Graduation address: Monday 27 June morning ceremony

Graduation address by Dr Simon Prosser, School of Philosophical, Anthropological and Film Studies

Vice-Chancellor, colleagues, graduates and special guests. 

Congratulations to all of our new graduates! We are all delighted for you, and you should be very proud of what you have achieved during your time with us.

This is, of course, an unusual graduation ceremony, since most of you graduating today finished your studies a year ago. I do hope things have gone well for you over the past year. We are delighted that you were able to return to St Andrews to see us again, and to join us in celebrating your achievements.

There is no doubt that you finished your degree during an extraordinary period of history, as much for this institution as elsewhere. I hope that when you look back, in the years to come, that last, rather difficult, part of your time with us does not dominate your memories, and that you will still have vivid memories of making new friends from all around the world, and of foam fights in the Quad, of the feeling of achievement when the laboratory apparatus that you had been struggling with finally produced a graph that was the right shape, or of talking about politics and philosophy during long walks on the West Sands; and not just memories of suddenly realising that you had forgotten to blur the background when attending a class on Microsoft Teams from a rather messy bedroom, or of your lecturer doing the same.

This is the first time that I have been asked to give a graduation address, and I must admit that my immediate reaction was to feel honoured, but also slightly terrified! But the opportunities that seem scary to us are often the ones that we should accept, for they are often the ones that will make us grow. There are so many ways in which people can grow, and during your time at the University we watched you grow in many of these ways. We grow when we gain knowledge, and you have certainly done that. But we also grow in other ways, when we broaden our experiences, and confront new challenges. We become stronger and more confident in ourselves, steadier on our feet, and better able to tackle what life throws at us. It is an amazing thing for those of us who teach here to see the transformation in students as they pass from their arrival as freshers, often just out of school, sometimes awkwardly inarticulate, to become the capable and impressive young adults that we see just four or five years later at graduation. That transformation is not to be underestimated; you leave as a quite different person to the one who arrived.

But we should never stop growing. Human beings, like many other living things, need to grow in order to flourish. You should never let your life stagnate, by just doing what you know, and taking the safe options. To grow, we must embrace change, and accept new challenges – challenges that will stretch us to our limits but will make us better for it.

In your lives, individually and collectively, you may face many challenges, some of them never faced by previous generations. But in many ways you are better equipped than any previous generation to meet those challenges. The knowledge and the intellectual training that you have acquired will stand you in good stead. Have trust in yourself, embrace the changes, and never stop growing.

But today is not about all that. Today is about you, and what you have achieved during your time at this University. I really hope you enjoy celebrating your achievements, and I wish you all the very best for the future, wherever your journey may take you. Stay in touch – we are always happy to hear your news – and remember that we are immensely proud of you.