"Good evening everyone.

I am honored to have this speech, today. Firstly, I would like to thank Irene Marangoni, who had been the first asking me to speak today; secondly, the professors and the whole institution who allowed me to do that. Least, but not last, I thank you for being here, “forced” to listen to my words.

We are all here to celebrate a milestone of our academic career. Today’s success belongs to all of us sitting in this room. It belongs to students, of course. Because it’s about our efforts, the energies given to this course. I guess we all remember when, during this couple of years, the pages and the books we had to memorize were the only ones we had the time to read; or when the courses we were attending monopolized our talks, discussions and chats from Monday until Saturday night. Today, we have succeeded because of our resilience, and we should celebrate that.

It’s a milestone involving our professors as well. I strongly believe to have given all of myself to this course, but on the other hand I am sure that I have received much more than I have given. The instruments we have received, from International Politics to Economics and to International Law, were high-quality tools and the critical thinking taught in this Master had often been something that the students should hope from an academic institution. This had been possible thanks to the job of many professors, led by our Master’s Director, Professor Parsi, whom we own a special thank.

But this finish line had been cut by our dearest people as well. I am talking about our parents, our friends, our relatives in general. Because they helped us by trusting us, by investing on us and motivating us. Around me I have always felt high expectations and a trust impossible to break down. Days like the one we are living are the demonstration that when these two elements work together, is impossible to fail.

Today we are seeing this day as a happy, but short break between an ordinary day of work, or of job search, and other ones, similar. Tomorrow, for us, will be the end of an ideal world. Not a perfect world, but a more idealistic one, compared to the cynical pragmatism which is waiting for us on some desks that, maybe, we are not enthusiastic about. Actually, the situation is not that simple.

Today’s celebration is useful for our future challenges. When someone will come back home tired, disappointed, felling stuck in a job he doesn’t appreciate or in a selection process with low percentages of success, I would like that he will think about today. Because it’s in days like this one that our limits look more faceable and our obstacles are small like they have never been before.

We are living in a world where competences and skills seems underrated as they have never been in recent history. A world in which inequalities brought social rage and disillusion. Elements who affected our generation and us, in this room, as well. We are living in a world, and in a country, like mine and the one of many of us, where the number of people attending college is every year smaller. In this world it’s our job to step up and be hungrier and more motivated than the others. We have to show everyone else outside this room what we have achieved today.

It will be our job to value the competences and the knowledge we have acquired during this two intense, exciting years.

So, this is my advice for all the colleagues of mine. During every bad day, remember that today you succeeded. You have enjoyed an extraordinary trip, you have achieved your goals and you can be proud of that. You have faced more than a single difficult day, but in the end everything went great. Tomorrow the script will be different, but the screenwriter would be the one who has received his Oscar, today.

Ad maiora."

Federico Costa Zaccarelli, MEPIN former student