University of Otago students have been urged to overcome their fears, prepare for big changes in their lives and use their skills to adapt to them.
Distinguished Prof Peter Narins, of the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), was commenting in an address to about 370 graduates in science, at an Otago University graduation ceremony on Saturday.
Prof Narins told the graduates, attending the 4pm ceremony at the Dunedin Town Hall, that he had spent nearly 40 years at UCLA, teaching and undertaking research with students who were not unlike the Otago graduates.
He was a neuroethologist, who studied the neural bases of behaviour, and had been studying frog acoustic communication behaviour for nearly half a century.
After nearly four decades of learning how students thought and viewed the world, he concluded ‘‘what they often most fear is change''.
This came in two forms: ‘‘the change that is forced upon you, and the change you elect''.
The first was often stress-inducing, and the second was ‘‘designed to relieve stress''.
‘‘Obviously, it's the imposed change that's the most troubling.''
Otago University was a place where ‘‘the authority of the highest ideas trumps the ideas of the highest authority'' and the university had taught graduates that knowledge mattered.‘‘Knowledge humanely applied makes human progress possible,'' he said.
Conviction was also vitally important, because without that there could be ‘‘no direction'' and, ultimately, ‘‘no journey''.
He also emphasised the importance of companionship and love, and urged graduates to ‘‘hang on to your families and the people you love''.
Otago graduates attending an earlier ceremony, at 1pm, were urged to show grit, persistency and character in striving to realise their dreams.
Deputy principal of the Diocesan School for Girls, Auckland, Christine Arthur, urged graduates to be ‘‘more interested in character than reputation''.
Ms Arthur said her earlier study at Otago University had been a ‘‘major influence on my life''.
And she recalled how she had worked her way up from an initial place in the university C team to becoming a New Zealand hockey representative at two Olympic Games.
Sir Winston Churchill had said that ‘‘success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts''.
She urged graduates to ‘‘choose to be optimistic, choose to show grit, choose to show gratitude, choose to always give your best effort and success will be yours''.
