ANU COLLEGE OF LAW

GRADUATION CEREMONY JULY 2016

Student Speaker: Sarah Dobbie

Good morning Chancellor, Vice-Chancellor, distinguished guests, academic staff, friends, families and, above all, fellow graduates. It is an absolute honour to be standing here on your behalf today, so thank you.

I must confess, however, that as a born-and-bred Canberran, I am acutely aware of the fact that I might not represent your university experience. So, after being asked to speak today, I did my research in the only logical place I could think of – the law library. In an attempt to survey our cohort, I read every word of graffiti scrawled and scratched onto the 48 library desks. I’m certainly not condoning vandalism but, as one student wrote on the 12th desk from the left, ‘graffiti is a long slow conversation between generations of law students’. Or, as another explains, ‘writing on these table is just a primitive form of Facebook’.

When faced with the challenge of writing this speech, I found support, advice and inspiration from the voices of my peers. As I read your graffiti, I didn’t agree with all opinions, I didn’t like half of them, and I questioned the sanity of many. But that didn’t change the importance of the thoughts. Amongst the endless political commentary, four letter words and the etched marks of panic, there were some incredible lessons to be learned. And so today, instead of just relying on the wise words of people we’ve never met, I’d like to share some crucial lessons from the law students themselves…

The greatest lessons start with questions. And so I turn first to the graffiti surveys asking, ‘What’s the meaning of life?’, ‘Should I do honours?’ and ‘What is law?’ I can’t answer the meaning of life. And I choose not to answer whether someone should do honours (although I do note that one student’s response simply reads, ‘Do you want to die?’). But the question of ‘What is law?’ - at its broadest level, and not to offend the theorists amongst us, I think that’s actually quite easy - ‘law’ is a set of rules that affects absolutely everyone, at all stages of life, but that can be understood by so very few.

And that leads me to the first lesson, a permanent marker message found on the 30th desk from the left - ‘Check your privilege’. We’re told by lecturers, families, and complete strangers that our law degree is a privilege. Far more than a privilege however, our law degree is an extraordinary responsibility. No matter how or where we pursue our careers, we’ve been gifted with unique insights into rights and remedies. We have the opportunity, privilege and responsibility of making genuine differences to the lives of individuals, the management of corporations, and to the wellbeing of nations. Whether corporate, government or community – to whatever great or little degree we use our degree – we will always carry the responsibility, to use privilege wisely, to share knowledge generously, and to never forget that it is we who are so advantaged.

As we have approached graduation, the most liberating, and terrifying, realisation has been this fact - that our ANU education has given us the freedom that millions fight for – the freedom of choice, of genuine options. Ironically though, the freedom can come with fear – when we can do anything and be anything, what do we do and who do we be? When faced with these choices, it’s all too easy to choose the path that we feel we ‘should’. As one student scrawled on the 19th desk, ‘We all have our reasons to be here. We all had our minds made up for us. We all needed something to cling to, so we did’. Unfortunately we do sometimes choose our paths out of fear disguised as practicality, or perhaps fear disguised as a sensible decision. But, as one of the more positive graffitists notes, ‘[i]t’s your life, only you have to live it’.

As I read through the long slow conversations between law students, it was clear that a lot of us just want to be remembered, and to make our mark. Scratched deep into the wood, there are at least four requests to ‘Remember me’, and an untold number of reminders that ‘I was here’.

If we really want to be remembered though, it won’t be for words alone, and it won’t be for doing things we ‘should’ do, or for being what others think we ‘should’ be. You don’t hear people saying ‘They were incredible, they did what they should’. It’s funny though, because I almost fell into that trap trying to write this speech. I can hear myself asking others, ‘What would you say?’ I even tried to research my way out of it (and my Google history does contain the search ‘What should you say at graduation?’) It was somewhere between listening to JK Rowling’s Harvard address and Tim Minchin’s now famous graduation speech that I realised my own hypocrisy, because it’s absolutely irrelevant what we ‘should’ say, or what anyone else has said before us.

It can be hard to have this confidence, and self-belief, especially when one of the largest graffiti messages instructs us in bold capitals that ‘everything you know is wrong’. As one student responded through, ‘But how do you know?’ And these are the lessons. No, not literally that everything we know is wrong. The lesson is to question what we know, and how we know it. And to have the confidence to question the loud claims of others. Throughout our time at the College of Law, we’ve certainly come face to face with our knowledge, our values, our way of seeing the world. We learn that yes, sometimes we were right, but other times we were wrong. Or, the classic law school dilemma: there’s no right or wrong, but you still might be wrong...

Earlier in my degree, I struggled with the idea that there might not be a ‘right’ way. And as someone who set their sights on a somewhat untraditional career, I couldn’t accept that there wasn’t a clear path. Thinking that someone must have the answer, I sought the wisdom of our College academics. And the best advice I received was actually a question, and it’s something that I think we should all be asked: Are you ready to jump? These words have really stuck – I’ve realised that if we can fail at what we don’t want, we might as well take a chance on doing what we love. It might not be immediate, it mightn’t be for years, but we’d be letting ourselves down if we didn’t take a jump. And for anyone thinking that it isn’t worth it, or that your effort won’t amount to enough, you clearly haven’t listened to the Dalai Lama - “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito [in the room]”. And so I say to all graduates what my little sister recently reminded me – embrace your inner mosquito!

On behalf of all graduates, my deepest thanks to the families and friends who have lived, breathed, and endured each exam, essay, disappointment, and victory with us. You are the listeners, the proof-readers, the huggers, the coffee-runners, and the sounding-boards. We have called on you at all hours, everyday, and we owe you everything.

My deepest thanks also to the lecturers, tutors and administrative staff of the College of Law – through your words, time, energy and dedication it is we who have been given the freedom of choice.

And finally, my biggest congratulations to the graduating class. As we leave today – supported by friends, families, academics, and each other – remember the words of desk no. 10 and the final lesson for today - ‘[w]e are the ones we have been waiting for’. Now is not the time to stop because we achieved what we came here to do. I think that now is the time to push forward because we have achieved what many can only dream of, and we are the ones the world is waiting for.

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