Graduation address: Thursday 16 June afternoon ceremony

Graduation address by Professor Dame Sally Mapstone DBE, Principal and Vice-Chancellor

It now falls upon me to deliver today’s graduation address, and it is conventional to begin with a wholehearted and emphatic note of congratulations. You have done it. In collecting your degree, you complete an intellectual journey that has demanded sustained investment across many months or years, as well as intellectual curiosity and sheer hard work. These capabilities have sharpened during your programme, and you leave better equipped for what comes next, indeed better able to envisage and create your own path. A degree from St Andrews is not easily attained, but it is something that you have earned and which nobody can take away from you. You and your friends, families, teachers, and peers have every right to feel very proud today.

You also have more to celebrate than most: for two years, the pandemic ruptured the conventional delivery of teaching and demanded that you exercise greater dexterity than any of your forebears. I know it has not been simple, but in coming through a time of great challenge with something of equally great value to show for it, you have demonstrated a quintessentially St Andrews spirit of endeavour and excellence.

During some of the most severe lockdowns necessitated by the pandemic, whether spent in St Andrews or elsewhere, reading and learning were two of the great reliefs of daily life. For many of us, they were supplemented by exercise. I was in St Andrews throughout the pandemic years, and exercise here first took the form of our daily, Government-allocated 30-minute dash out of the house, which later proliferated, when outdoor activities were increasingly enabled, into much longer stretches of walking, hiking, and running. A paucity of tourists and, at times, students and staff, made St Andrews a quiet place for those of us who remained, but its beaches and streets were unfailingly punctuated by people running or walking their way through the anxieties of the moment.

This draws upon a long tradition of exercise at St Andrews, in which running has been used as a way to offset the stresses of studying by generations of students. Before your enrolment here, some of your attending guests may have been more familiar with our town as either the home of golf or as the setting of the opening scene of the 1981 film, Chariots of Fire. That sequence, in which a group of students run along West Sands towards St Andrews, is one of the most iconic cinematic visuals in western film, and it is accompanied by an equally iconic score by the composer, Vangelis, who passed away just last month. It is a scene recreated, consciously or otherwise, hundreds of times every day by the students who run across the Sands, and with more deliberate intent at the annual Chariots of Fire 5K beach race. The latest iteration of this event took place at the beginning of this month, and it brought together 700 staff, students, and townsfolk for a community celebration of exercise in the landscape that we are so fortunate to inhabit.

Further sources of athletic inspiration are present on our stage, particularly in our honourable Chancellor, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem. Lord Campbell is a polymath of renown – a lawyer by training, a Parliamentarian of historic significance, and an incisive foreign affairs and defence specialist. Lord Campbell serves to this day as a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly as part of a UK delegation that he led from 2010 to 2015. Lord Campbell is, however, also an Olympian of equally historic proportions: he competed at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, including in the 4 x 100-metre relay, at which he and his team established a new British record. Lord Campbell subsequently competed in the 1966 Commonwealth Games, he later defeated OJ Simpson in a competitive 100-metre race in 1967, and from 1967 to 1974 he held the national 100-metre record. In his autobiography, published in 2008, Lord Campbell recalls his feelings upon leaving Tokyo as an Olympian, writing:

‘I worked for it, dreamed of it, and finally achieved it. […] I remember it vividly as if it were yesterday.’

Like running, studying is about perseverance – about getting to the library or laboratory every day and doing the work. It can often be a solitary activity, and its rewards do not immediately manifest. One must simply trust that through repeated labour and constant endeavour, a transformation occurs by degrees that, through time, leads both to a distinct sharpening of one’s capabilities and the discovery of new understandings. Every assignment you completed, every page you read, or every experiment you conducted placed you one foot further forward, and today we mark your completion of the race.

Running is not an activity that everyone enjoys. Some of you will default to other sports or the gentler pleasures of walking. But every academic can relate to the central ethos of running – a will toward self-improvement that is wonderfully described by the Japanese novelist, Haruki Murakami, in his 2007 memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I quote:

Running day after day, piling up the races, bit by bit I raise the bar, and by clearing each level I elevate myself. […] The point is whether or not I improved over yesterday. In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.

Your time studying as part of the class of 2022 is over. While you will always be part of a rich and inclusive alumni community, the track ahead is one that you must pursue alone, guided by your principles and impulses. That is a daunting prospect, but also a tremendously exciting one: it is time to set your own standards and aspirations. St Andrews has equipped you with the skills, knowledge, and perseverance necessary to excel in anything you wish to pursue, and the future is yours. Run toward it, for the prize is yours to take.