"The UPF-BSM will always be a reference and an inspiration for our future"

Good morning to the Rector, the General Director, all the authorities and the students, families, and colleagues on the courses and, in particular, on the Master's Degree in Professional Legal Practice, which is where you see us from today.

My name is Qianying-Núria Zhou, a recent graduate of the Master's Degree in Professional Legal Practice, and it is an honour for me to be able to speak on behalf of my colleagues at this graduation ceremony. I am still wondering if I have been chosen in order to check that I have managed to correct all the grammatical mistakes I made in our hours and hours of conversations while exchanging knowledge of our two great cultures.

I want to take this opportunity to congratulate all of you. We have all come through this complicated year together, with its anxieties and nerves, but it has also been a year full of positive emotions that have brought us to this day, such as the hope and enthusiasm of soon becoming great professionals.

We would like to thank all the staff of the School for offering us the best educational experience in a difficult and changing situation

The UPF Barcelona School of Management is a management school that belongs to one of the best universities both nationally and internationally, the Pompeu Fabra University.

Nine months ago we started the course in a very special way. Personally, instead of making my long train journey from the outskirts of Barcelona to the Balmes building, I took this time to download Zoom, learn how it worked, and connect to online classes with classmates on the master's degree virtually.

But in the few trips I did make by train, through the different landscapes, my mind also travelled, and I couldn't stop thinking about what I would like to do and what I could do in such a diverse world, apart from dedicating myself to the world of legal practice of which I wish to be a part. For now, though, I’m happy to join my alma mater and collaborate on the proposal from the Director General for the development of the China Initiative to build bridges and establish relations between the UPF-BSM and China.

This year, although distance has reduced human contact, the effort of teachers to interact with students, their desire to pass on knowledge, and the moments when we have been able to share our ideas with different magistrates, prosecutors, lawyers, and leading professors have made the course a unique and unforgettable part of our academic career. We would like to thank all the staff of the School for offering us the best educational experience in a difficult and changing situation.

During these nine months, we have been able to acquire professional knowledge for practising as future lawyers, but apart from this we have also gained a global vision, values, a critical sense, skills for leading projects, and the qualities needed to practise as good professionals, which have been passed on to us by the teachers and the School, and which are competitive advantages that we now have for facing future challenges.

The training the School gives in the spirit of cooperation and teamwork will be an important force for overcoming all the difficulties we will encounter.

Now it’s time for us to keep moving forward and our paths will part. I am here in front of future magistrates, prosecutors, social graduates, professors, law professionals in public administrations, and of course future lawyers.
 
We are called to an important mission that can be dizzying; to be Guardians of the Law so that Justice and truth triumph in the face of injustice.

The training the School gives in the spirit of cooperation and teamwork will be an important force for overcoming all the difficulties we will encounter.

And we will be entrusted with the most sensitive and delicate material that exists: the life, freedom, and heritage of people, and the other human and fundamental rights we have. This is not an easy task and so I would I encourage you to look back on our time in the UPF-BSM, whenever you have a moment of calm to reflect, as it will always be a reference and an inspiration for our future.

It is no coincidence that lawyers are known by the term "learned", a word that has its origin in the consideration of a lawyer as a connoisseur of knowledge, and which is synonymous with wise, expert, and educated in any branch or speciality of Law. As such, I encourage you to not allow our professional and personal circumstances to prevent us from undertaking what we must do for the rest of our lives; constantly study and train in order to adapt our knowledge to the social circumstances of each moment.
 
I wish you all many successes, personal and professional, with the conviction that throughout our career we will carry the mark that the UPF-BSM has left on us and which we can proudly show as our introductory letter.

Finally, I would like to congratulate all the graduates with whom I shared the course and now the graduation, and remind you that now that we join the world of work, we have the keys to success thanks to the UPF-BSM, our open minds, and the desire to learn and integrate ourselves in a world of great cultural diversity.

And most importantly, I want to give our most sincere thanks to some of the most important people in our lives: our parents and families, who are also with us remotely today for our graduation. Thank you for all the time you've spent listening to us and supporting us through good times and bad, and for caring as much as we do for our future. And remember, no matter how far we travel from home, we will always return. Thank you so much everyone.

And now we will hand over to Sharon Sun, Trade Policy Economist at the Canada West Foundation and UPF-BSM alumni.