Honorary Graduates

Orations and responses

Response by Charles Handy

Chancellor, Vice Chancellor, distinguished ladies and gentlemen.  I stand here highly honoured and slightly embarrassed.  Highly honoured to be invited to be associated with this great University.  People like me talk these days a lot about globalisation and the global world but sitting here listening to that wonderful array of names I realise I am at the heart of this global world and its great to be here. 

It is also great to be associated by just sitting beside Patrick Collinson, one of our great academics.  I tried to be an academic once.  But one of my colleagues said �If you will write books without footnotes you�re only a journalist�.

I am slightly embarrassed however, I mean, these honeyed words from the public orator will, as Elizabeth will tell you, conceal the other half of me.  I wouldn�t like you to think that I am all like that.  But I am also reminded  of what my son said to me the other day.  �It must be very awkward, Dad� he said �to go along where all these people who�ve  received their degrees have sweated long hours, long nights, passed exams, written theses, and all you have done is turn up on the day�.  Slightly pompously I said �Well actually these honorary degrees you know, my son, you earn them with your life not with your writings.�    Forgive the pomposity but I actually think its true which its why its so nice to have ones life recognised by a place like this.  Thank you sir.

But if I may say a word, first to the long suffering parents and spouses and others in the support contingent of  those who are graduating.  Savour this moment, tuck it away in your memories because this is probably the last time you will be thanked for all your efforts and perseverance.  I just remember when that same son of ours, who is an actor,  had his first appearance in the West End and he showed me the little description of his life that he had to write for the programme.  I said to him �reads very well,  but you don�t mention your education�, over which we laboured long and financially arduously.  �Dad�, he said in a pitying voice,  �the people who come to the theatre are not interested in what I learnt or where I learnt, they are only interested in what I do with it�.  I had to admit that he was right.  And so never again has he mentioned thank you for all that we gave him.  So savour this moment. 

But to those of you who have graduated today - congratulations!  I am sure you deserve it for all your hard work.  But let me just warn you, you may not have got what you bargained for.  I, too, graduated one day, long ago.  And then I joined this oil company as you heard.  They sent me out to South East Asia, where I had a year mucking around having a lovely time, learning the language, meeting the people and so on, and then they called me into the head office in Singapore one sunny morning and they said:  �London have asked to create the post of Economic Co-ordinator for South East Asia�.  �Indeed� I said.  �Yes� they said �and you are it�.  �Ah� I said, �but actually I studied Greek and Latin and Philosophy�.  �Yes� they said �but you got a degree didn�t you?�  I said �well yes� and they said, �okay, so you�re the Economics Adviser for South East Asia�. 

I then discovered to my horror that what I had been given was not a degree but a licence to learn.  And I have to warn you that in the years that lie ahead you may have to use this new licence that you have been given rather more often than you would wish.  And if you have got a post graduate degree then you are expected to learn faster than anyone else. So beware. You too may end up as an economist in South East Asia.  But, the great good news - as I discovered, when I rushed down town and bought a little yellow book called �Teach yourself Economics in a great hurry� is that actually if you have to or if you want to, you can learn anything, absolutely anything.  Even if it costs a little embarrassment. 

Our daughter is currently in New Zealand where she is causing a little bit of panic -  because she is learning to fly in her spare time.  Now,  apparently in that part of New Zealand,  if there are sharks seen in the water the tradition is for an aeroplane to fly over the beach waggling its wings to tell people to get out of the water, sharks have been sighted.  Our daughter reports that so far she has been unable to fly an aeroplane straight,  so she waggles the wings, unconsciously and is scaring the life out of the natives who run out of the sea.  �But� she said to me �Dad, I know that because I want more than anything else to learn how to fly, that I will learn and will one day be able to fly the plane straight.�   You can learn anything that you want to.

So may I wish you a wonderful life and may it be possible perhaps that in the distant future you too will stand here and hear flattering lies told about your life by the public orator as a reward for all that learning that you have done.  Thank you very much.