Yale-NUS College Graduation 2023 (Morning Ceremony)

Mdm Kay Kuok, Chair of the Yale-NUS Governing Board

Members of the Yale-NUS Governing Board

Graduands, Parents, Families, Yale-NUS community and Friends.

Congratulations Class of 2023! This is your special day. It is a special one for me too as this marks my first Graduation ceremony as President of Yale-NUS College. I am honoured to be celebrating this milestone with you and your loved ones.

Graduation is a time of celebration and reflection. We celebrate what you have achieved and gained during your time in college, we celebrate your aspirations, and very importantly, this is also a time when we reflect upon and celebrate our time spent together.

I was at a sharing session last semester with a group of students, and we were each asked to pull up a photo that captured something special or important to us about our Yale-NUS experience. Some of you were at the session, and I hope you still remember which photo you shared and why that moment mattered to you.

For me, I pulled up the photo of my two sons from our first ‘Beginning of Semester’ dinner at Saga dining hall. That night, as we got ready, I asked them both to get dressed up for dinner. My elder son, Finn, probably nine at the time, came out in a pair of khaki pants and black golf shirt, looking grown up and handsome, ready to go. Seconds later, his younger brother Jude jumped out, in a polyester Boba Fett costume from Star Wars – complete with a helmet and a large plastic Nerf gun, and announced he was ready to go too.

As I looked at them, I thought, yeah that will work at Yale-NUS.

That here there is room for both of these different ways of seeing the world and of expressing ourselves. In fact, this is exactly what makes the College such a special place for me, and I believe for many of you too. That all of us, from different places, backgrounds, experiences, with different passions and concerns, have found and created a space where we all belong. We are different, and these differences are to be celebrated.  That together they create our defining effervescence. That joyful way we express, embrace, and learn from each other.

Graduations often cause me to reminisce, please bear with me! In preparing my message today, I was reminded of my first official day on campus, almost six and half years ago. Like many of you, I arrived excited, a little nervous but also brimming with possibilities. What would this place be like, colleagues, students, the environment? Would it be different from when I was just visiting faculty?  And what I found was a welcoming and open community that warmly embraced me and my family. But it wasn’t always easy, the start of something worthwhile rarely is.

For some of you, your first year marked the first time you were living away from home. For others it was a double or triple whammy of living away from home in a foreign land with five strangers during a global pandemic!

Your four years here have certainly been quite an adventure. COVID-19 hit during your first year in college and the safety measures that were implemented altered the way we learnt in the classroom, organised student activities, lived on campus, and travelled abroad for opportunities or to see our families. The adjustments weren’t easy, but you adapted and found ways to maximise your own experience. Then came the merger announcement, and we had to process the news that there will be no more new batches of Kingfishers.

While we shouldn’t let our challenges define us, there are important lessons we can learn from these experiences. You learnt to be stronger and resilient in the face of difficulties. You came up with ways to support and care for one another and help fellow students through difficult moments. You learnt to process your emotions and seek outlets to channel those emotions into something positive, such as organising sharing sessions for the community, or just simply, reaching out to your friends and making sure they are okay. This unity and resilience are the foundations that built our community of care. A community we are all so proud to belong to.

As you graduate from college and leave what is familiar, that same uncertainty you felt may take hold of you. As you enter a new work or learning environment, or move to another country, always know that what you have done here over the last four years, has equipped you well to go on to create new, special communities for yourself and for others.

But try not to fly too far from the nest! During your time here, you have worked with one another to build a tightly knit and caring campus community, and I hope you will continue that work as alumni.

We are all connected by this time together, and this journey we have had the privilege to share. I know you will find ways to continue to support, nurture, and challenge one another, and I look forward to working with you to build a space that will carry on long after our College closes. A space that you will all still call home.  A community that you will always belong to.  A heritage and legacy which you will share and build.

As you go forward from here, I encourage you to be brave and open to new ways of seeing the world, to be curious enough to face the unknown, and to be bold enough to take risks, like you have done here . Do carry with you the lessons you have learnt from your time here, both within the classroom and without – to be kind to one another and to yourselves, and to always seek ways to be of service to those around you.

I am so proud of all you have accomplished and I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Congratulations Class of 2023!