Milestones and Thank you

As the rain fell on Sheffield during this week’s degree ceremonies, the new graduates gathered with their families and supporters at a milestone event in their lives. Some were laughing, some nervous, pride in achievement was common. All knew this was a rite of passage.

For these graduates and their families this day was the culmination of preparation, learning and commitment which goes back years. Our own role too has been long-term and often unseen. Along with the robes and the ceremonies it is rightly a time for thank you.

And so, on behalf of them and of the University, I would like to spend some time saying thank you. Thanks for helping all the students and their families to find their way to the Octagon and keeping them safe when they were there. Thanks for guiding them to that stage with the academics sitting in their robes. That act of guiding may have started at an open day, all that time ago, when they first looked around the campus and tried to anticipate what it would be like to be here.

Thanks for organising and cleaning the rooms and running the places they learned and were taught in. Thanks for all the facilities and services they used during their time here. Thanks for working in libraries and as lab technicians to support their learning. Thanks for cooking all the food and serving the drinks that kept them going, so they reached one of the most important celebrations of their lives.

And last but not least, thanks for teaching and inspiring them and giving them the gift of how to learn.

At this time of transition, we say goodbye to the students that have studied and learned and lived with us. I feel an intense wish and hope that we have served them well. But I know that they are entering a less caring, much more competitive world. How will what we have given help them to survive all that competition? We shall not be there to help them as we have been.

As Vice-Chancellor, I also have to think what to say to them as they leave. What do you say to young people on the threshold of a new chapter in their lives? I want to say something that matters to them, something that might be a kind of keepsake for the future. So I encourage them to be proud of what they have achieved and take some of our pride in them as they go along in life.

They will forget much that has happened to them here in Sheffield but by no means all. And I am so lucky; I get to see the effect Sheffield has on people when I meet students that left us many years ago. I get to see the welling up of affection and nostalgia for this wonderful place, its experiences and people. I get to see that what we teach them endures in ways we cannot fully appreciate and cannot plan. It is a powerful and lasting presence that is core to many peoples’ success in life.

One of my favourite poems is by C D Lewis and is called ‘Walking Away’. The last stanza says “selfhood begins with a walking away, and love proved in the letting go.”

This week our graduates begin that walk away – but when connections are real with people and places, they also go with you. So let’s be proud of our students, our newest Sheffield Graduates. Let’s be proud of the role we play in their lives. Let’s also be proud of a place that will continue to mean so much to them in the years ahead. And from them and from me – thank you.

Professor Keith Burnett
Vice-Chancellor