Jul
11
My son graduated from Napier Unversity yesterday. Along with his sister’s graduation a couple of years ago this was one of the greatest days of my life. I had a huge lump in my throat and my heart was swelled with pride. Every graduate had worked hard to get there. The speakers reinforced the messages that they should celebrate success that day, be proud of their achievement and to go out into the world now and show what they can do!
As is often the case the University also conferred honorary degrees. Yesterday one of the recipients was the actor Brian Cox.
Speaking to the assembled graduates Brian told his story. Growing up in Dundee he lost his father when he was very young and his mother did not keep good health. He was judged to be “educationally subnormal” when he was 11. Despite this he said that he felt it was his responsibility to learn. He was very close to his aunt who took him to the cinema and he decided he wanted to be an actor. With hard work and determination of course he has achieved huge success in both the theatre and in movies - most recently in the Bourne movies.
Imagine labelling a child like this? We live in different times and I hope that his sort of judgement is never passed down now.
But there are people out there who were written off at school and proudly tell how they overcame that. I met a guy a couple of years ago who was making a presentation to a group of business people. It was an interactive session and we became aware that what he was writing on the flip chart was nonsense - to the audience anyway. He deliberately left it a few moments before sharing that he was dyslexic. He had been told he would not amount to anything - and he had shown through the success of his business that that prediction was wrong. And he used his “disability” very powerfully to reinforce the message.
As a final note I really loved this quote - what do mothers know anyway!
Brian said ”My mother would be so proud if she was still with us. As she often used to say: Och, Brian’s a nice laddie, but no’ awfy bright.’”
