Graduation Exercises

Congratulations class of 2026, you have made it.

Today is a big day.
Today marks the end of one journey and the beginning of another.
Today you leave the relative comfort of a place that has been your home for your learning, for your growth, your burgeoning independence.

You now move beyond Milton’s familiarities to places unknown to you, where the safeguards are less prevalent;
Where turmoil and uncertainty are part of what it means to be human in this world.
Encountering challenges is inevitable.
And it is in our struggle through them that we realize the gifts hidden within them.

For it is in vulnerability that we discover the source of our resilience;
It is in risking failure that we generate success;
It is through facing fear that we recognize our courage;
And it is tribulation that provides the inspiration for hope.

Adversity enables us to see the potential within ourselves and to imagine a better world beyond us.
One small flicker of light can help us to see more clearly, even when we are muddling through—and so it is with the collective sum of individual choices to extend gratitude, kindness, and compassion to those around us with the belief that these acts will ripple outward, strengthening our communities to more faithfully embody our ideals.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Ms. Hughes Johnson, Mrs. Stone, Ms. DeBuhr, Mr. Keefe, Ms. Sugrue, Ms. Morrison, Mr. Furst, Mr. LaRocque, members of the board of trustees, faculty, staff, alumni, students, family, friends, and, most of all, members of the Class of 2026, it is my honor to welcome everyone to Milton Academy’s 2026 Graduation ceremony.

I would like to offer a particularly warm welcome and deep gratitude to the many parents, guardians, siblings, grandparents, relatives, and friends gathered today to help celebrate this wonderful occasion. And welcome to all of you who are tuning in from around the world. Graduates, please join me in thanking all of these loved ones who have been instrumental in your journey to this moment.

And now, please join me in thanking Milton’s exceptional faculty and staff.

A proud Milton tradition is honoring our retiring colleagues at Graduation, and it is my great pleasure to continue that today.

I will read the names of these eight wonderful individuals. They are spread out around this venue.

First up is Bill Hill—member of our technology staff for 22 years.

Liz Wood—registrar for 22 years.

Sam Landau—former Middle School athletic director, coach, and member of the Physical Education Department for 23 years.

Anne Kaufman, Class of 1979—teacher in our Math Department for 24 years.

Gregg Reilly—math teacher for 25 years.

Mark Williams—member of the Campus Safety crew, and official campus greeter, for 26 years.

Ted Whalen—music teacher for 31 years.

And finally, Jane McGuiness—Lower School teacher for 37 years.
Together, this group has served Milton for 209 years. Please join me as we express our deep gratitude to each of these remarkable individuals for their incredible service to Milton. 

And while she’s not retiring, I do want to take a moment to recognize our Dean of Academics, Heather Sugrue, who is departing Milton after 25 years. Thank you, Ms. Sugrue.

And now, Class of 2026, I hope you will indulge me as I share a few thoughts.

Seniors, you have very few ceremonies in your life: high school graduation, college graduation, maybe grad school, your wedding. Very few moments to publicly celebrate you and your accomplishments.

I can picture my own Milton graduation perfectly. It was a stunning day—brilliant sunshine but cooler than usual. There were three Alexandras in my class – and I was the third to be called. A classmate, David Lindsay-Abaire, now a Pulitzer Prize- and Tony award-winning playwright, was one of our speakers. He led us in a game of Simon Says.

Truly, it was a day to remember. But in the same way a marriage isn’t just about the wedding, my Milton education isn’t just about my graduation, just as your Milton education is not just about today. Indeed, the benefits have only just begun.

To my mind, your time here at Milton has provided you with three things—knowledge, ethics, and agency.

Obviously, the education you received here starts with knowledge and the skills that go along with it. Thanks to Milton’s deep commitment to a liberal arts education, you have been exposed to various schools of thought. You have been provided with insight into how the world works —physically, socially, artistically, historically.

And then there’s ethics. As called for by our motto Dare to Be True, Milton asks its students to develop an ethical backbone, a set of deeply held beliefs that guide your actions.

The third thing Milton has given you is agency, a belief in your own power to make things happen.

These three things—knowledge, ethics, and agency—exist in a carefully balanced triangle. Remove one and things get messy. Knowledge and ethics without agency – useless. Agency and knowledge without ethics – dangerous. You get the idea.

Our hope is that each of you will go out into the world ready to make a difference. We know that you are prepared.

Today is the culmination of your Milton education, but it’s just the beginning of your lifetime of learning. Continue building your knowledge and using the skills you’ve honed here to think critically and stay curious. You—along with your family and friends, your Milton teachers, coaches, advisors, and peers—have also developed a strong ethical foundation to support you as you venture out into the world. I have no doubt that your values and your ethical compass are well calibrated.

As for your agency: You have already put it into practice here on campus. Class of 2026, you have shown us all the good that happens when smart, ethical people act with purpose in a community. The time has come to carry that spirit forward. I know that you will do amazing things.

So, Class of 2026, enjoy today. Lean into the celebration. Cheer for your classmates. Get butterflies when your name is called. Remember the speeches. Bask in the adoration. You’ve earned it.

Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next week, but soon, I hope you will each put to use the knowledge, ethics, and agency you have gained here at Milton. You will be called to contribute and to lead. Know that you have the confidence and support of this entire community. Truly, we are all looking forward to your bright, limitless futures. Because goodness, our world needs you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Stone. Ms. Hughes-Johnson and the Board of Trustees, Dr. Callen, Ms. Sugrue, Ms. Morrison, Mr. Keefe, members of the faculty and staff, friends, family, students, and the class of 2026.

Two summers ago, I was lucky enough to have one of the great American novels assigned for summer reading. As I read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, I took a pen to every page, and when I’d finished, I read the book through a second time. When I got to class in September, I didn’t need much time to decide that I wanted to focus my first paper on Ellison’s description of education. In five sittings, I churned out a piece of writing that exactly met the word count for the assignment and didn’t contain a single instance of the verb “to be.” Satisfied, I hit print and dropped the essay off.

The next week, I received the worst grade I’d ever even seen in an English class. What dragged down my score was the requirement that I connect my analysis to myself. I was confused because, in my view, I’d absolutely made that connection. My views on philosophy and politics were splattered all over my paper; I’d evoked my favorite passages from my favorite 19th-century social scientists; I’d presented the book in the way that I’d genuinely read it—both times! I ran to Forbes and tried to sort out with my classmates what’d happened: had I accidentally spelled out a threatening message to my teacher with the first letters of my sentences?

But it quickly became clear to me that I’d intensely misunderstood what my teacher meant by “self,” and I’d confused it with my worldview, presenting my opinions as the cornerstone of my identity. I’d responded to a brilliant text that develops its protagonist across diverse settings and identities with a freeze frame of the political opinions of a high-school junior. And I did so because I was deeply afraid of presenting myself as anything other than a polished, curated, complete product.

As a child, my favorite compliment to receive from adults was that I “knew who I was.” From my point of view, growing up often seemed to squeeze out peoples’ uniqueness, so I secretly delighted in not relating to my classmates and preferring the company of older people. I believed that to preserve difference, we had to build decisive intellectual walls so pressure couldn’t crush our beliefs. For me, those walls looked like a constantly stylized persona, an ostentatiously clever sense of humor, and a stubborn political point of view. Believing every slogan about “sticking to your guns,” I came to high school thinking I could finalize myself. I planned to sort out my skills and viewpoints, and then sell myself to the world as quickly as possible. In other words, I came to Milton to be right.
But I had it backwards: being wrong and changing my beliefs about topics from the equivalence of hard work and burnout, rational choice theory in elections, and cell phones to zoning laws, the fallibility of language, and even the narrative quality of the show SpongeBob SquarePants, has defined my experience here. Contrary to my expectations, the real value of my Milton education was not in learning the best strategies to defend my beliefs but rather in being proven wrong about successively more fundamental topics by brilliant and passionate people.

And the accumulation of these moments brought me to the realization that the strength I had held so proudly for so long was undergirded by a well-hidden fear—a fear that if the completeness of my perspective was called into question, who I was would come crashing down with it. This fear manifested itself in my supporting a line of thinking that has grown quite popular: that the best state of affairs, especially regarding controversial issues, is consensus, and if consensus is nowhere to be found, it’s better to fake it ‘til you make it and steer clear of uncomfortable debates.

You know, back in fourth grade, I actually led a campaign to abolish the rule requiring us to walk in single-file lines between classes. Never one for drama, I called this policy something along the lines of Operation Hallway Freedom. I circulated a petition, and I quickly got seventeen of my nineteen classmates on board. My teacher told me she would only consider the plan if I got the two holdouts to agree as well. After a few weeks of what could gently be termed “arm twisting,” I finally got the unanimous vote I needed, and I internalized the idea that any disagreement holds a project back.

Later, as a Milton freshman, I gave up on going to our High School Democrats chapter when I found out its members had mostly supported a different senate candidate than I had. I certainly wasn’t mad at them—we were all quite cordial—I simply didn’t think we had enough in common to play for the same team. I was forced to strike a different tone, though, when I became an opinion editor for The Milton Paper, a role requiring me to refine and even strengthen arguments that contradicted my dogmas but which came from people decidedly on my team.

It’s no secret that some people don’t think such a model is compatible with our polarized world. But even the word “polarized” implies fixed “poles,” and, although it’s easy to view other people as stubborn and unyielding, I’d wager that none of my classmates view their minds as permanently fixed in space. I’ve seen internal contradictions and doubts benefit an organization, and I think those qualities can benefit a person in much the same way.

For high-school students, the illusory “correctness” I spent years chasing now seems more accessible than ever. Artificial intelligence offers a world in which those who use it never have to experience being wrong, never have to experience not knowing how to do something, and never have to experience feeling incomplete. Why this false promise is so tantalizing is not hard to understand. Interpreting a text or an assignment inaccurately; having your well-considered stances challenged; and having no idea how to even begin an apology note, an essay, or a speech are unsettling feelings. But to never be unsettled—to never be shaken into a new and risky line of thought by a disagreement or by your own mind stretching under pressure—is to learn only at the most superficial level.

What I gained from my moments of necessary tension and discomfort at Milton was not the opportunity to hastily correct my beliefs and pretend that I’d always been “right”; it was a chance to embrace the feeling of being wrong. Self-doubt, intellectual insecurity, and the humility to change are, for many people in our optimized era, the worst things one can have, unworkable burdens that stop you from being a “winner.” Accepting these concepts does not come easy to me; for much of my life, I thought they jeopardized the intelligence I felt I so desperately needed. This thought held me back from the advantages of vulnerability, and I can only say thank you to my peers and, particularly, my teachers at Milton for helping me begin to discard it.

No one who knows me well will tell you that I’ve given up on having opinions—far from it—but my Milton years have taught me that fierce beliefs, which everyone should have, ought to be paired with an equally fierce willingness to proudly get it wrong and adjust. In a world as rapidly changing as ours, we cannot tick off the box that says we’re done evolving.

It takes judgment to discern between adapting to new information and caving to outside pressure. I don’t have one perfect formula to make that judgment, but it is always easier to make in communities where honest disagreement is encouraged. Thanks to Milton, I know what those communities look like and desire wholeheartedly to keep them alive. I urge you to do the same.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Sugrue. Ms. Hughes Johnson and the Board of Trustees, Dr. Callen, Mrs. Stone, Ms. Morrison, Mr. Keefe, members of the faculty and staff, friends, family, students, and the Class of 2026.

When I first heard Milton’s motto—Dare to be True—I thought: “How? How could I dare to be true in a world where I have experienced rejection whether I was genuine or some false version of myself?”

Throughout all of elementary school, my hair was straight: easily tamed and compliant. Some of my friends now question whether the pale-skinned girl with smooth hair in my baby photos is actually me. As a little girl, I had a sense of myself that matched the simple straight locks on my head: I knew who I was. I was an older sister and I liked cupcakes and ice cream and I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up.

Around sixth grade, my hair grew coarse and uncontrollable—much more difficult to manage. My hair became a reminder of how different I was to the people around me. So, I hid it, wearing a hood over my head every day. I was trying—and failing—to find my place in a world where I spoke Polish with my mom and looked more and more like my Caribbean dad.

One morning, I sat in the very front of my science teacher’s classroom. It was the first day that all students were back in-person after the pandemic. So, instead of wearing a hood, I had woken up early to slather curl creams and gels in my hair. I let it air dry, and, I’ll admit, it was a bit frizzy. But I felt good about myself. I felt cute. This was the first time I had my natural hair uncovered and down in my whole middle school career.

Sitting behind me was a boy who was essentially a stranger to me other than in that room. As we all sat waiting for the bell to ring, he said, “Ania, your hair looks like you just got into a car accident.”
I gave him a thin smile, turned back towards the teacher, and reached for a hood that I soon realized wasn’t there. After these years of hiding, I never wanted to show my face—or hair—again. I don’t know if he was trying to be funny, but for a long time I couldn’t think about his comment without dissolving into tears. He established this connection between my outward appearance and the person I was. I felt like I had presented my authentic self and had been rejected.

I tried brushing my hair. I tried tying it up. My mom even begged me to let her do French braids on me. But I denied her requests every time. My hair signaled my otherness. It felt like I didn’t belong with my white or Black peers.

In the winter of eighth grade, my mom set up an appointment at a Black-owned hair salon. They would silk press my curls. The procedure would end with my hair being smooth and straight. I thought that maybe, if I could look like someone else, I would fit in.

After the washing and styling process was over, I moved my trembling hands out from under the salon cape as I watched the stylist caress my finally straightened hair. The tension in my body released after two hours of sitting upright gazing into the large, lighted vanity mirror. I saw an alternate version of myself, someone who had been welcomed into this space, this culture.

However, my delight was short-lived. In the 15 minutes it took to get back home, the hairstylist had texted my mom saying that I didn’t have Black hair, so I shouldn’t come back. Without letting any tears ruin my fresh silk press, I buried my face in my hands and sobbed. Although my hair looked the way it had in those baby photos, I couldn’t find the person I once was, the little girl who could belong anywhere because she felt secure with herself. I let other people define my identity. I let others determine whether I belonged.

When I was accepted to Milton Academy for ninth grade, I didn’t know if there would be space for me. I didn’t know what “daring to be true” really meant. I kept meeting rejection because of things I couldn’t change. So why would this school be any different?

For all of freshman year, you could have seen me wearing the same hoodies I did throughout middle school. I don’t remember the specific day that I started wearing my hair down, but I did so with the fear that others would criticize my hair, and thus, criticize me.

However, I found the exact opposite: students and teachers complimented me. Whether I wore my hair curly or straight, people accepted me in whichever ways I showed up. But I almost completely depended on this validation, and that meant I didn’t truly and fully accept who I was. I was still allowing others to dictate my feelings of belonging.

While considering running for co-head of Onyx—our Black Student Union, I worried about whether or not I was Black enough to represent this population of students. I desperately wanted confirmation that I could indeed have this role. So I reached out to a peer and asked her to read my statement. In my initial draft, I hadn’t really talked about my appreciation for the club that had brought me closer to this part of my identity. The advice my friend gave me was to explore that perspective. She didn’t tell me if I should apply. Instead, she wanted me to be more honest.

I thought about my experience freshman year when I wouldn’t really speak at club meetings. I sat with my friends in the corner and watched. Fast forward two years, and I was leading conversations and often the person laughing the loudest in the room. Although the people around me made me feel comfortable enough to participate, ultimately, I had been the one to decide to try and lead, to try and build a space where others could be their uninhibited selves.
In my revised statement, I wrote that I had “found a second family.” I wrote about how Onyx had taught me to take up space, space that I was previously not sure I could take. The writing was vulnerable and uncomfortable, but it was true.

Yes, I had asked my classmate for advice—however, I put my whole self out there. I wasn’t trying to hide, change, or fit in. I was entirely me, no matter the outcome.

This year, for our Black and Latinx Banquet, I just washed my hair and let it air dry. I let my curls be the most natural they could be. And thanks to the people around me and myself, I felt good. I felt cute.

The point of daring to be true to yourself is to be okay with rejection. It means to love and respect yourself anyway. There are going to be people who reject you for who you are and for who you’re not. Embody the values you believe in. Embrace the aspects of yourself that make you, you.

To the Class of 2026, to all of you, have the courage to be the truest you, no matter how scary or challenging.

Being yourself and accepting that is intimidating, but that’s why we say dare.

Thank you.

Good morning!

On behalf of the Board of Trustees, I want to congratulate the Class of 2026 and their families. We’re so proud of you and everything you’ve accomplished! Today, I have the privilege of welcoming our guest speaker who is very much not a guest.

The writer Robert Fisk described journalists as “the first impartial witnesses to history,” something this morning’s distinguished speaker has been time and time again: Wresting the hidden truths from underworlds and halls of power alike, and uncovering the human stories at the core of massive political, economic, and social systems.

His path toward journalistic excellence began right here at Milton and I’m proud to say I was a partial witness, first to Patrick and my brother having playdates and then to them being upstart young academic stars when the rest of us were just trying to get into college.

Patrick Radden Keefe, a member of the Class of 1994, is a longtime staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of six nonfiction books, including New York Times bestsellers Empire of Pain, Rogues, and Say Nothing, which the Times named one of the 20 Best Books of the 21st Century. His work has been translated into two dozen languages and recognized with many awards, including the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, the Orwell Prize for Political Writing, the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Peabody Award.

Say Nothing was adapted into an Emmy-nominated 9-part FX series, on which Patrick served as an executive producer. He is also the creator and host of the 2020 podcast “Wind of Change” about the strange convergence of Cold War espionage and heavy metal music. His latest book is London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth.

Whether zipping through the streets of Hanoi on Anthony Bourdain’s scooter, detailing the human toll of the opioid crisis in America, or excavating oral histories about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Patrick digs up untold, deeply personal stories. With compelling prose and exacting detail, his longform stories draw readers into corners of our world rarely glimpsed by the general public. His stories explore nuances and complexities that are often untouched in other media, and his talents as a writer and reporter make him an ideal “witness to history.”

Patrick’s time at Milton helped him discover his deep interest in writing and storytelling, passions that have driven his career. Following his graduation, he attended Columbia and then Yale Law School, keeping his sights on The New Yorker. Sources and colleagues credit his natural curiosity and his legal studies for his ability to unearth stories about crime and corruption.

The best investigative journalists embody the principle of “Dare to be true,” and Patrick is—without question—one of the very best. We are extraordinarily fortunate to have him back at Milton this morning.

Please join me in giving a warm welcome to Patrick Radden Keefe!

Good morning, class of 2026! Greetings parents, grandparents, siblings, faculty, administration, and alumni. My name is Patrick Radden Keefe, and it is an honor to address you this morning on this happy occasion.

You know, memory is a funny thing. Looking out at all of you, this sea of chairs, the tents, Straus Library, I’m catapulted back, instantly, to the day I graduated from Milton, thirty-two years ago. And the memories are vivid. I remember being late that morning, and driving my mother’s car from our house in Dorchester—speeding in my mother’s car, if I’m being honest—because I was in danger of being late for my own graduation. And this was 1994, so I was listening to the classic Liz Phair album Exile in Guyville. On tape.

Honestly, it feels like the day before yesterday that I was sitting where you’re sitting. Yet somehow here I am, middle-aged, with two teenaged kids of my own. And I have a terrible memory: I couldn’t tell you what I ordered in a restaurant at lunch last Tuesday or the plot of a novel I spent a week reading over Christmas, or that errand my wife made me promise I would run before I left to come here. But I can tell you the precise song I was listening to on that glorious morning back in June 1994.

And if that seems weird—and it is, objectively, weird—it’s pretty typical of my years at Milton. And I don’t think I’m alone. In fact, I would bet that you are going to find this, too. On the one hand, today is the first day of the rest of your lives, and you’re going to leave here and go on to experience extraordinary, wonderful, momentous things.

On the other hand, these years you’ve spent here—the things you’ve learned, the friendships you’ve forged, even the mistakes you’ve made—they’re going to stay with you, wherever you venture, and whatever you go on to do. Because you’re going to take them with you.

As a ninth grader at Milton, I wrote a little paper for English class, evaluating a short story by Katherine Mansfield. Now, I was not a straight-A student during my time here. I wasn’t a bad student, but as some of you have probably found—in fact, as some of you have probably tried to explain to your parents—when your fellow students are workaholic brainiacs, it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish yourself. But this particular English paper must have come together well, because when I got it back, my teacher had scrawled something across the front of it that indicated he thought I might have a talent for writing. And then he wrote—and this was 1990, but I still remember the exact words—he wrote, “You will move mountains.”

You will move mountains.

Now, let’s just acknowledge, that is a fairly ridiculous thing to say to anyone. If I wrote those words in a draft of one of my articles for The New Yorker, my editor Daniel would just straight-up delete them. He might even delete them, then add a one-word comment—this is the worst, he does this sometimes—that just says “purple.” Meaning: overwrought writing. Purple prose. Pretty much the worst thing they can accuse you of at The New Yorker.

But let me tell you, when I was fourteen years old and I got this paper back? The thought that there might be someone—a grown up, who was not related to me—who believed I had talent and who could imagine a life in which I pursued it and got to do the thing I already had a dream of doing? To impart that message to that kid at that moment…that was a rare gift.

Maybe another way to underline the extent to which some of the experiences you’ve had here at Milton will continue to resonate in your lives would be to point out that I’m fifty today. I’ve got a wife and two kids and a house in New York. I’ve written six books, produced TV shows, won awards. But I still have that essay. I’ve held onto it for nearly forty years.

Do you guys still read William Faulkner at Milton? The Sound and the Fury? That was tough. I like the way Faulkner put it: “There is no such thing as was. Just is.”

You’re closing one chapter in your lives today, and starting a completely new one. But in ways it would be impossible for you to fully appreciate just yet, the people you become will be profoundly shaped by the experiences you’ve had here. I realize this might be a little paradoxical as a theme for a graduation speech, but the thing they don’t tell you about high school is that it never really ends.

Sure, you’ll go on to have amazing experiences. Some of you may walk away from campus today and never set foot on these beautiful green fields, again. Most of the really important, high-stakes stuff in your life hasn’t happened yet. But I promise you, everything that happened here, you’ll take it with you, and there will be nights two years, 10 years, 50 years from now when you find yourself going back over the details of some minor drama, some triumph or embarrassment, that happened to you at Milton.

The other thing you’ll take with you is your classmates. Take a second to look at these people sitting around you. There are your close friends, of course. You’ll take them with you. I still talk with my best friends from Milton all the time. I had dinner with one of them last night. But also, there are the kids you might know to say hello to but have never really hung out with. And then there are the kids who you may actively despise. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but you probably haven’t seen the last of them either. But the thing about workaholic brainiacs is, they often grow up to become pretty fascinating people.

I’m not really a clubby person, not much of a joiner. The record will show that my attendance at Class of ‘94 reunions has been less than stellar. But there is nothing quite like the Milton Academy alumni community. In almost any professional field, any walk of life, you will find people who went here and then went on to thrive, to make important discoveries, to change industries, to create significant works of art. It’s hard to appreciate just how much of a privilege a Milton education is while you’re here, actually getting the education. But once you leave, you start to notice. Again and again, throughout my career there have been these funny moments when I’ll encounter someone who seems really exciting, maybe it’s a matter of their sense of style or their personal philosophy or their offbeat sense of humor. And at a certain point, it comes out that they went to Milton, too.

And I always chuckle, and say, “Of course you did.”

A lot of you will, in one way or another, become highly successful. But try to remember: success isn’t everything.

At my own graduation I was feeling anxious because unlike most of my classmates, I was not headed off to college. The school I really wanted to attend was Columbia. But I didn’t get in. So I was planning to take a year off, and in that moment I felt a lot of uncertainty—and insecurity—because so many of my fellow graduates were getting ready to go to college in August and seemed to have their lives figured out.

Only much later, looking back, could I see how useful it was for me to experience the sting of that rejection—and to learn from it. The fact that you’re all about to receive a diploma from one of the most rigorous high schools in the land is already a great success. And you’ve all got many other successes ahead of you. But it’s important to bear in mind that we often learn less from success than we do from failure. Failure teaches us humility, which I think is pretty underrated, as a virtue, these days. And it teaches us persistence. It’s important, especially when you’re young, to learn how to metabolize rejection efficiently. So you don’t get knocked down. You learn from it, and keep moving. An essential part of life is taking risks: introducing yourself to a stranger, applying for a job, asking someone out. If you’re too focused on your own unblemished record of achievement, you could end up living a life that is safe, but small.

As you go on to college, selecting courses and majors and internships and eventually jobs or courses of graduate study, be wary of the brass ring. Many of you will already have had the experience of working really hard towards a goal not because you particularly care about the goal in question, but because somebody told you that it was an important goal. To a point, I think that’s useful: Rou need to learn how to grind it out sometimes, how to put your head down and do the work. But in the next few years you’ll be faced with some choices about the things you want to pursue, and you may encounter a certain pressure to pursue opportunities just because they are the most exclusive or the most prestigious.

My advice on this one is simple: Figure out what you love to do, then try and do it. Don’t try and game the system or play it too safe. Don’t seek out some major or, worse, some career that you secretly find a little boring. Listen to your own passions, then follow them. I say this as someone who has been pretty obstinate about pursuing what he loves. I’ve had times in my career when things were financially precarious, and other times when I was riding high. But the thing I put the greatest premium on, beyond financial rewards or stability or any external markers of success, is that I’m doing something that I genuinely love, and I am never, ever bored.

I’m also not hurting the world, which might feel like such an obvious thing that you wouldn’t have to spell it out it in a graduation speech. But these are weird times we’re living in.

I haven’t spoken this morning about technology or politics or how rapidly the world is changing, in part because you guys have been hearing this stuff all your lives. But more importantly, I think our world will be transformed only as much as we allow it to be, and I have a stubborn conviction that certain human values will prevail. To come back to this idea that success isn’t everything, I hope you’ll remember, as you leave here and begin your adult lives, that really all we have is each other, other flesh-and-blood human beings. Guard your empathy. Nurture it. Don’t lose it. It’s the thing that makes us human.

These are dehumanizing times, in the sense that we all spend more hours of any given day looking at screens than we do looking at one another. But also in that decisions are made—political decisions, business decisions—that can have highly destructive effects on ordinary human lives. Sometimes success has a price, and as you pursue your careers and eventually assume positions of real power and influence, my appeal to you is that you try and avoid a kind of success for which other people will be forced to pay the price.

There’s a lot of talk these days about how we’re living through an era of great unpredictability. But the truth is, every era is unpredictable in its own way. When I was graduating from Milton, the Cold War had just ended and 9/11 was still seven years off. I remember writing a letter to a friend late that summer. She’d just gotten to college (Columbia, actually. She got in) and she wrote a letter back, saying, “You know there’s a new way to do this. It’s called Email.”

We thought we could predict the future, in other words. We just turned out to be wrong.

So sure, the world you’re entering is unpredictable. But there’s nothing new about that. And unlike my generation, you know it’s unpredictable already. So when you think about it that way, you’ve got a head start.

You must remember, though, crucially, that you are not powerless in the face of change. On the contrary, one thing I can predict with a high degree of certainty about the future is that some of you on this stage right now will be instrumental in shaping it.

To the class of 2026, I want to offer my warmest congratulations. You will leave here and do great things. Wherever you venture, you will carry the lessons and the friendships from your time at Milton with you.

Now go. Move mountains.

Thank you.

Ania Maria Robinson

Eli Benjamin Berk

Qur’an Anthony McNeill

Avaneesh Varma Siruvuri

Montserrat Martinez Vindas

Rhys Argeo Adams

Charlotte Emily Weinstein

John Victor Dias Valerio

Sarina Evelyn Miller

Nehemiah Sanon

Patrycja (Pati) Pogorzelska

Gustavo Silva dos Reis

Patrycja (Pati) Pogorzelska

Gustavo Silva dos Reis

Lok Cheung (Melody) Chen

Montserrat Martinez Vindas

Alden Bos Goodman

Theodore Choe

Jordan Paul Munsey

Max Robert Tsai-Young

Gabriel Koerner-Imas

Shengtian (Thomas) Hong

Sarina Evelyn Miller

Shengtian (Thomas) Hong

Victoria Kirkham

Wenna (Vickie) Mao

Xiaoke Yu

Grant Wheelan

Harper Simoneau

Lewis Moten

Xiaoyan (Nina) Yu

Zoe Druker

Qur’an Anthony McNeill

Essay of Ideas: Andria Laitadze

Memoir: Claire Elizabeth Salvato

Feature: Ruohui (Sissi) Ma

Aava Darvish

For Fiction: Andria Laitadze

For Poetry: EmmaRose Kamay Zilla

For Poetry: Lyla Marissa Tanzi

Julia Elizabeth Baldwin

Eli Benjamin Berk

Heng Lucas Chan

Sarina Evelyn Miller

Bain Coyne

Iko Jai Lee

Victoria Kirkham

For Acting & Performing
Lok Cheung (Melody) Chen
Lyla Marissa Tanzi
Rhys Argeo Adams

For Dance Performance & Choreography
Amara Michelle Prather
Phoebe Zhang
Shaleka Tashima Maddix

Emilia Isabelle Raviola

Grant Chiao-Yi Morishita

Haotong (HT) Xue

Rhys Argeo Adams

Theodore Choe

Lok Cheung (Melody) Chen

Phoebe Zhang

Victoria Kirkham

Mary Elizabeth Quatrale

Amelia Claire Simoneau

Eli Benjamin Berk

Natalie Greenwood

Andria Laitadze

Cole Evan Simmons

Adair Johnson

Hugh Kramer

Celina Wang

Zifu Song

Matthew Robert Scudiere

Molly Anne O’Brien

Rhys Argeo Adams

Level 5 – Dilan Payne

Level 4 – Annabelle Chen

Level 3 – Isha Singh

The French Prize
Ania Maria Robinson
Ellyson Klein McKillop Ash
Jordan Paul Munsey

The Spanish Prize
Rhys Argeo Adams

The Chinese Award
Anthony Monteiro Landolfi
Esme Zhao-Li Campbell
Mika Hsieh

In Drawing & Painting: Isla Elisabeth Hamory

In Sculpture & Ceramics: Anna Isabella Chernock Mulliken

In Photography & Digital-Imaging: Jack David Belyea

In Technology & Digital Media: Wenna (Vickie) Mao

In Filmmaking: Nora Basterretxea Larrion

In Architecture: Owen Wyatt West

Alexander Landis-Arnold

John Charles Hackett

Leah Ruiya Li

Theodore Choe

Esme Zhao-Li Campbell

Max Robert Tsai-Young

Giovanni Joseph

Reagan Alden Vaughan