Congratulations to the class of Fall 2018

Graduates, friends, families, and colleagues, congratulations to us all. Today we reflect on our past selves, we celebrate our present selves, and we embrace and enable our future selves.

For numerous reasons we made a commitment to our future self when we chose to undertake a degree in science. Our past selves worked diligently with our heads down, focused on the next hurdle in our immediate future. The next assignment, group project, midterm, final, candidacy, and defence. Since our last examinations we have all begun to focus on the next hurdle as the commitment of our past has bore fruit. How will we honour our past selves?

Progress towards a sustainable future for our species and our planet relies on science as a bedrock. The world is advancing with accelerating rapidity. Now that we have taken this time together for celebration and contemplation, we can ask questions to help illuminate our paths beyond university.

What will life look like for our future selves in the next 5, 10, or 25 years? Will quantum computing change the nature of materials and drug discovery as we know it? Will cellular agriculture be a necessity in order to feed the world's population? Will we solve the alignment problem of artificial intelligence? Will our climate demand a plan B intervention at an unprecedented scale?

The immense challenges that face our world and the ever changing technological landscape can be anxiety-inducing. But we as science graduates have made an important choice. Our past selves chose curiosity over fear. Rather than succumb to overwhelm we have chosen the hard path of grit and rigor to equip ourselves with tools to face wicked problems head on.

There is so much uncertainty in the world but you are a scientist and you are in the business of discovering reality. Who better to stare headstrong at opportunity and challenge than the experts at managing uncertainty! How then, do we deal with the unknowns that our future selves will face?

We manage it with the tools of science and with the humble question. We manage it by forming hypotheses and testing them with rigor. We make informed decisions based on probability rather than bias for we know there is no good data or bad data, there is only data. We know to ask, how can we measure this? And perhaps most importantly, we also know to ask: What do I need to learn in order to accomplish this task?

Our present selves are calibrated for learning. We have had to cultivate a growth mindset in order to survive the demands of the lab and the classroom. We are scientists, and we can learn what we need to learn in order to rise to the occasion. Our perceived failures have galvanized us. We exchanged the phrase "I don't know how to do linear algebra" with "I don't know how to do linear algebra *yet*." We (scientists) are resilient. One experiment or one thousand, we will keep going. To learn, and to seek the objective truth.

During our studies we have built a substantial knowledge base and toolset. With this knowledge I would like to suggest a commitment to our future selves. That we go from knowing, to doing. For the problems of today the stakes are incredibly high, the urgency is palpable, and we all have skin in the game. We must continue to choose curiosity over the fear of missing out. All of the world's wicked problems are important ones. So pick one, and chip away at it. Action brings clarity.

Our alumni slogan at the University of Alberta is "Do Great Things". Recognize this phrase for what it is. It is a call to action. The most important part of it is the word "do." So actually do. You have the ability to deal with information overload and break down any challenge. Whether this is the challenge of finding a career, starting a business, or deciding where to focus your research efforts.

So, congratulations and a toast to the class of 2018!

May you honour your past self, engage with your present self, and create an impact your future self will thank you for.