Graduation Address: Kerry Tavakoli, International Education and Lifelong Learning Institute
Monday 30 June 2025 – morning ceremony
Vice-Chancellor, special guests, colleagues and, especially, new graduates and their friends and family, welcome on this joyful occasion. It is a great honour for me to be asked to address our new graduates from the Schools represented here today.
What does it really mean to be a graduate? As a linguist I felt compelled to look at the etymology of the noun ‘graduate’. The word is as old as this University, dating from the fifteenth century, when the earliest universities were founded in Europe, amongst which was St Andrews. The definition is given as “one who holds a degree”, originally “a man who holds a degree”, coming from the Latin ‘gradus’, “a step; a step climbed (on a ladder or stair);” figuratively “a step toward something, a degree of something rising by stages”.
After much hard work and dedication, you have reached an important step in your formal education, a significant day for you and those close to you, a day to remember and be immensely proud of. But it does not mark the end of the story, you have not reached your ultimate goal, there are many more steps to take in the journey of life. St Andrews is a wonderful destination but only represents one step in a much longer journey as you look to a bright future. You are now ready to move on to the next step.
Tackling new steps can be a wobbly process as all your families will remember! In The Lord of the Rings, Bilbo Baggins warns that:
“It’s a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
So, sometimes a steadying and supportive hand is needed. Look around at your friends and family, your lecturers and other University staff, and do not underestimate the value of their help along the way.
New graduates, many of you will indeed have made life-changing choices and decisions during your time here. You have studied hard, and played hard too, I hope. For many of you, it is this next step into the wider world, outside the ‘bubble’ as we affectionately refer to the University and the town, which requires difficult decisions – where to go, what to do and perhaps who to do it all with! Very few will be as lucky as I was. Apparently one week after starting school, at four years of age, I informed my parents I was going to be a teacher, never imagining that I would end up here in the Younger Hall addressing you, successful graduates about to move on, into a rapidly changing world, with career opportunities you may never have thought of.
Returning to the ‘step’ metaphor, this is a moment to reflect, with justified pride, on the skills you are taking with you out into the world. You will have learned to think critically, express yourselves in a variety of contexts, work collaboratively, stretch yourselves and your minds. Many of you will have devoted time to music or sport, or any of the many other interests supported by student societies here.
These, along with your world-class academic qualifications, are invaluable skills in the steps you will climb in the next years, in addition to your studies in physics, astronomy, education, music, anthropology, philosophy, film studies and other disciplines you have studied. As the American poet and essayist Walt Whitman says, you are “large”, you “contain multitudes”, and all these elements of yourselves that you have cultivated during your time in St Andrews will shape and inform you and the careers you go into. This diversity will be essential in the way your life’s work can contribute to a fragile world. Consider sustainability, equity and inclusivity at a time when progress and development in many ways are adding to the widening gaps between both individuals and nations.
So do not limit yourselves, your potential is vast and for all you know, you or the person next to you could be one of the great change-makers of the future.
You will need considerable resilience in the pursuit of your ambitions – ‘per ardua ad astra’, through adversity to the stars. We are inevitably surrounded by ‘adversity’ in the pursuit of knowledge. If life were that easy, it would be dull. Rise to any challenge, take carefully calculated risks, and above all, cultivate your curiosity.
Take with you our motto ‘Ever to Excel’, be curious, creative and innovative in the many steps still to be taken throughout your career and beyond.
I spoke before about ‘stepping outside the bubble’ as you leave this place – ‘locus iste’, this university, this town. But, in some real and powerful ways, as a graduate of St Andrews, you will take the bubble with you and in all the adversity of life you will be supported by the learning you have achieved here and by the love of those you have met here. As Rilke wrote in his Letters to a Young Poet: “…have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.”
Graduates, let me congratulate you one more time. It has been my honour to share this graduation ceremony with you. Step out with joy.