Graduation

Looking back on the selfishness of youth

The 17th-century Sheldonian Theatre, where Oxford graduation ceremonies take place. Line engraving by D. Loggan. Wellcome Trust.

Truly, though our element is time,

We are not suited to the long perspectives

Open at each instant of our lives.

They link us to our losses.¹

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This summer, I visited Oxford for the first time in five years. As I ambled past the Sheldonian Theatre, I remembered being astonished by Andrei Voznesensky’s dramatic, sonorous reading there; I recalled Shura Cherkassky’s exquisite playing of Chopin in that hall; and most of all, I remember standing outside and listening in wonderment to Simon Rattle and the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra blowing the roof off with their sublime summer evening performance of Elgar’s Enigma Variations.

Only then did I remember that the building is also used for graduation ceremonies.

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Forty years ago, after I finished my final exams at Oxford, I indulged in the usual festivities in the college quad before throwing aside my gown. Despite signs telling us not to, we inexpertly popped corks of sweet and bubby Pomagne² on the elegant lawn. I then packed my bags and left the city the next day without further ceremony.

I spent the summer at my parents’ house in Devon and taught English at a local language school. I’m sure I spent a lot of time talking to my parents that summer.

But one topic that never came up was graduation. Although I knew about such ceremonies, it honestly never occurred to me to attend one.³ So when the letter came from the university about graduation formalities, I replied asking to graduate in absentia.

I never thought to ask my parents whether they might like to go to my graduation. Such things had little meaning for me, and in my selfishness, I just assumed the same would be true for them.

That autumn, I enrolled in a Master’s programme at the University of East Anglia.⁴ The following year, before I departed for the Canary Islands, I again spent the summer with my parents. And again, I didn’t even think about going to a graduation ceremony; once again, the subject never came up.

It was how I lived then. Life events came along, and I just made my own decisions, rarely consulting or even informing my parents until afterwards.

There was no hostility in this; I was always grateful for their support. But out of sheer self-centredness, I failed to consider whether they’d welcome being more involved.

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With the kind of irony that the universe occasionally indulges in, my career would eventually oblige me to attend many graduations. In the different countries I worked in, I was often invited to attend them and sometimes to give speeches for the new graduates. The most remarkable ceremonies were in Egypt, and this is where I began to warm to these events. The enthusiasm of the newly graduated, the exuberance of the celebrations, and the sheer scale of the festivities made me realise what a special day this was for students, teachers, and parents alike. 

It was during the time that I was in Egypt that both of my sons graduated from their first universities. My elder son invited me to his graduation in Bristol, and I vividly recall the joy and pride I felt at that warm and welcoming event. 

Me speaking at a graduation ceremony in Hong Kong in 2019

My insouciance had begun to melt away, and by the time I found myself attending a number of ceremonies in Hong Kong in the run-up to the pandemic, I’d become familiar with these ancient rites, learning to use expressions such as “graduans” and even (momentarily) how to put on a mortar board correctly.

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I realised that I wanted to talk through the whole thing with my parents. But I’d left it very late.

Just before the pandemic closed down Hong Kong in February 2020, my father died, and I was more or less unable to leave Hong Kong for the next two and a half years. 

When I retired in the summer of 2022 and returned to England to help care for my mother, this was one of many topics I hoped to raise with her. However, after a little more than three months, she passed away. The right moment had never quite arrived. The opportunity to talk was lost forever. 

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It was in 2017 that I finally attended a graduation ceremony at Oxford—my younger son’s.

As I mentioned above, Oxford graduations take place in the Sheldonian Theatre. I found myself looking forward to the event as I waited on the hard benches in the steep aisles of the theatre for what seemed like ages.

Then suddenly, the ceremony began. And so did the confusion. The words spoken were in Latin, like mass in a mediaeval church. It was hard to work out what was being said or what was going on. With just time for a few blurred and hurried photos of my son, the ceremony was suddenly over.

It was raining when we got outside. Fortunately, the pride I felt for my son was strong enough to wash away my feeling of anti-climax about the ceremony. 

Students arriving for their matriculation ceremony at the Sheldonian Theatre, 2003. This is mandatory for entry into the university, so I attended. Image by Toby Ord, CC BY-SA 2.5

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I think back to my parents. Would they have enjoyed it? Or perhaps they would have been even more bemused than I was by the austere ceremony? 

Part of me wants to believe that I was right to leave them out of it. 

But that patronising sentiment misses the point. If I failed to invite my parents to my non-existent graduation ceremony—if I failed even to think of it—it wasn’t out of some condescending desire to shield my parents from disappointment or social embarrassment.

It was just plain thoughtlessness. 

The moments of my graduation will remain forever uncelebrated, and the conversations with my parents will stay unspoken.

“Remorse is memory awake,” wrote Emily Dickinson.

I can’t put these things right now. All I can do is try to forgive my self-directed, selfish younger self and slowly rock these memories back to sleep. 

1. From Reference Back, by Philip Larkin.

2. A cheap sparkling cider that was better to spill than drink. It’s no longer made.

3. Perhaps I should mention that in England, you don’t “graduate” from secondary (high) school. You just stop attending after the final exams. So I’d never been to a graduation.

4. Like most MA programmes in England, it was a one-year course.