'Go out there and live an epic life'

My commencement address to UTS graduates

It was an unexpected honour earlier this year to be awarded an Honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Technology, Sydney “in recognition of (my) significant contributions to our knowledge of, and finding solutions to, gendered violence in Australia.”

UTS asked me to also deliver the commencement address for their graduates. I tore my hair out for days, agonising over how to avoid sounding like some kind of pompous motivational speaker. In the end, I decided to demonstrate that for some people, so much of what looks like ‘success’ is not created by some magic formula, but is instead the result of skidding chaotically (with a lot of determination) from one job or place to another.

You can watch it here: UTS Graduation Ceremony – Jess Hill oration

Or read below:

“I just want to get a look at you.

It's been absolutely gorgeous seeing you walk across the stage. I just feel so chuffed and thrilled to be here with you on this incredible day for all of you. I acknowledge the Gadigal people and pay my respects to their elders, past and present, on this land that was never ceded, and extend that respect to all First Nations people here in the room today.

I also acknowledge the Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor, members of council staff, distinguished guests, and especially the graduates and your proud families and friends who have been heckling you all incredibly today, in ways that are totally supportive and very welcome.

I'm really thrilled to receive this Honorary Doctorate from this incredible university. My work was done in collaboration with so many other people, but especially my partner David Hollier, who has in many ways been sort of like the university teacher I never had, but not in a gross way, because he's also my husband, so just… you know.

It's also a real thrill to see you receive your degrees, and my hands are now sore from clapping all of you. As a writer, I am vomitously familiar with stressful deadlines and that constant sense that you should be doing more.

But here you all are. The deadlines can just be put in the rear vision mirror for a while, and for the rest of your lives you have this proof of your commitment and your self-belief and your knowledge. And has there actually ever been a moment in history when we've been more in need of people who can think, reason, and argue towards the truth?

For all the sacrifices that you've made to get here. The elaborate and persuasive excuses you've had to devise to get extensions. To your families and friends and all UTS staff who believed in you. Absolute kudos to all of you.

I also want to address those of you who don't have the privilege of a supportive family. Who have experienced coercive control or other forms of abuse: racism, bullying, sexual violence. Solidarity and enormous respect to all of you and what you had to overcome just to be here today. That same solidarity and respect goes to all of those supporting relatives here who have had to use every ounce of love and willpower to be a cycle breaker for your kids. We talk a lot about what governments can do, and we know that governments can do a lot more. But honestly, that is the stuff of nation building.

When I was graduating Barrenjoey High School, on Sydney's northern beaches, I thought of university students as supremely intelligent and disciplined beings from another realm that were way beyond me. Don't get me wrong - I definitely loved learning. But I just could not work to the syllabus. I actually used to regularly wag school - not to go to the beach or pull bongs, but just to do my own learning. Probably some missed opportunities there, but anyway...

Luckily my Nonna, who was a long-time activist for the rights of authors and who lived in the granny flat that my dad built behind our house, didn't seem to mind me hanging out with her when I was truanting. I had the same unwavering support from my mum and my dad, too, who always supported me to live unconventionally and challenged the status quo. And dad is still living his own unconventional life and has just started his PhD at age 70 (applause!). Also, it was the 90s and it was Avalon and it was all pretty loose.

So on this momentous day for all of you, I want to talk about and really celebrate the messy and random paths that we take to figure out who we are and what kind of mark we want to leave on this world.

My own trajectory has been acutely messy and random, if you weren't already getting that idea. In fact, back in 2016, when I was being interviewed for an environment reporter job at the Guardian, the editor at the time held my resumé, clocked me in the eye, looking slightly aghast, and said, 'this is not a CV. This is a saga!' I have to say, her assessment was not entirely unfair, and to be honest, I have dined out on it ever since.

I graduated high school in a rush. I felt like I didn't have time to go to uni, and I was determined to start an intelligent alternative to women's magazines, which to my mind in the 90s was like Cosmopolitan meets Time magazine. And by 18, I had a publisher, I had a corner office, I had staff, there was a launch date. But then things did not work out. Those words are doing some really heavy lifting that we're not going to go into right now. I felt thwarted and devastated and quite broke, and I crashed down to earth in an entry level job at an ad agency. On my first day, I moved boxes of magazines from one room to another. So that is an unfortunate truth. Some of those of you who are about to go into the workforce - many of you, this is not your first rodeo - but no amount of talent or ambition will protect you from tedious tasks that are way below your standing.

Now desperate to get into writing, I blew up that job after a couple of years. And literally after weeks of hitting refresh on Seek.com every 3 minutes, I landed a job writing paid travel advertorials. Apparently my edge was that I was the first person to apply for the job.

So it is disturbing how much of our lives are actually decided by synchronicity and luck. Anyway, I worked my way into becoming an actual travel writer and at age 23, was being sent to Paris to review the finest hotels that humankind has to offer. But by 25, I was getting soggy on perks and I wanted to become a real journalist. And I wonder how many of you have had that dream job in mind, but absolutely no idea of how to land it. I mean, having a degree is a very good start I can say, as somebody who does not. But I knew that nobody would hire me as a journalist. So, like so many of us (Gen Ys), Millennials and Zoomers have to do, I decided to just make my own job.

It was 2007 and running in the upcoming American election was this promising young senator Barack Obama. So I thought, why not just make myself into a foreign correspondent? If someone could pay me 100 bucks a column, I could at least claim the trip as a tax deduction. David managed to get New Matilda to commission us, and four months later, we were standing in Grant Park in Chicago as Obama delivered his acceptance speech. Totally incredible. Life-changing, unforgettable; and ultimately completely impoverishing. And I don't think I actually quite understood how tax deductions work - that you don't just get all the money that you spent back from the tax department. Just a pro tip there for you.

Back in Sydney and unemployed, I leapt at this transcribing job in the ABC's radio current affairs department with 4:30 am starts, and I really can't stress enough how important it is to just take whatever chance lands there in front of you, even if it might feel like a backward step. And my plan had kind of worked because it was those published stories (from America) that ended up landing me that job.

I absorbed every bit of expertise I could from mentors like Mark Colvin and Edmond Roy, worked my ass off and was preparing to become a total lifer at the ABC until I got a phone call from the legendary former Russian correspondent Monica Attard, who is seated next to my husband, David, in the front row. Did I like my job at the ABC? she asked me late on a Saturday night. Yes, I did. Would I leave it immediately and move to the Middle East and become a correspondent for her new publishing company? Yes, I will. Yes, I will do that.

Now I'm aware that mine is a particular approach, and there's probably many of you in the audience who are like you, 'eww', and many parents, perhaps, who would hope for a steadier career and life path. But I say all of this - and make this a very self-referential address - basically, to boil down to this. Trust your own instincts, and don't be alarmed if life turns out a bit messy. Leaving a rare permanent job at the ABC was, to use an Arabic term, haram, which means forbidden. But it was worth it.

Then a year into that job, I had a seizure on a plane from Yemen to Beirut. Found out I had a brain tumour, got operated on in Lebanon, and had to come home and have been living with brain cancer ever since.

Now that's a lot to just drop in at the end of this address. And it sounds pretty hardcore, and it was and remains to be.

But not once did I wonder, 'why me? This is just so unfair,' because some of the brightest people that I've ever met had to flee the war in Syria and were living with next to nothing in Lebanon. So why them? The world actually is not fair. So why not me?

So maybe that Guardian Editor was actually right. It is a saga, but I like to think like a cool, Viking kind of saga. Life is messy and the world is unpredictable. So just try not to stress when things don't go according to plan.

And lastly, because I'm totally over time already and I cannot write to a word limit, let alone work to a syllabus. I would just say that the only advice I can give you, as a 41 year old who's actually not that much older than quite a few of you: find the older people who are experts at the thing that you most want to do, become useful to them, treat them with the utmost respect and learn everything that you can from them. Do more than what's expected of you and show like literally sick levels of initiative.

You all have a saga inside of you. Go out there and live like a Viking. Except for the killing and the pillaging. Have an epic life. Thank you.”