Graduation address: Tuesday 21 June afternoon ceremony

Graduation address by Professor Rhiannon Purdie, School of English 

Vice-Chancellor, colleagues, special guests and graduates.

Here is a statement that a Graduation Address never normally starts with: welcome back!  Normally, the point of a Graduation Address is to wave and cheer on behalf of the University as we launch you into the world. But for you, the Class of 2020, the world was suddenly turned on its head during the final few weeks of your degrees with the global Covid-19 pandemic. We all found ourselves locked up, pixellating and stuttering through the remaining classes online. You got through strange final assessments online only to realise that the graduation celebrations which your previous four (or five) years had been leading up to would have to be postponed. Maybe you envied the class of 2021, whose graduation wouldn't be blighted because of course the pandemic would be long gone by then...  

Next, I would usually say something at once sentimental and vaguely threatening like 'you might not realise it yet, but St Andrews has become part of you, and you will find yourself drawn inexorably back to visit this place where you became an adult'. But you haveve been out in the rough and tumble of the world for two years already and you have come back: you know the strength of your ties to this place as a simple fact. You also probably do not need the kinds of advice we normally offer to starry-eyed new graduates, but I'm an academic and I pontificate to audiences for a living. I am that annoying elderly aunt who corners you at a wedding reception when you just want to party with the rest of them, and I am going to go ahead and give you some advice anyway.    

The first thing is something my father told me when I was agonising over whether to go back and do a PhD. I was teaching English in Japan at the time, which was huge fun and difficult to give up; I worried about the kind of debt I would rack up if I went back to studying; I fretted about how old I would be – almost 30! – before I finished and could embark on a grown-up career at last. I expected him to have an opinion one way or the other and I was all set to argue with him about it whatever it was, but he just said: 'Well you know, the real difficulty in life isn't doing things, it's figuring out your priorities. You can't do or have everything, so which is the thing you most want and that you'll sacrifice other things for if necessary? That's the difficult call to make. But once you've made it, the rest is just admin.'  'Just admin' may oversimplify things a bit but I have found this advice genuinely useful at various points in my life so I pass it on to you in the hopes that you will too.

The second slightly more controversial piece of advice comes from my friend, let us call her Morag. Many years ago, when our sons were in primary school together, her son was getting bullied by an older boy who was really starting to knock him about. Morag had always taught her sons that hitting people was wrong, violence was never the answer, you talk things out etc. But talking was not working with this bully and her son asked her anxiously what he should do. Morag looked down into her little boy's face, she imagined this older kid terrorising him, and she really tried to give her usual advice that you should never hit anyone. Did I mention that Morag is from Glasgow? Anyway. She ended up saying 'you should never hit people' – and she took a big breath – 'but if you ever DO have to hit someone, darlin', make it a cracker.' Like Morag, I do not advocate violence. I am a Professor of English and I mean you to take this story on a purely metaphorical level. With that in mind, class of 2020, if life ever puts you into the kind of intolerable position where all negotiation and compromise has failed and you have no other recourse but to throw a metaphorical punch, remember your Scottish training: make it a cracker.

Huge congratulations to you, the resilient class of 2020, and to the families that supported you through it all too. Enjoy your time back in St Andrews this week and go party -- you have earned it.