Andrew Francis

Pro Chancellor, Pro Vice-Chancellor, my academic colleagues, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, and, of course, graduands.

So, here you are at last, in your graduation robes; with your strange hats; in this hall with the piece of paper that has been waiting for you. Perhaps when you began University you thought that this piece of paper was what it was all about. But look around you now. Look at the people in this room that you have sat beside in lectures, tried to solve problems with in tutorials, and hung around cafés with over the last three or so years. This space is now strangely also occupied by your friends and families, in perhaps the first time they have been here since they came to an Open Day years ago! Time passes, and you have changed, as have your families, friends, the University and indeed the country.

I grew up in rural New South Wales in a family that was poor in financial terms, but one advantage that I had that is worth more than wealth is that my parents valued education. What a huge advantage! And I would say this: if you can confer this advantage to the next generation then you have already made a massive difference. I never questioned that I could go to University if I wanted to and had the ability.

I started University wanting to be a vet – an animal doctor. I didn’t get the marks and instead enrolled in Science, thinking I would transfer. But when I got there – into Science – I didn’t want to leave. I went into mathematics and philosophy, then into pure mathematics – which is almost philosophy after all – and stayed there.

Pure mathematics is mathematics that is done for its own sake; mathematics that answers questions about mathematics itself. Mathematical ideas may come out of nature, out of physics, chemistry or engineering for instance, but once the ideas are there, pure mathematics tries to understand the structure of those ideas, how they behave, what they mean. Well, one might say it’s pointless, a luxury, but if you are an engineer or a computer scientist then you know very well that your tools, whether technological or theoretical, are based on mathematics that began as pure mathematics.

Nowadays, I do research that uses the most abstract tools from pure mathematics to try to understand the way evolution works in bacteria. So, I changed from a kid running around after yabbies in a country creek, slowly evolving into a mathematician … studying evolution!

But I want to use this address to ask you to focus on how you have all changed from when you came in to begin your University studies, and not just because now you are wearing funny robes and holding a new piece of embossed paper.

I want to take this opportunity to tell you what I think your piece of paper is really all about. Now, I grew up in the country, but not on farms; I grew up as the son of a country parish priest – not a Catholic one mind you – and so I know that all good sermons have three points.

The first point is always the obvious one. Your course has trained you in something. You have learned content that you will, probably, use in the workplace. For some of you your degree is an important ticket that entitles you to practice as, for instance, an engineer. If this is not your case, you might think of your degree as a pass into whatever comes next. You can put “Bachelor of something” next to your name and get ahead in the job queue. If that was all University was then it’s a bit sad.

The second point is that despite pretentions, in many ways it’s not what you learn in class at University that is the real education; not the “content” in the Unit Outline that’s important.

It’s the ability to think, to solve new problems by looking carefully at them, challenging the assumptions behind them, asking whether what they seek is achievable, and how. You will need to be creative and critical. These might be work problems in engineering, computing or mathematics, and you might be tempted to think you can look up the solutions in a textbook. But I would encourage you to be bold. You are not an automaton that someone could program to find a solution that can be found by a deterministic algorithm. You have a brain, and you have been trained to use it. Use it.

But the great power of your brain is that while you have been taught to think in the particular context of your studies, you can apply these skills absolutely anywhere. Think analytically; solve problems in all domains, whether it’s a network configuration issue, whether it’s how to stop suffering people dying at sea trying to reach Australia, or whether it’s how to get your kids to their weekend commitments. These problems may be difficult, but you are trained to give them a good go. This is your privilege and your responsibility. Use your skills to improve the world beyond your profession.

Thirdly, beyond your coursework, and beyond your analytical skills, you have learned that there is a lot to learn. You have a degree, but do you feel like an expert? I hope not. After my own 9 years as a student and fifteen as an academic, I still feel like I know nothing. If you feel like an expert now, then we have failed you.

Don’t get me wrong: you now know a lot and should be secure in that knowledge. But you should now be aware that every situation is different, and that small changes in initial conditions – small changes in our assumptions – can result in large differences in the behavior of a system. So I would say to you, be open to different approaches, be open to the possibility that your first idea may be wrong, be open to the possibility someone else may know better than you, even if they are less well-trained than you, and be open to the possibility that you may need to learn some more to address the problem.

So that’s my three-point sermon done, and I want to share with you one more little story, given by Brian Dyson, the CEO of Coca-Cola in the early 1990s in a graduation address like this one. He said that on graduation, instead of receiving a testamur you are in fact being given five balls that you must juggle for the rest of your life. Four of them are made of glass, the fifth rubber. When the rubber one drops, it bounces, obviously. But when a glass ball drops it can either smash or be permanently scratched. Throughout life many people will drop a ball or two, but your job is to do your best to keep them all in the air safely. If you come to a time when you’re losing control and have to drop one: choose the rubber one! It will bounce.

Now, what are these balls?

The glass ones are your health, your family, your friends, and your spirit. The fifth is your job.

I am going to leave you with that, and with one last thought. Last week I attended my oldest son’s year 12 graduation. While he still has the HSC exams to come, he has finished with school classes for good. It signified a major change in his life and that of his peers. Today, for you, it is another of those major life transitions. It is important to mark these moments. Breath in the air, look at the light on the leaves and the faces of the people around you. Savour the moment. And as you go away from UWS for the next stage of your life, remember to juggle with care and with wisdom.

Thank you.