FIRST PERSON

“Not the Ending I Imagined”: Malala on Her Virtual Oxford Graduation

The Nobel Prize–winning Pakistani girls’ education advocate didn’t get to savor her final months at university, but so be it. Like so many of her generation, she knows she is inheriting a broken world—and believes in her power to change it.

By Malala Yousafzai

August 6, 2020

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By Antonio Olmos/eyevine/Redux.

In March, I packed up a few things from my room at Oxford University—books, shoes, clothes—enough for the three-week Easter break. Months later, I am still at home with my parents.

Throughout the spring, I took classes by Zoom and final exams in my bedroom. In June, I graduated in the backyard. I returned to Oxford for only two hours, to collect my remaining belongings and move out for the last time. The bushes and lawn were overgrown. The food-delivery drivers had vanished. Everywhere on campus was quiet.

Like other 2020 graduates, this was not the ending I imagined. At the start of the academic year, I told myself I would walk every street in Oxford, take pictures of every beautiful garden, drink tea in every café, and eat in every dining hall on campus, especially the Harry Potter one at Christ Church. This was my last chance to see, hear, touch, and taste it all—and I missed it.

This felt like such a loss because education is so much more than a reading list or a syllabus. For many of us, college is our first real experience with independence. We set our own schedules—even small decisions like what to eat or how to spend a Sunday are thrilling. In my early days at Oxford, a senior student told me that university life is sleeping, studying, and socializing—and you can only pick two. I found it hard to do even two, so study and sleep were mostly sacrificed.

I attended cricket matches and college balls. I joined the Pakistan Society and the Oxford Union. Far too often, my friends convinced me to abandon my studies and go to a debating society or a pub. I don’t drink, but being the only sober one in a group of students arguing over Brexit is its own fascination.

I watched Rick and Morty or The Big Bang Theory and left my assignments until the last possible minute, submitting many uncommendable essays. I stayed awake until 5 a.m. to see the sun rise over the gardens. I still haven’t mastered laundry.

I listened to inspiring lectures from some of the world’s greatest thinkers and leaders. But I learned as much or more from my peers. And I am still learning every day from young people.

Like me, they step out into a reeling world—a global pandemic, an economic recession, racism, inequality, and a most uncertain future. According to researchers at UCLA, the class of 2020 may not recover from professional and financial setbacks for 10 years.

Yet we have long understood that a lot of work will fall on our shoulders. We watched while those in power failed to protect refugees and religious minorities, stop attacks on schools, ensure justice for Black and brown people, or even acknowledge that climate change exists. We have grown up knowing that the world we inherit will be broken.

In many ways, we are more prepared for the current crisis because we’ve had a lot of practice fighting for change. I was 11 years old when I started advocating for girls’ education in Pakistan—and 15 when the Taliban tried to kill me for speaking out.

Courtesy of Malala Yousafzai.

Licypriya Kangujam was only seven when she challenged politicians in India for their failure to enact climate change laws. Eleven-year-old Naomi Wadler quieted a crowd of thousands at the 2018 March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., when she urged them to remember Black girls and women affected by gun violence. After her family fled Somalia’s civil war, Hamdia Ahmed spent the first seven years of her life in a refugee camp; by the time she was a teenager, she was campaigning for displaced people everywhere. And, of course, there’s my friend Greta Thunberg.

I could fill every page of this magazine with the names and stories of young people, especially girls, who have sparked movements, used technology to solve a problem in their communities, created art to show the world from their perspective, and so much more. A willingness to work hard for change and the courage to believe we can achieve our goals are defining qualities of my generation.

I did not get to say goodbye to my friends at Oxford. My classmates have gone home to 140 countries around the world. But I know I will see them and the global class of 2020 again. I will see them advocating for voting rights and strengthening our democracies. I’ll see them protecting our planet. I’ll see them fighting racism and injustice. And they’ll see me, every day for the rest of my life, working for education, equality, and women’s rights.

I’m often asked to give advice to children and I tell them, “You don’t have to wait to be an adult to be a leader.” Young people are leading, but our world has too many problems for one generation to solve. So today my advice is for our elders: It’s not too late for you to change.

Malala Yousafzai

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