Speech by Dr Michael P. Mortell,
President, University College, Cork
at the Conferring of Engineering Degrees
Wednesday, 22 July 1998 at 12.30 p.m.
 
Opportunity and Risk

One of the things that is clear, on this your day of graduation, is that the country and the world in general is at present offering great opportunity. What I would like to talk to you about today is how this opportunity must be grasped and how an element of risk should be introduced into your approach to life after UCC.

At present all of the economic and social indicators suggest that this is a time of great opportunity. The stock market is at record levels; the housing market is buoyant; a fragile peace exists in this country for the first time in many years; the jobs market, especially for quality graduates of the type that I see before me today, has never been better; starting salaries, particularly in engineering and information technology are at record levels. Opportunities abound.

Every newspaper that we pick up, every broadcast, is reporting some new opportunity being seized by Irish industry, much of it related to the information technology revolution, the combination of computing and telecommunications and is high on the list of all government educational initiatives.

Manufacturing industry is also booming. There are now 9,000 jobs in the Cork area in electronics industry alone, a number that would have been unthinkable even 5 or 10 years ago.

New "wonder drugs" are offering much speculation and a new repertoire of jokes; but more importantly new jobs. The pharmaceutical and food industries are providing opportunities on a daily basis.

There has probably never been a time when the opportunities for you, our new graduates has been greater.

When you leave us it is important that you make full use of your education as your embark on the training stage in your chosen profession. Find yourself a mentor, find the best person available and learn from them. University is only one step in the learning process on which you have embarked, you should ensure that you never stop expanding your learning from the firm base that we hope we have given you here at UCC.

Another piece of advice is that you must learn to take risks, to make maximum use of your opportunity. It was Francis Bacon who said:

"A wise man will make more opportunity

than he finds"

You must be prepared to make mistakes as part of the learning process or as Oscar Wilde put it.

"Experience is the name everyone gives

to their mistakes"

Don't grasp at security too early in your career, be prepared to move for better experience. To quote from the military field, Douglas Macarthur suggests that

"There is no security in this life

There is only opportunity"

Don't always follow the conventional route, it may well be the route to mediocrity: One last quotation, this time from the ever-quotable George Bernard Shaw:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying

to adapt the world to himself

Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man"

To conclude:

We hope that your education here at UCC has now given you the opportunity to go out into the world and to be unreasonable. The future of the Irish economy depends on it.