Address to the 2020 Graduands of the Master of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics)

NIODA Graduation Ceremony

MS SUSAN CAMPBELL

Address to the 2020 Graduands of the Master of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics)

For the last few weeks, as I’ve held this graduation in mind, I’ve recognised the parallel of our Melbourne experience of emerging out of lockdown with your experience of emerging out of your studies as we begin to move from our homes and our five-kilometre zones. You’re packing away your books closing up your folders, finishing classes and socialising once again, many of our cities poets, authors and thinkers have reflected on 2020 and a song called ‘When the machine starts up again‘ by Missy Higgins caught my attention. Unsurprisingly I was transported back to first year where we studied the machine metaphors of organisations. In this song, Missy alludes to the busyness, the pressure, the strain of pre-lockdown life and she sings:
When the machine starts up again will I be spinning all the plates? Will I be snapping at its wheels buying books on how to feel? When the machine starts up again and the speed is picking up, will I forget what it’s like to be standing here looking up, drinking in the sky, oh don’t let me forget, don’t let me forget when the machine starts up again.

I wonder graduates if this sentiment resonates with you? What will happen when your machine starts up again, when the hours that have been carved out in your calendars, as well as the mental load that has been expended on your studies, is no longer occupied in the same way that it has done for three, four or even five years?

Also please don’t let me forget tonight right now we are creating a memory that will contribute to your remembering. Tonight is a cairn moment. To celebrate the completion of my masters along with some other milestones, we packed up the kids, hooked on the camper trailer and spent 100 nights travelling a 20,000 kilometres, a half lap around Australia. I clearly remember my regular battle of study sessions during third year. Should I research academic literature or campgrounds in Kakadu beyond or Broome? Winnicott or whale watching? But during our adventure, we walked through riverbeds, along valleys, across cliffs and outback stations. So we came across a few cairns. For those non-walkers among us, a cairn is a pile of rocks that is rocks that are precariously piled on top of each other; the cairns aren’t carried long distances, they aren’t they are just gathered from the ground nearby, they aren’t labelled or signed or consistently sized or shaped, they aren’t drawn on maps and you usually don’t find them on Google. However, a cairn can be significant. It can even save lives. A cairn marks something, it acknowledges something. Sometimes those things are known, sometimes they’re not, except by the cairn builders. It may be a track, or a location of a site, or a recognition of a distance for work for walkers. The cairn is a good place to stop to get out the map or the water bottle or the snacks, to recover refresh and muster energy to continue to look back from where we’ve come and to celebrate and to look forward to where we’re going, and to anticipate sometimes walkers add a rock or a branch or a scratch. To the cairn it symbolises achievement and presence – I made it! I am here! Walkers also see other rocks and acknowledge that others often unknown to them have been and gone just as they will come and go. It’s a place also to wait for others to catch up, to be attentive to the people around you. A cairn is a good place for a yarn. This graduation like a cairn is not particularly spectacular, it is another zoom in a day, a week and a year of zooms, it’s a Tuesday night and again we’re all in our homes. I have a special hat and a shiny blue fabric on top but I do admit that I’m wearing trackies and ugg boots on the bottom. The mode cannot diminish the significance of what is actually taking place here tonight graduands you are stopping you are looking back you are celebrating, and you are looking forward with anticipation, you are regrouping showing care and attention to your student colleagues. You are also recognising some of the other rocks in this cairn, or tonight squares on the screen, who have come before you and who stand with you. If we met in person at this ceremony tonight I’d give you each a rock and so that you could take it home and put it on your desk as a symbol of tonight to remember your studies what you have learned, how you have changed, so that when the machine starts up again and the wheels start to spin you will remember. But perhaps it’s not really needed because I have a hunch that you won’t need to strain very hard to remember.

Address to the 2020 Graduands of the Master of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics)

Ms Susan Campbell
John F Newton Award for Academic Excellence recipient 2018,
NIODA Academic Board of Governance member, Alumni portfolio

8 December 2020

Address to the 2020 Graduands of the Master of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics)

Reference:

Moran, A., McAllister, J. (2020). Patyegarang: Australia’s First Teacher of Aboriginal Language, ABC News, Viewed 20 January 2021, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-11/patyegarang-and-how-she-preserved-the-gadigal-language/12022646.

ps Are you a leader or manager and would like to learn more this master which is not like some other ‘get and forget’ qualification? Have a look at the NIODA Master of Leadership and Management (Organisation Dynamics) course.