Graduation address by Professor Monique MacKenzie

Tuesday 30 November 2021
Afternoon ceremony

Vice-Chancellor, graduates, and everyone here today.

It is a great honour to be presenting this Graduation Address this afternoon. I would like to start by saying congratulations on your degree: you have worked hard at a world-class university during unprecedented times, and you should be very proud of what you have achieved. But, if we are honest about this, the credit for this achievement is in fact shared – you will not have achieved this all by yourself; somewhere, someone, or some group has supported you as part of a collective effort to get you here today. And it is this group I want to talk about today (let us call them your family) – this may include members of your nuclear (or first) family (but it may not) and it is likely to include those who have been right beside you for all or part of your degree. I would like us to think for a moment about who these people are, and for us to think together about what that might mean looking ahead.

My personal belief is that, however you cut it, these groups of people are what fuel us through our lives, and that is regardless of our background. I hope that you have all been fortunate in your lives so far, and that your upbringing was like a Disney movie full of unconditional love and opportunity, and that this upbringing taught you practical ways to cope with the joys and troubles in life. It is easy to see how that start in life has (and will) propel you forward. If instead, however, you hail from a background more akin to a Tim Burton movie (a rich mix of fantasy and horror) – much more like mine – then also well done to us; but we are also lucky that this provides us with fuel to send us forward – it provides the energy to do better, live better and be better for ourselves and for those around us.

Even if you are not someone who tends to dwell on such things, the pandemic has drawn our sense of family into sharp focus. For the first time, many of us had to explicitly define who was in (and perhaps more painfully who was out) of our bubble. This meant thinking carefully about where our supports were and who in our family group would need the contact and help the most during what turned out to be several difficult months. And as relationships blossomed, or indeed ended, this group may have changed shape across time, but it was always something we had to publicly define, and even justify, if challenged.

However you define your version of family during your time at St Andrews, these close relationships are likely to stay with you for years to come. As part of my slightly misshapen (but perfectly formed) family, I got to recently experience a version of the St Andrews bubble first-hand – possibly something like your bubble might be in about two years’ time but ‘on tour’. Coincidentally, I was at a wedding where two St Andrews graduates were getting married – they had met at St Andrews and were continuing the tradition of a post-degree St Andrews marriage (something you were almost promised at your welcome ceremony). At this event, I had the pleasure of meeting a vibrant group of St Andrews alumni who had gathered around this young couple and were forming a family of their own. And, despite being on the periphery of that group, the love and belonging in the farmhouse barn and, dare I say it, on the dance floor, was enough to move you to tears.

In some sense, your new degree has now joined your family group. It is part of who you have become, and you can choose how, or if, you nurture the academic relationship you have established. But unlike the flesh and blood element of your family, you are free to feed or starve this family member or not, as you please, in the years to come. You may engorge this loved one or see it deflate into oblivion and if I am ever asked for advice on this, I would always suggest that you do what you love – if that is furthering your studies, do it, but if it is moving onto new things, then do that instead. I find that people shine when they do what they love, and when we shine it can illuminate pathways we otherwise would not have seen.

As I age, I have also learned be open minded about the membership of this family group and to invest in relationships both ‘at home’ and ‘at work’. I learned, quite by surprise, that this notion of family can extend to your place of work and, over the last 20 years at St Andrews, I have been incredibly lucky to work beside a small group of wonderful people (in various ways) who are now firmly part of what I consider my family. We are there for each other, during days, nights, pandemic or otherwise. And, in the spirit of not wasting a good crisis, the pandemic has also led me to extend my close group of friends as part of the Can Do project, in response to Covid-19.

Relatedly, the pandemic has also been a friendly reminder for me to nurture these relationships. Life tends to be pretty good at interrupting our carefully drafted plans with reminders about our mortality. I have been reminded not to allow my loved ones to fade into the background behind your diary commitments, because those people will be the ones who will be there for you, and you for them, regardless of what is in that diary and through life’s difficult landscapes with their charged emotional fields.

So, in the spirit of Mapstone condensed: build on this achievement you were awarded today, using the fuel from whatever background you inherited, do what you love, nourish the relationships you have created with your time, love and be generous, and cherish the shared experiences. Keep an open mind about who might join your family and find reasons to keep sharing time with these people, even if that means finding community in a crisis.

Professor Monique MacKenzie
Assistant Vice-Principal (Provost)