Congratulations class of 2024. That was all I needed to hear when I stood in your shoes almost 40 years ago. 40 years - it may sound like a cliché – but I promise you they will go by in a blink. And here we are, me close to the end of my working life and you at the start of yours. More and more I wonder what would I tell my young self if he was standing before me now? How can I summarise 40 years of insights in just 10 minutes for your benefit?

First of ten tips: The world doesn’t care about your self-esteem – it’s all on you.

I left university in 1985, joining Mrs Thatcher’s great unemployed with my pharmacology tutor’s words ringing in my ears – “Hardman, you will never be a scientist.” And yet, I knew that I was the best practical scientist in my year – he didn’t know of care that I struggled with writing. But here’s a home truth, if you found your teachers unsupportive of your dreams, just wait until you have a boss. I wrote over 200 job application letters – by hand, with a pen (no home computers or Google to look for exciting job opportunities). My letters generated over 180 outright rejections, 20 poor interviews (please come and talk to me about the benefits of soft skills over academic achievement) and eventually, one job offer – a lab technician with the potential, if I showed ‘the right stuff,’ to study for a PhD. I was on my way as the lowest lifeform in the laboratory. My first job involved washing out urine bottles. Yes, we had recycling in the 1980s. In fact, the first job was being taught how to wash out urine bottles – and facing my bosses’ disappointment at my inability to do it correctly. Nevertheless, my dream had been to work in the medical sciences, and however humble, being in the lab made the daily smell of stale urine a little more acceptable.

2: Believe you can make a difference

Success is built on achieving small incremental victories. Careers have inertia, at first you feel like you are making no progress. It took over 6 years to get my first publication… but it was in the BMJ – so never give up. Use your time well and be prepared, in the working world you don’t get summer off and the boss (that’s me) expects you in bright and early and performing your best every morning.

3: Moderate your aspirations

Adopt an attitude of passionate dedication to the pursuit of short-term goals. Be micro-ambitious. Put your head down and work hard on whatever is in front of you. It’s a great way to invest in your future, you never know where you might end up. Define yourself by those parts of the job you love doing. For me, the subject of a PhD surfaced (eventually) after my supervisor literally threw a paper at me and said, “look into it.” That opportunity didn’t arise because he suddenly recognised that I was now ‘made of the right stuff.’ I worked with him for 10+ years and I am sure he didn’t give a hoot about my goals. Respect is earned and he asked me because he had a problem and knew I would make things happen.

4: Don’t be the person with all the reasons NOT to do things.

Give opportunity the opportunity to come knocking. Volunteer, step up, give things a try. For certain, the next worthy pursuit will appear out of the corner of your eye. Which is why you should be careful of only concentrating on long-term dreams. If you focus too far in front of you, you won’t see the shiny thing in the periphery. I still didn’t realise what I wanted to be until I was 35. But when the opportunity arose to start my own company, I finally realised what I really wanted to be was in charge.

5: Thinking is your superpower

Today is not the end of your learning. Life itself is an apprenticeship and you are just starting out. Continue to feed your intelligence and give it regular exercise, it really could save your life.

In 2013, I was lying in A&E on a hospital trolly bleeding to death. I instinctively knew I had seconds to live – don’t ask me how – you will know when your time comes. I could see that the doctors and nurses around me were overwhelmed with other cases, and I couldn’t get their attention. In that moment I knew that the only way to get noticed was to roll off the trolly. It took every last bit of strength; I was dead before I hit the floor – but I am here today thanks to quick-thinking – not just mine but the doctor who pumped 20 pints of blood into me while he was looking for the leak.

But enough about me…

6: (and you should own this) The future is not about my generation, it’s about yours.

And the future is coming and my advice to you is to prepare. You stand on the precipice of unprecedented change in the field of medicine which (incidentally) has moved little beyond administering ground up plants for the last five millennia. The US Food and Drug Administration predicts that in the next 5 years over 80% of new drug applications will be biological or gene-based therapies, possibly cures, add to this the insights being provided by artificial intelligence across the biomedical landscape, and we can predict that the process of drug development and the practice of medicine is facing a paradigm shift. It’s an exciting time to be entering the field of biomedical science and the future is calling.

7: Curate your ongoing curriculum

The hardware and most of the software that makes up your central nervous system is running on 160-thousand-year-old technology. Be careful of the programmes you run on it, not all data is good for your brain. If you want to keep your thoughts free from obesity and infection, you need to learn how to filter out the crap. Your lecturers have schooled you in the scientific discipline – it is the incremental acquisition of understanding through observation – use it, religiously. We live in the age of information and create an obscene amounts of brain junk food. Every 60 seconds we write 230 million emails, share 66 thousand pictures on ‘insta’ and Youtubers load 500 hours of new videos – I am far too old to understand what the hell happens on tik-tok. But 90% of the world's data was created in the last 2 years. The scale of the scientific literature itself is beyond comprehension with over 50 million articles online and another 2.5 million added each year. But you are not here to worship what is known but to question it. Be intellectually rigorous in accounting for your biases, your prejudices and your privilege. Remember, the most powerful word in the English language is “why”.

8: Celebrate your mistakes

You will fail and there will be bad luck. Society is obsessed with perfection, with succeeding, never failing or making mistakes and so we stigmatise our failures. I am extremely embarrassed by many of my own stinkers. For example. the Editor of Clinical Science once wrote to me saying that he would accept a manuscript I had submitted detailing 2 years of hard work if I replaced the word ‘hotchpotch’ with a word or phrase that his readers would understand. I wrote back explaining that the word appeared in both English and American dictionaries. He rejected the work outright. Our lesson here – nobody likes a smartass. Where possible it is better to own and learn from your mistakes than to deny and let them own you. Listen when people point out your errors and attempt, as far as you can, to take your limitations into account. Don’t be discouraged by failure. Certainly not by one that results from well-designed and well-intentioned experimentation. Take every opportunity to be creative and bold. Don’t worry about what others are doing or saying, whatever it is, it will be focused on the challenges and fears they are facing with their own journey.

9: Be human

You won’t find your future in your phone. Spend time with people not with electronics. Take pictures but remember that your life is for living not for recording. It is nice to have something to look back on as you get older, but it is unlikely that you will have time to review all those movies of people, long forgotten, taking selfies. Being a good human takes practice. Politeness, humility, gratitude and generosity are behaviours that machines can already mimic better than most of you. Be open and honest about how you feel and enjoy the fresh air this brings to interactions with friends and colleagues. Learn to perceive and appreciate this in others.

• Read poetry, if you can find its voice it will help you engage with the human condition. Write poetry and you will find a 100,000 word PhD thesis is child’s play compared to writing a 100 word poem about someone you have lost.
• Be kind.
• Try not to put yourself first, but don’t ever expect anyone else to do that for you.
• Seek out love and treat it with respect when you find it. It is a finite resource that you cannot measure or qualify. Prepare to have your heart broken – it hurts – but never fear falling in love, it’s worth the ride.
• Wherever possible, give more than you take and never spend more than you earn.

Research confirms that gratitude, generosity, forgiveness, learning and exercise all lead to longer, happier and more fulfilled lives – P less than 0.001. No arguing with that. In contrast, smartphone use is a growing cause of embarrassing insta posts and in extreme cases premature accidental death.

10: When (and only when) you have served your apprenticeship, learned from your mistakes, discovered the universes’ great truths (or whatever small part of it you have specialised in) you must share it freely. Be a teacher, share what you have learned with others – knowledge is not a commodity. The common thread that connects your progress from lowly apprentice to journeyman and eventually master of your craft will be the lessons other people have taught you – and you only truly become a master when you take on an apprentice of your own. The Niche team and I have found nothing more rewarding in the last 25 years than hosting students from St George’s and other institutions at our company, in some way we hope influencing the minds of the future. And my times up and I really don’t want to go.

One last thing. What I am saying will mean little to you now. But please revisit my words again sometime before you are 35 and know that (wherever we all are) I am filled with pride and honoured to have stood beside you today. Good luck and be awesome.