“It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of going into teaching?” ― TERRY PRATCHETT, Mort

I love Terry Pratchett books: they are absolutely insane and it takes a special kind of mind to think in such a bizarre manner and then to be able to express those thoughts for others to read. Terry Pratchett's death last year saddened me because the world has lost such a tremendous sense of humour. 

Let me explain: I am one of those irreverent people who believes that having a sense of humour is the most important quality a person can have. In my world there are no holy cows and I actively look for humour in any situation in which I find myself. Yes, this has created all sorts of problems for me, and I confess that sometimes the humour is based on cynicism and an acute awareness of the irony of human existence: sometimes the laughter is hollow, and often it is directed at me and how ridiculous I may appear but you know what, at the end of the day, I still laugh. 

As a teacher of adolescent boys I find a sense of humour to be essential: I have seen colleagues over the years creating dramatic productions over incidents so trivial they could have been dismissed with a well-timed joke or a laugh. Students soon understand they can undermine a teacher by saying the most outrageous things in the knowledge that they will be taken seriously. Over the years I have established relationships with my students through my ability to laugh with them - whether that laughter is directed at me or at a situation is immaterial - we laugh together.

And so when I saw the YouTube video of comedian Tim Minchin delivering a graduation speech at UWA (University of Western Australia - his alma mater) I knew I had to include it somewhere in this blog. I have shown it to all my senior classes and the boys loved it - and have learnt some important life lessons from it. Because of course that is the awesome by-product of humour - the lessons we learn whilst seemingly not doing so. It is those lessons we remember, and it is the relationships we forge through shared humour that tend to endure.

So I hope you enjoy Tim Minchin's nine bits of advice to those university graduates and that they resonate with you as they did with me. The speech is extremely funny and very profound.