Graduation address: Friday 17 June morning ceremony

Graduation address by Professor Katie Stevenson, Vice-Principal (Collections, Music and Digital Content)

Chancellor, distinguished guests and graduates of the University of St Andrews, on behalf of my colleagues here with me on the stage and all of those at the University, I am honoured to be the first to say to you – congratulations!

It is my duty today to say some words that you will find meaningful and reflect the mood of the graduation ritual. You will not remember anything I have said by suppertime, because today is too thrilling – filled with excitement, pride, and that knowingly nostalgic feeling when one moves through a ritual ending and says goodbye to everything that has passed, and looks ahead to something else – a different beginning that will bring trepidation, challenges, discomfort, uncertainty and across time more learning, growth, failures and accomplishments. As a cohort, you too will remember with fondness your arrival at this university, having crossed a similar threshold when you left your last milestone and came here, bright, excited and ready to take every opportunity that this new life offered you. I hope you did. 

I raise my hat to you for the way in which you faced challenges never before known in the history of university education, where you studied at home and met your friends on a screen, in some cases unable to do the very actions which attracted you to a future in health and medical sciences – the comforting of someone in pain with the touch of your hand. That you have emerged as graduates through this time is a stupendous achievement and one with which we are all – your families, your loved ones, your lecturers and tutors, and your friends – extraordinarily impressed. 

I am an historian, a discipline which reflects on how people understand and write about the events which they have experienced, and how memory changes, distorts, recreates, or disappears over time. In the coming days and weeks, spend some time reflecting on your university years and on the pandemic in particular – you will already have noticed that as the immediacy of its effects have diminished, we are quick to forget what we experienced. Do not lose the opportunity to remind yourself of your history, to take stock of the lessons you have learned, remind yourself of the people who have influenced or impacted upon you, and celebrate that who you were when you arrived at St Andrews, is leaving St Andrews as someone a little older, who knows a lot more, and who has experienced intensive challenges that brought you remarkable resilience.

In Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s 2018 book The Coddling of the American Mind, they quoted from a speech that John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States, had given just a year earlier. Invited to give the commencement address at a middle school, Roberts used this as an opportunity to make a plea for resilience in a generation he saw as being too fragile and inexperienced with the real demands of contributing positively to adult society. In this speech he said:

“From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.” 

I do not follow Robert’s position and I do not wish these things for you. You are not 11 and just starting on your middle and high school journeys, and you have already experienced these things and likely often. But I would like you to remember as you navigate the next steps of your lives that whilst you have – I hope – just experienced the most challenging years of your lives, far more challenging than any of us could ever have anticipated, that life will continue to challenge you and, in that challenge, will come the opportunity to learn, to grow and to continue to pursue a life of worthwhile contribution. 

Over 600 years ago when the University was first founded, the historian Walter Bower described the celebrations of the townspeople, University teachers and students as they came together in celebration on a day not unlike today – there was “boundless merry-making”, “large bonfires burning in the streets” and a lot of wine was consumed. Bower also observed: “Some people think that there is one thing in the University in recent times that is not only reprehensible but also needs changing” (and he didn’t mean the wine drinking!) “…namely that when [students] being to learn and obtain degrees, they soon leave and thus demean the learning which ought to distinguish them.”

Bower thought students should learn at university and then stay on to teach others and contemplate philosophically the problems the world faced, not go out into the world to take their knowledge and skills with them to other organisations. While my colleagues and I have followed Bower’s preferred path, you will all be relieved to hear that we are delighted that having obtained your degree that you will definitely be leaving. But do take Bower’s point to heart – do not demean your learning, rather, let your learning distinguish you in your chosen career.

Graduation addresses are by their very nature a moment for the University to give you something of a celebratory push out of the nest. Today, as a graduate of this ancient university, you stand as a credit to yourself. We hope that what St Andrews has provided for you will give you the knowledge, the wisdom and the resilience to succeed, to prosper and to be happy – Ever to Excel.