50 years since graduating, a letter to myself ...
Reflecting on 50 years since graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from the University of Sydney, in 2021 I wrote this Letter to myself: (an 8 min read)
1968 - 2nd year undergraduate student
2021 - retired 12 years
March 1971. Graduation day in the Great Hall – you, so proud of your BScAgr awarded in front of your parents. But your naïve self has so little idea of what lies ahead of you in your personal and professional life and how it will be influenced profoundly by your four years of study at the University of Sydney. I thought I should write to you to give you some idea of your next 50 years!
You remember why you chose to study Ag Science – influenced by your poet/dairy farmer mentor, Roger McKnight, who yelled at you in 1966 to “trust your peasant guts”! And because you figured that food is so central to life that it just might be a long lasting, safe career to learn how food is produced? Well, in 50 years from now, in 2021, you will come to realise that humans still don’t know how to feed themselves ‘sustainably’! In fact, they continue along a path of increasing complacency about the supply and safety of food despite many warnings from those who know.
The most important things you have learned are not necessarily what you now think might be most important to you. The thing is: you can’t know what is ahead of you! So, with the benefit of 50 years of hindsight, let me tell you it was vital that your curriculum covered such a wide assortment of compulsory subjects.
As you sat struggling with those ‘steam-powered’ mechanical calculators in statistics pracs, you cannot imagine how important statistics will be in your future career! Things you will get to know include most probable number methods of enumerating rhizobia! And later, the wonders of Generalised Linear and Additive Modelling.
The big focus on chemistry subjects will prove to be important for you in understanding so many factors that govern agriculture. It will allow you to appreciate Adam Spencer when he suggests, in 2020, that the Periodic Table is the most creative thing achieved by anyone in the world! You will agree wholeheartedly.
Agriculture will become something of a dirty word over the next 50 years – undeservedly so. And it will need every passionate agricultural scientist to push for science-based continuous progress with our food production system over the horizon, for as long as mankind needs to eat.
Your practical experiences will prove to be invaluable and, in two cases, lead to life-long friendships and mentoring, including from that poet cum dairy farmer!
Remember your morning coffee sessions with friends in the Union, when you often reflected on those just-finished lectures asking, in unison: “what did that mean to the farmer”? This will echo throughout your career – leading you to focus on a farming systems study led by a farmer group over a period of 10 years – perhaps this publication, involving some 48 co-authors, will be your most fulfilling professional achievement?
Remember how you didn’t really value your soil science studies? In spite of your lack of motivation, some of your lecturers were just so knowledgeable about soils and soil physics in particular. In years to come, you will regret that you did not sufficiently appreciate the expertise of staff such as Prof. Neville Collis-George.
Microbiology? You struggled to be motivated. What do I need that for? Well, let me tell you it will be of vital interest to you - especially over the first 10 years of your career – in both dairy technology and in agronomic aspects of symbiosis.
Appreciating the skill of Prof Frank Crofts as he ‘kicked the dirt’ and explained soil and pasture limitations of livestock farming proved to be some of the most valuable lessons for you to aspire to. Later, you will try to emulate some of these skills in your own teaching efforts at another university.
As you listened to lecturers with experience overseas, like Dr Owen Carter explaining the intricacies of soybean agronomy, you did not realise that you will move to the USA for 5 years and conduct research in the corn/soybean belt (and marry, with 2 of your 3 children born there)! It will surprise you that you will carry out collaborative research in China and travel to many other countries over your career.
Learning to take copious notes and accumulating skills in the library will be of benefit to you over all your professional life.
It turns out that you were right to question Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War and to be critical of the then Minister for Defence, Malcolm Fraser, especially for overseeing a corrupt lottery system for the conscription of young men your age – as found by a University of Sydney student union survey. You will marvel how Vietnam will become a valued travel destination for Australians in the decades ahead.
You liked learning about agricultural extension from Parry Brown. Would you believe that the State Government will change the name of the Department of Agriculture about 10 times during your career? And then, can you imagine that same government will eliminate the Extension half of the Department of Primary Industries? Incredible!
Of course, you never got to use a computer in your studies – but can you guess just how important they will be to everything you will do in your career? Where will your slide rule be in 50 years’ time? (a memento only - on a shelf in your home office!)
Remember the regular fortnightly cheques you got from your Teachers College scholarship and the low fees you paid? Can you imagine that future undergraduates like you will accumulate a huge personal debt to the government under a Higher Education Contribution Scheme? What a nonsense to burden young people in this way! In time, this will lead Australian universities to become focused principally on $$, to the detriment of higher education.
During your undergraduate studies, you believed that postgraduate study would not be for you – you wanted to get a job that paid well and get on with your life! Little did you know that you will discover that postgraduate study will open doors that you don’t yet know are there! And making that decision to undertake further study will be profoundly influenced by your most valued university mentor, Prof Frank Crofts. Some of his own postgraduates - such as Prof Graeme Blair and Dr Alan Andrews - will later mentor you along the continuous chain of the transfer of agricultural knowledge.
Another Federal government decision will profoundly change Australian universities as you experience them over the decades of your career. In 1992, the Minister of Education, John Dawkins, will launch a unified system of education merging all higher education institutions into a single system which you will experience as a disastrous change.
The number of people who will profoundly influence your career with a background from the University of Sydney will astound you. Getting to know your lecturers will prove to be of untold importance to you in the future as your career unfolds.
In 50 years, you will reflect with wonder on the many positive influences this University has had on your fortunate life!
Postscript
In March, 2022, about half of our 1971 graduating cohort, many with partners/spouses, got together for a 2-day reunion which got lots of us talking about the last 50 years. We needed these name tags to recognise each other!
