To the Class of 2026 – Speech by Acting Principal Helene Vejbjerg Lindemann

Spoken by Helene Vejbjerg Lindemann

How absolutely wonderful you look, sitting here together as a group in your graduation caps. It is beautiful and moving every single year, but of course you are something special, and I am incredibly happy and proud to have the opportunity to speak to exactly you today.

This entire great hall is filled with people who all have a graduate, or perhaps two, whom they are bursting with pride over. I – just like my BG colleagues – have 392 graduates whom I am so proud of, now sitting here having completed their time at BG.

Together, we are writing ourselves into BG’s history: You are the largest year group we have ever graduated; we have a graduate who is only 17 years old; and for the first time in BG’s almost 160-year history, a woman has been allowed to give this speech to the graduates of the year. Surely that will be all right too.

The graduates of the year – who have you actually been during your time at BG? You came to us in August about two or three years ago – nervous, awestruck, but also full of will and desire to throw yourselves into upper-secondary school life. And now you sit here, relieved and perhaps a little tired, but still full of will and desire to throw yourselves into the part of life that comes after BG.

• In the meantime, you have handed in countless assignments, read your way through thousands of pages, and taken a long series of tests and exams. I imagine some of you have been pretty “cooked” along the way.

• You made The Greatest Show.

• You helped revive BG’s tradition of going on an introductory trip to Berlin.

• You took part in the Danish Red Cross national collection and covered so many routes that we became Red Cross Upper-Secondary School of the Year. We did not win the draw for the concert with Mumle, but then you have simply held some other absolutely fantastic parties. Never have we had so many participants at the AOC parties as in the past two school years, and this year’s Kaffebal was impressive as well.

• You held yet another impressive BigMUN.

• You have helped build up a strong corps of student ambassadors.

• You have participated in and won competitions of both a sporting and other academic nature,

• and after the last day of school, you left the school as neat and tidy as ever – so a note to you parents: they can actually do that whole tidying-up thing.

• And then, more than anyone, you have had a school life with AI.

Together with us, you have had to navigate an educational world in which AI has significantly changed the conditions, while the framework within which we operate has not changed.

AI can, of course, be used well for many things and is quickly becoming an imperceptible part of everyday life – also for you.

What can worry someone like me is when AI becomes the easy solution. When AI is used so that one can get around the assignments as easily as possible, when the focus is far too much on being able to submit a product rather than on having gained something from the process towards being able to submit that product.

It worries me when the use of AI is about getting through things easily and quickly and moving on without having to do very much oneself. When it is about saving time instead of investing time. For what is life if it is mostly about moving on easily and quickly? To what? To live life is to be present. As human beings, we have the ability to linger and to immerse ourselves. It is typically here that we experience the greater realizations and insights that actually matter.

I hope that when we at BG have asked you to put away your phones and close your computers, you have also experienced that there is something valuable in being present in the moment, being present simply as yourselves and with others, and with what each of you has to contribute. That it becomes much more interesting and relevant when it is your own voice you use, and when it is others’ authentic voices you hear. So, dear graduates – be present – “Log in”.

We do believe that you can do things yourselves, that all of you have much to contribute. So if any of you have the feeling that “the bot” can do it much better than you can, that is not true. It can probably do it faster, but you are the originals; you are the real thing. It is your voices the world needs to hear. It is you who must meet the world.

Meet the world … The German sociologist Hartmut Rosa has a concept: resonance. Resonance is when an encounter with something or someone in the world touches us, so that we are moved and affected. When something speaks to us in such a way that we simply have to take a little more interest in that particular corner of the world. When we are struck in a way that means we are no longer quite the same, and our experience of the world is no longer quite the same either. Perhaps it is a particularly beautiful view that gives us goosebumps, perhaps it is a very special atmosphere in a very special piece of music that brings tears to our eyes, or perhaps it is a smile and an encounter with another person that makes our pulse quicken.

And the point is – according to Rosa – that we cannot control when it happens; we cannot control it. We can buy a plane ticket and climb a mountain, but perhaps the view does not strike us as we expected. We can stand in the middle of the pit at a concert with our favourite band and our friends, but we cannot be sure that the experience will sweep us off our feet. And perhaps one day we meet another human being under completely unexpected circumstances, someone who will forever change us and our view of the world.

And there is even the fact that when it actually does happen, when we are struck by a view, we cannot store it and hold on to it. We try by taking a picture, but it is not the same. We make a playlist from the concert, but we cannot recreate the feeling.

It is uncontrollable, Rosa says. We cannot force resonance, and we cannot hold on to it, but it changes us and our relationship with the world when we are struck by it, if we are open to being struck.

I hope – dear graduates – that your time at BG has prepared you for the world. That you feel like throwing yourselves into it, acting, doing, and leaving your mark. I hope that you have gained something that the world can touch, so that resonance can arise. I hope you will have many uncontrollable moments in your encounter with the new and unknown. For this is where we are struck by something that makes the world and life greater.

Dear graduates – I wish you every possible good fortune and happiness on your onward journey.

And with this, I graduate BG’s Class of 2026.