Graduation address: Professor Graham Turnbull
Monday 24 June 2019
Vice-Chancellor, ladies and gentlemen, everyone, it is my great honour to address our new graduates and honorary graduates this afternoon.
Congratulations to you all! Today is your day, though we know that others have made this journey with you, willing you along. Your friends and your family are rightly proud of you, and we are all delighted to celebrate your success.
Graduation marks the end of one life chapter of your lives and the start of the next. It is a time to take stock and a time to look at what you have accomplished since you first arrived in St Andrews; how you have changed and developed – as a physicist or a philosopher, as an individual and as a community. Your St Andrews degree marks your many achievements in exams and essays, in labs and seminars, in assignments and research projects. You have mastered how to answer tough questions: you have gathered facts and analysed data. You have drawn reasoned conclusions, corrected misconceptions, and presented your thesis.
But we all know you have learned other lessons that do not fit into modules. Since you first arrived here, many of you have learned to wash your own socks! You have held down a job. You have raised thousands for charity. You have lived our traditions and invented your own. You have pulled on the Saints Sport colours and won – and lost. You have danced like nobody’s watching! Sometimes, your helium balloon just floats away while your experiment remains on the ground. But you have borne those setbacks, learned and grown. The Proctor, Professor Peddie, is a champion of experiential learning, and I am confident you have all experienced a lot…
But while you have been busy in the bubble of St Andrews, the world has been changing at a fast pace, seemingly faster than ever, as Dr Tett has just described. In the last four years, we have encountered Brexit, Donald Trump, fake news, populists, Korean rockets, drone attacks, trade wars, Alt-Right, migrants, #MeToo, gilets jaunes, novichok, Grenfell, Myanmar, Syria, Yemen, malware, Wannacry, Facebook data, Russian bots, zika virus, hurricanes, microplastics and climate change… For the first time, we felt gravitational waves - distortions in the fabric of space and time itself, and this spring we even looked into a black hole.
So, when you walk out that door at the back of the hall, there’s going to be plenty to get your teeth into…
Be confident! Your St Andrews degree has prepared you with the skills to analyse hard problems, with an unwavering respect for the facts and the truth, with inventiveness and creativity.
Be ambitious! Find your passion and think globally. There are many big problems out there that affect billions of people. What is the billion-person problem that you will solve?
Do not assume you must or can do this alone. Work with others; be determined; keep learning.
Include St Andrews in your future plans and goals – we are already trying to clear landmines, fight infections, connect the world, and promote equality. Working together, we really can achieve great things!
So, venture forth, be ambitious and take St Andrews with you. Don't become a stranger – you are always welcome back!
Professor Graham Turnbull
School of Physics and Astronomy