Eric Sidoti, Director, Whitlam Institute within the University of Western Sydney

Eric Sidoti and Quentin Bryce

Eric Sidoi with fellow Occasional Address guest speaker Her Excellency Ms Quentin Bryce, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia

 

Eric Sidoti is the Director of the Whitlam Institute within the University of Western Sydney, and is also Provost of the Parramatta Campus. Eric commenced with the Whitlam Institute in mid 2007.

He has been actively engaged in public policy development, strategic planning and communications throughout his career. For over a decade, prior to his appointment at the Whitlam Institute, Eric managed Strategic Options, his own small consultancy.

This enabled him to develop long-term relationships with a small number of clients, principally the Dusseldorp Skills Forum and the Australian Red Cross, in addition to the Enterprise and Careers Education Foundation, Greening Australia and Job Futures.

He has been engaged in projects across a broad range of policy fields, such as education, training and employment; human rights; development; Indigenous land rights and education; humanitarian law and conflict; and welfare issues.

His previous roles include Executive Director of the Human Rights Council of Australia from 1992 until 1995; Communications Director of Amnesty International Australia from 1987 until 1992; and National Secretary of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace from 1985 until1987.

 

Eric Sidoti's Occasional Address speech:

Pro Chancellor, Ms Gillian Shadwick, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Professor Andrew Cheetham, my UWS colleagues, special guests, ladies and gentlemen – and most importantly graduands.

For each of us our lives are mapped by particular events, experiences and special occasions. Today is one such day. It is a milestone: the moment at which your journey to this point becomes distinct from the journey that lies ahead.

Today is a day of celebration: a time to rejoice in your very real achievement in qualifying for the award you are formally being accorded. While it is primarily your achievement, I’ve no doubt for many - if not all - it is an achievement shared with those family, friends, teachers and others who have supported you and indeed are here with us today.

That said, it is your achievement and you should be proud of it. Your studies here have demanded that you master a body of knowledge and skills, that you learn the discipline that scholarship requires and the capacity to organise not just your thoughts but your life accordingly. Your studies have demanded that you not just acquire knowledge but demonstrate your ability to apply it.

Today is a day for remembering. I suspect your first day of university seems a lifetime ago and I would wager that this is as much the case for your families – parents, partners and no doubt for some for your children as well.

Today is also a day for a little dreaming. Where to from here?

This University of Western Sydney, your university, is a young, dynamic university but it is worth recalling that we are the heirs of age-old traditions; even in the rituals associated with the recognition of scholarship and learning. Ours is a young university whose roots are deeply embedded in the soils of this country: the country of the Darug and Dharawal peoples, we are custodians of the earliest vestiges of European settlement (including the Female Orphan School on this campus founded in 1813); and our roots are literally in the soils of this land as our Hawkesbury campus was established as an agricultural college as far back as 1891.

The best traditions though are those that evolve. Those that are open to new influences. Those which recognise that to remain alive and healthy demands that they adapt and continually enrich themselves.

So I would remind you that you are graduating from a young university but are part of a history that stretches back to the earliest days of human civilisation and of European settlement in this land. The past in never just the past. It lives and your stories are now interwoven with the history of this place.

There is an expectation, I am told, that the person delivering the graduation address should offer some words of advice. I confess that I’m hesitant to do so. Goodness knows my own children seem entirely immune to any I may have dared to offer in the past.

So rather than advice I might simply make three observations from my own experience which I will leave for your consideration.

The first is that one of the great benefits of education is that it gives you options. This can be both a blessing and a curse; for having options means you’ll need to make decisions and it is not always easy to discern which path to take.

I, like you, happen to have a teaching degree. On completing my degree I did teach English in factories and community centres for a short while but that was as close as I ever got to being a classroom teacher; I am though surrounded by friends and family members who have devoted their working lives to education.

Teaching is a genuinely noble and vitally important profession and our need for talented, dedicated teachers has rarely been greater. For many it is a fulfilling and rewarding life.

For others, an education degree -or perhaps early years in the profession- prove a stepping stone to other paths: qualified teachers can be found in media, politics, the arts, in academia, and indeed on many a sporting field and in quite a few board rooms.

My second observation is that it is important to be aware that a job and a vocation are not the same thing.

At the most basic level a job is employment: a position with remuneration attached. A job is the means to both the necessities of life and a desired quality of life. There’s nothing wrong with having a job; quite the opposite. A job can be a source of dignity and identity as well as financial security. A job can be a source of pride and rightly so.

A vocation, on the other hand, is generally described as a calling. It’s often struck me that a vocation might more properly be understood as that thing in your gut which just won’t let you go, that pulls you in a particular direction almost - but not quite - despite yourself. I can give you any number of examples among those I know which are probably quite familiar stories:

  • the young woman who gets an ATAR of 99.85, whizzes through a university degree and turns down various offers to take a job in bars and cafes to finance her second album;
  • the successful banker who dabbles in ‘causes’ before setting aside the business career to enter politics;
  • the lawyer who leaves one of the top-ten firms to take a position in a human rights organisation.

But these stories disguise the truth; for they are all about changing course.

Many more approach their job as a vocation from day one and they tend to stand out from the pack. We’ve all come across them: that special teacher; the family GP who is always there when you need them; the nurse who tends the spirit not just the body; the tradie who employs apprentices as much out of a desire to pass on his skills as to build his business; the corporate leader whose passion and satisfaction lies in the company she’s built and the people in it as it does in the annual returns. Even then, this list doesn’t begin to properly acknowledge those parents, carers and volunteers whose vocation is a full-time occupation without remuneration.

For most of us, we will experience both job and vocation, at different times in our working lives.

My third observation flows from all that I’ve traversed over these few minutes. For perhaps the greatest skill of all is the ability to maintain a sense of balance: between tradition and the new world; between what you know and what you may be yet to learn; between financing your lifestyle and feeding the soul; between your work-life and your home-life.

I suggested at the beginning that today is a day for celebration and in that spirit I congratulate you on your achievements and I acknowledge your family and friends for their support.

I suggested that today is a day for remembering and I hope that your memories remain with you as a source of pride, comfort and strength.

Finally I also suggested that today is a day for a little dreaming. Whatever may lie ahead, you will be leaving here today with options and there will be choices to be made. I could say choose wisely but more than anything else I would simply say to you that the world awaits you and it is a changing, exciting world, ripe with possibility, so do please make the most of it.

And again, on behalf of all gathered here, congratulations.

 

Return to New beginnings for UWS spring graduates

Photos: Sally Tsoutas