Commencement Address by J.K.

Rowling “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the

Importance of Imagination”
I. Explain the following in English:
Graduate: to successfully complete a course of study, typically at a university, and
receive a degree or diploma.
Inadvertently: unintentionally or without meaning to; accidentally.
Wrack one’s mind and heart for: to struggle or exert great effort mentally and
emotionally in an attempt to find or understand something.
To extol (formal): to praise or speak highly in a formal manner.
Impoverished backgrounds: backgrounds characterized by poverty or lack of
resources.
Quixotic (ideas, thoughts): idealistic or impractical in a way that is often unrealistic
or not likely to succeed.
Cartoon anvil: a heavy iron or metal object often symbolizing misfortune or an
impending disaster, commonly used for comedic effect in cartoons.
Please bear with me: kindly ask for patience or understanding from others.
Ennobling experience: an experience that elevates or uplifts a person, often morally
or spiritually.
It means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships: it refers to enduring numerous
small and demeaning experiences or difficulties.
To be truly above the price of rubies: to possess exceptional worth or value,
surpassing even the highest standards.
Revelatory: revealing or providing insight or understanding about something.
Proceed/precede: proceed means to move forward or continue, while precede means
to come before or anticipate.
Amnesty International: an international non-governmental organization focused on
promoting human rights and advocating for the release of prisoners of conscience and
fair trials.
II. While watching the video, come up with synonyms for the following:

Bear – endure
Sickness – nausea
Important, vital – crucial
Skip, miss – ti ditch
To collapse – to implode
To achieve – to attain, to reach
To imagine – to wonder

III. Find words, phrasal verbs and phrases that mean the following:
1. kind of situation, solution that will end well for everyone involved in it; win-
win situation
2. breathe n a lot of air at one time; to take a deep breaths
3. to look at something with your eyes partly closed in order to see better; to
squint
4. to try to remember something that happened in the past literary; to cast your
mind back
5. to think carefully about something, or to say something that you have been
thinking about; to reflect (on)
6. to make it possible for someone to do something, or for something to happen;
to enable
7. in the future; ahead
8. at the beginning of a new and important event or development;
9. to give the correct amount of importance or attention to two separate things;
10.thinking back to a time in the past, especially with the advantage of knowing
more now than you did then;
looking back
11.to have difficulty doing something;
12.to be especially proud of something that you do well, or of a good quality that
you have; to pride
13.have a natural skill or ability to do sth; to have a knack
14.if something happens that way, it happens because you did not do anything to
change it;
15.a problem that delays or prevents progress, or makes things worse than they
were a setback
16.a situation in which you have a lot of problems that seem to be caused by bad
luck;
17.to write something quickly and untidily; to scribble
18.disappear without any way of finding them;
disappear without trace
19.when someone says or does something in a way that shows a lack of respect
for other people and is likely to offend them;
20.to make someone suffer something unpleasant; to inflict
21.to work with someone secretly, especially in order to do something dishonest
or illegal; collude
22.to be able to understand someone else's feelings, problems etc, especially
because you have had similar experience.
to empathise

IV. Watch and fill in the gaps with words you hear:
1. Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility
2. I’ve come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock.
3. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what
important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that have expired between that
day and this.
4. I have come up with two answers.
5. I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and
what those closest to me expected of me.
6. They might well have found out for the first time on graduation day.
7. At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had
spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at
lectures.
8. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never
experience poverty.
 9. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success.
10.So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years
after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale.

V. Come up with English equivalents for the following:

думати, притримуватись думки; to take the view
походити, бути родом з; to come from
захцянка, каприз; quirk
платити заставу; pay a mortgage
досягнути компромісу; reach a compromise
включати, спричиняти, потребувати; entail
протягом багатьох років; for years
одноліток; peer
бути знайомим з чимось, кимось; well-acquainted
відбуватися, траплятися, мати місце; to happen
мінливість, зрадливість (долі); caprice, vicissitude
до останнього подиху; to last gasp
джерело, першооснова чогось; fount
розпачливий, безнадійний; desperate
відплата, помста retaliation

involve, cause, require;

take place, occur;

VI. Comment on these statements:

This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might
inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or
politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their
point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the
wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies
with you.

Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched
German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates,
and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of
unruffled privilege and contentment.

I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the
end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential.

Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination
to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my
greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I
adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the
solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility
to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. (Seneca)