that I would like to give you is this – stay curious, keep an open mind and don’t stop learning! But use your skills and talents wisely. I hope that what you have learned during your time in St Andrews will help you to live a happy and rewarding life.
Once again: Congratulations!
Professor Thomas Neukirch
School of Mathematics and Statistics