Good [afternoon] everyone.
To our distinguished Guest of Honour, the Presiding Officer, members of the Academic Procession, esteemed faculty, fellow graduates, our family and friends, thank you for being here with us today.
Today isn’t just a ceremony. It’s a checkpoint on a much longer road, one where we learned how to debug a machine, yes—but more importantly, how to debug ourselves. How to build things that work, and how to rebuild when they don’t. How to lean into discomfort, and how to know when it’s time to ask for help.
On behalf of my fellow graduates, thank you to the faculty and staff who challenged us, supported us, and reminded us that learning is a lifelong expedition. Thank you to our families and friends—for your encouragement, patience, and love—even when we were tired, distracted, or buried in group projects.
This moment belongs to all of you as much as it belongs to us.
Opening: The Contrived Hunt
Let me tell you about Cyrus. Not the pop star. But Cyrus the Great, the founder of the vast Persian Empire. At one point in his youth, Cyrus realises something disturbing: the hunts he is sent on, the challenges he is given, the missions assigned to him—they’re all contrived. Designed to teach him a lesson. Engineered to be solvable. And he gets bored.
We too were given our fair share of hunts. Exams with predetermined answers. Group projects with marking rubrics. Problem sets that felt important mostly because someone told us they were. We were told to be creative—within the marking scheme. Told to be bold—within the model answer.
And now, suddenly, we’re here. At the edge of the textbook. Past the contrived hunt. And we have to ask ourselves: what now?
Real Life Begins Where the Textbook Ends
Xenophon1, the author of Cyrus’ semi-fictional biography writes that the danger of getting good at textbook problems is that you might think you’re good at real problems.
Because in textbooks, problems are solvable. Worth solving (if you care about the grades). Solvable by you. In the real world, none of those things are guaranteed.
Sometimes the best move isn’t to persist—it’s to walk away. Sometimes you need help. Sometimes there is no elegant answer. Sometimes the chapter you need hasn’t been written yet.
So what now? What kind of tools do we need, standing here, outside the textbook?
Seeking Failure Like Cyrus
Of all Cyrus’s many qualities: willpower, strength, charisma, glibness, intelligence, handsomeness; Xenophon makes a point to draw our attention to one in particular. It is this: “He did not run from being defeated into the refuge of not doing that in which he had been defeated.”
Cyrus learned to love the feeling of failure. Why? Because failure meant he had finally met a worthy challenge. Failure meant he hadn’t set his sights too low. It was the stone hard enough to sharpen his edge.
If we’ve never failed, maybe we weren’t aiming high enough.
Each of us here has failed in some way. Quietly, dramatically, privately, or publicly. And that’s good. Because we’ve built the muscle memory for what it means to try again.
Know Thyself Isn’t What You Think It Is
The Delphic oracle2 said: “Know thyself.” And for years I thought it was about self-discovery, artistic brooding, or infinite therapy sessions. No, its pretty much the opposite.
When Croesus3 is defeated by Cyrus, Xenophon reflects: the real meaning of “know thyself” is understanding whether you are the Child of Destiny—and stopping if you’re not.
Not everybody can conquer the world. But Cyrus needs and values his friends. Meanwhile, Croesus, the defeated King of Lydia, finds peace not in victory, but in living the life of the woman he loved—rich in company, food, and conversation, but free of the crushing weight of command.
Maybe the lesson isn’t to be exceptional. Maybe it’s to know when it’s enough to be good, and good to others.
Advice Is Biased
Here’s the problem with advice: it’s usually projection.
The artsy dreamer tells you to follow your dreams. The practical person tells you to build a stable foundation. The person who quit their job tells you to quit yours. The person who stayed says, stay. Advice is tricky. It encodes the life experience, privilege, fears, and worldview of the advice-giver—much more than your own. So beware: when you’re reading advice about being braver, maybe you’re already someone who takes too many risks. When you’re told to settle down, maybe you need to be taking more shots. Sometimes, the fact that it resonates is a sign that we’re already deep in an echo chamber.
Advice is never truly neutral.
Lean Into Discomfort, Minimise Regret’
But once you’ve taken stock of all that—once you’ve acknowledged that every opinion you hear might be more reflective of someone else’s life than your own—you’re still left with a choice. You can overthink forever, or you can try.
We’re told to avoid regret. But regret usually doesn’t come from trying and failing.
It comes from not trying. From silence. From talking ourselves out of asking. From assuming we’re not enough. From imagining that our height, our school, our background disqualifies us.
And that’s the paradox: even if the advice is flawed, the experience you gain from testing it is priceless. You can’t learn courage from reading blog posts. You learn it by doing the hard thing. You don’t grow by sitting in a room wondering who you are—you grow by finding out who you are when things are uncertain, and uncomfortable, and hard.
Lean into discomfort. Bias toward action. Ask, even when it feels foolish. Especially then.
Find Your Tribe; Guard It
Every industry, every school, every office has their echo chambers of negativity. They’re seductive. Everyone there is clever, sarcastic, wounded in a way that makes them magnetic. But they are not where good things grow.
The best people I know—the builders, the generous ones, the unreasonably curious—spend their time elsewhere. In yes, and communities. In places where people are still trying. Let’s not become the people who gave up and became funny about it. Let’s protect the spaces where hope still lives.
A Toast to the non main characters
So—what now?
Some of us will go into software. Some into strategy. Some will be entrepreneurs, researchers, or consultants. But whether we’re shipping code or shaping policy, I hope we carry this with us: That it’s okay not to be the main character.
Not all of us will be Cyrus. But we can be the friends he trusts, the ones who carry water, who make plans, who set the table. We can be the person who says yes to a friend’s wild idea, who says “try again” after the fifth rejection, who reminds others that good people are always in demand.
That failure is not just something to survive, but something to seek. That in a world obsessed with looking good, we can still choose to be good. To be kind. To be the sort of person others want to build with. Not all of us will conquer the world. But we can all make something worth building. A system that runs a little more smoothly. A teammate who feels a little more seen. A life that feels, not just optimized—but meaningful.
Here’s to debugging the world—with heart, with courage, and with each other. Thank you.