A Fond Farewell from Prof Stack
How to say goodbye?
This morning I was surfing on twitter as a way of procrastinating about how to answer this question and Kate Dickie, the Scottish Actress, was talking about contronyms – single words that have two contradictory meanings – and one of the examples she used was the word ‘left’ meaning both remained and departed. And I thought ‘left’ that is our shared word, as today you shall all leave moving onto to the next part of your journey and we shall remain behind keeping a light on in case you ever want to come back.
Endings and beginnings are funny things as you never have one without the other and they are so full of the mixed emotions of sadness, excitement, hope and maybe a little fear. But they are a good time to pause, reflect and to embrace all that we have learnt, how we have changed and who we still want to become. Know that while you are thinking about the changes you have made over the past four years, you have also changed us and helped us grow and develop and we are grateful for all you have contributed in your time here at UofGPsych.
Reading all your contributions for this yearbook has been a joy, it is a beautiful mish mash of all the diversity of who you all are. It is a celebration not only of your academic achievements as demonstrated by your conference abstracts but that you are all so much more than your degrees (as excellent as those are) you are creative and caring humans who we are so proud to send out to change the world in big, and importantly, millions of small everyday ways. So - go out there, dream big dreams, take chances, fail and learn from it, succeed and take pleasure in those successes, and while you are doing all of this hold a little space for UofgPsych in your heart.
“So fill to me the parting glass
Good night and joy be to you all”