Graduation Address: Professor David Crossman, School of Medicine
Tuesday 3 December 2024 – morning ceremony
Its good, is it not? All this fuss – for you! You deserve it! Graduation day – maybe you have been wishing for this day for ages, maybe you are apprehensive of what lies beyond. Anyway, we are here – all dressed up, for you.
I start by adding my own, heart-felt congratulations to you all. Graduation is the culmination of work, learning, discipline and exploration. You have driven your path through this to your academic success today and you should have the confidence in yourselves to appreciate your achievement and accept the congratulatory comments of others. It is great, smile and feel warm.
Today is emphatically your day and one to relish your achievements here at St Andrews. It is also but one punctuation mark in your life’s journey with its many punctuation marks – mostly yet to come. You will leave the uniformity of a cohort of University of St Andrews student life with its simple steps to the goal of your graduation, towards multiple, different and varied life courses. The single path branches. “The way is broad, reaching left as well as right.” Things will be different and there will be choices.
So, what can be the last St Andrews lecture for you? What final words can add to the wisdom of a time at St Andrews? What could be helpful? As an old(ish) man now at the end of his career I will not presume to go anywhere near contemporary issues. Anything from my generation (and that includes many on the stage) will only be warnings and cautions emerging from a nostalgia for times gone and possibly forged by our own mistakes. No, I will not go there – besides I would go on too long.
Therefore, my words will be emphatically joyous and or encouraging and take the form of advice which is freely given.
“Get involved” is perhaps the advice I want to give you, for all your next moves. The seemingly long road of your life is shorter than it may seem and, like riding a motorbike very fast (on a track of course!), the faster you go the more exciting it is but the quicker the road runs out. So, take every opportunity that comes your way. Do not leave opportunities to be involved or let them slide by thinking others will come. Try and make a difference in the world. A job opportunity is a job, the life opportunity is what you make of it and what else you find to do with it. In any job or role that you may be in, there is always the opportunity to make the world better and yourself better. Grab those and be involved.
The energy and excitement that drives “getting involved” wholeheartedly will dispel any inclination to look back, dwell, or procrastinate. “The past is a foreign land” and they indeed do “do things differently there”. It should not be your currency, the future and its engagement are yours. Oh, what joy!
What life skills might I offer for those jobs and roles with opportunities to get involved? Some personal bits of advice – this is going to be a mixture!
- Never apply for a job if you do not really want it. You might get it! It all sounds very obvious, but I have seen quite a few unhappy people in jobs that they were not really suited for and did not want but the selection process somehow appointed them.
- If you do not own the company, you are just an employee. It does not matter how senior or whatever connections you have at the end of the day you are an employee, and the employer has expectations which you will be much happier if you understand and embrace. And besides the organisation is likely to go on without you.
- First impressions really matter. Our natural characters are difficult to change but there are many mutable aspects of how we create a first impression so think about them in terms of presentation and what you say and what you want to do when you first start.
- Advice number four comes from many negotiators. In nearly all jobs when you are trying to do something you will find someone or an organisation against you. Success will be more likely if you have the emotional intelligence to understand your opponent. Everyone wants to be understood, and most people are reasonable and can give ground (be suspicious of those who do not). Understand how you can help your opponent, which may mean giving some ground yourself.
- And finally, be kind to those around you. Help those who need a bit of help and do not be too judgemental when others are having a bad day.
There is much, much more I could say in the way of advice, but over and above all of these is to have fun and enjoyment. Yes, career gain is good, yes, improving society and the lives of others is a wonderful thing to do and gives a wonderful feeling, but if you are not having fun and not enjoying it the gains are at best costly and at worse destructive.
It brings me back, therefore, to my “get involved” message. Get involved in the opportunities – its where the fun is. What makes a good manager, banker, social worker, teacher, doctor, Vice-Chancellor, is not doing the job well (that is a given) it is seizing the opportunities that come with the privilege that these jobs have. Seize them, run with them.
The somewhat out of fashion Victorian poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow closes his poem A Psalm of Life with the words:
“Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate”
This day, enjoy the many congratulations and praises, then, tomorrow, be “up and doing”. It can be fun, it should be fun, and it will be fun.
Go on your journeys, thank you for listening and the very best of luck.