2026 Commencement Address by Dr. Samantha Boardman P'24, '26
Good morning and congratulations to Millbrook’s magnificent Class of 2026! I’m Samantha and welcome to my chapel talk.
It’s an honor to be speaking to you on this happy occasion. Along with happiness, I feel a wave of pride. And perhaps some relief—from parents…teachers…school staff, and administrators, especially Ms. Birnbaum. I sense a lot of relief from Ms. Birnbaum.
And of course from the graduates. So much has happened since you drove down School Road for the first time. You have grown literally. And you have grown intellectually. You have deepened your knowledge of world history, conquered chemistry. And your mastery of Zaddy language has expanded in ways that your teachers find alarming. But something deeper has happened here. Something harder to name and more important than any grade or trophy or title. You have also grown psychologically. And I’d like to focus on some Millbrook traditions that also deserve some credit. Traditions like marsh-mucking which taught you to face your fears. Sitting down for formal dinners on Thursday nights with faculty and fellow students. Nominating people for Kind Bars, or maybe even being the recipient of one yourself. And dancing your hearts out over Winter Weekend for those airband performances, where you learned how to get comfortable getting awkward. And some of you got really really comfortable getting awkward.
At Millbrook, you have been known and needed. Perhaps more known and needed than you hoped for at times?
And you’ve made others feel known and needed, too. This is one of the reasons that my husband Aby and I chose Millbrook for Baker and Vivian. Because Millbrook truly embraces the philosophy that goodness matters as much as greatness. And while it’s important to strive for greatness in life, I assure you that it is goodness that makes life worth living. And when I say goodness, I mean the everyday kind. How you treat people when nothing is at stake. What you do when no one is watching.
The world however has other ideas. As a psychiatrist, I spend a lot of time helping people unlearn things. So, as your shrink for the next ten minutes, I want to save you some time, and perhaps some therapy bills, by addressing three misleading messages that are flooding your feed right now. You've probably already heard everything I am going to say from your parents. I have the advantage of not being them (Sorry, Vivian, doing my best not to make you cringe.) And let's be honest, you'd probably trust me more if I had two million followers and a ring light.
So, misleading message one: “Becoming an adult means figuring out who you are and what you want.”
This assumes that there is some fixed version of you that is just waiting to be discovered like a prize inside a box of Cracker Jacks. And that with enough self-focus and self-reflection, this “true self” will magically be revealed. Well, as you learned in Mr. MacKenzie’s biology class, your cells are constantly being replaced throughout life. The way you think and behave will change too. Or, as I like to put it—with apologies to all the English teachers—"You" is not a pronoun. It's a verb.
You are always in the process of becoming. In fact, there is evidence that our personality changes so much from youth to old age that, you can look like a completely different person at age 14 than you do at 77! So, when someone tells you to “Stay in your lane,” you don’t have to. Veer all you want. You get to decide what your lane is. You get to draw it, define it, or abandon it entirely. Just please use your blinker.
And when you find yourself at a fork in the road, ask yourself: which road bends toward goodness? Take that one. While you may not be anywhere near School Road, you can always find your way back to what it stands for. To quote the great philosopher Taylor Swift in her treatise “Dear Reader”: “if you don't recognize yourself. That means you did it right.”
The second misleading message is that “Happiness comes from within “ In my experience, happiness comes not from within but from “with.” Studies show that chocolate tastes better when you share it with a friend, and a hill feels less steep when you’re hiking with another. You’re also 30 times more likely to laugh when you’re with someone else. Think of a moment in the past week that brought you joy or made you laugh. I bet it involved someone else. Maybe it was chatting with John in the Strong Box, or advisory lunch with Ms. Vollmer, or just hanging with your friends in the dorm. The moments that matter most in life will almost never be moments you are alone. The quality of your life will depend on the quality of your relationships. Your friends are your superpower. Your fellow travelers. They know the real you, not the Instagram you, not the college essay you, but the actual you.
Cherish these friendships even as you make new ones. Because life gets busy—it just does. Here's a little secret: good friendships don't just happen. They need tending. Cultivate them like a garden. School Road is smoothly paved but the road ahead may not always be. And it will be your friends—not your therapist—who will carry you through.
The third misleading message—and you don't have to scroll very far to find this one—is that the world is a dark place full of terrible people. I disagree. Professionally. Look, I'm a psychiatrist. I am not naive about human suffering. But there is a difference between being clear-eyed and catasrophisizing.
The problem with catastrophizing is that it's self-fulfilling. What we pay attention to determines what we find. So choose carefully. Look for what's good. And I say this with love: you will need to look up from your phone to do this. There is so much more to life than hunting for what's wrong and fixating on the problems. The world is also full of wonder and beauty. You just have to be looking in the right direction.
There's a show on Broadway right now called Every Brilliant Thing—the premise is simple: make a list of all the ordinary beautiful things that make you glad to be alive. There is so much on your list already. A few seniors told me theirs: seeing the chapel steeple from the top of School Road, sundaes on Sunday, hackysack on the quad, trying to figure out who the Case Screamer is...And the best way to keep that list growing? Assume the best in the people. Give them the benefit of the doubt before you give them the side eye.
Too often we underestimate how kind and caring people are. Researchers asked college students: "If you were struggling, would a classmate reach out to help?" Most said…no. But when asked, "Would you reach out to help someone else?" almost everyone said yes. They called it the empathy gap. So contrary to what TikTok tells you, for the most part, people are good.
I promise that if you bend toward goodness… goodness will bend toward you.
Oh, and one more thing. Please thank the people who got you here. The teachers, the coaches, the dorm parents—the ones who showed up for you every single day, often in ways you never noticed. And your family. The ones who sent care packages, cheered from the sidelines, proofread your essays before ChatGPT came along, and pretended not to cry at drop-off. The ones who have worried about you, believed in you, and loved you into being.
Someone once said that the decision to have a child means to forever have your heart go walking around outside your body. Knowing that you were walking around Millbrook made it a little easier for us. We knew our hearts were in a good place.
So graduates, as you go off to college, we are bracing ourselves, too. I think I speak for every parent here when I say… when we call, please just answer the phone. And don’t leave us on “read” when we text. And don’t start texting back so we see those three dots blinking and then suddenly stop. And enough with those ominous texts that just say “Mom” and nothing else. When we get those and there’s no follow up, we assume you’re in jail.
Today, it may feel like your Millbrook era is drawing to a close, but the truth is, you’re going to be marsh mucking your entire life. That means meeting challenges. Gaining knowledge. Being uncomfortable at times. And laughing with your friends even when you’re deep in the mud.
And when you return to Millbrook for your 5th–or 50th–reunion, I guarantee that what will make you happiest is not just the greatness that you have achieved, but the goodness you’ve put into the world.
I have watched this class from the sidelines for four years, and what I can tell you—as a psychiatrist, as a mom, as someone who has been paying attention—is that you are a good group of people, genuinely good. And the world needs what you have to offer. Not just your talent or your ambition—your goodness. It needs that most of all.
So this is it. No more storytime with Mr. Downs. Now it’s time to write your own stories! May there be goodness on every page. Congratulations!
Back
It’s an honor to be speaking to you on this happy occasion. Along with happiness, I feel a wave of pride. And perhaps some relief—from parents…teachers…school staff, and administrators, especially Ms. Birnbaum. I sense a lot of relief from Ms. Birnbaum.
And of course from the graduates. So much has happened since you drove down School Road for the first time. You have grown literally. And you have grown intellectually. You have deepened your knowledge of world history, conquered chemistry. And your mastery of Zaddy language has expanded in ways that your teachers find alarming. But something deeper has happened here. Something harder to name and more important than any grade or trophy or title. You have also grown psychologically. And I’d like to focus on some Millbrook traditions that also deserve some credit. Traditions like marsh-mucking which taught you to face your fears. Sitting down for formal dinners on Thursday nights with faculty and fellow students. Nominating people for Kind Bars, or maybe even being the recipient of one yourself. And dancing your hearts out over Winter Weekend for those airband performances, where you learned how to get comfortable getting awkward. And some of you got really really comfortable getting awkward.
At Millbrook, you have been known and needed. Perhaps more known and needed than you hoped for at times?
And you’ve made others feel known and needed, too. This is one of the reasons that my husband Aby and I chose Millbrook for Baker and Vivian. Because Millbrook truly embraces the philosophy that goodness matters as much as greatness. And while it’s important to strive for greatness in life, I assure you that it is goodness that makes life worth living. And when I say goodness, I mean the everyday kind. How you treat people when nothing is at stake. What you do when no one is watching.
The world however has other ideas. As a psychiatrist, I spend a lot of time helping people unlearn things. So, as your shrink for the next ten minutes, I want to save you some time, and perhaps some therapy bills, by addressing three misleading messages that are flooding your feed right now. You've probably already heard everything I am going to say from your parents. I have the advantage of not being them (Sorry, Vivian, doing my best not to make you cringe.) And let's be honest, you'd probably trust me more if I had two million followers and a ring light.
So, misleading message one: “Becoming an adult means figuring out who you are and what you want.”
This assumes that there is some fixed version of you that is just waiting to be discovered like a prize inside a box of Cracker Jacks. And that with enough self-focus and self-reflection, this “true self” will magically be revealed. Well, as you learned in Mr. MacKenzie’s biology class, your cells are constantly being replaced throughout life. The way you think and behave will change too. Or, as I like to put it—with apologies to all the English teachers—"You" is not a pronoun. It's a verb.
You are always in the process of becoming. In fact, there is evidence that our personality changes so much from youth to old age that, you can look like a completely different person at age 14 than you do at 77! So, when someone tells you to “Stay in your lane,” you don’t have to. Veer all you want. You get to decide what your lane is. You get to draw it, define it, or abandon it entirely. Just please use your blinker.
And when you find yourself at a fork in the road, ask yourself: which road bends toward goodness? Take that one. While you may not be anywhere near School Road, you can always find your way back to what it stands for. To quote the great philosopher Taylor Swift in her treatise “Dear Reader”: “if you don't recognize yourself. That means you did it right.”
The second misleading message is that “Happiness comes from within “ In my experience, happiness comes not from within but from “with.” Studies show that chocolate tastes better when you share it with a friend, and a hill feels less steep when you’re hiking with another. You’re also 30 times more likely to laugh when you’re with someone else. Think of a moment in the past week that brought you joy or made you laugh. I bet it involved someone else. Maybe it was chatting with John in the Strong Box, or advisory lunch with Ms. Vollmer, or just hanging with your friends in the dorm. The moments that matter most in life will almost never be moments you are alone. The quality of your life will depend on the quality of your relationships. Your friends are your superpower. Your fellow travelers. They know the real you, not the Instagram you, not the college essay you, but the actual you.
Cherish these friendships even as you make new ones. Because life gets busy—it just does. Here's a little secret: good friendships don't just happen. They need tending. Cultivate them like a garden. School Road is smoothly paved but the road ahead may not always be. And it will be your friends—not your therapist—who will carry you through.
The third misleading message—and you don't have to scroll very far to find this one—is that the world is a dark place full of terrible people. I disagree. Professionally. Look, I'm a psychiatrist. I am not naive about human suffering. But there is a difference between being clear-eyed and catasrophisizing.
The problem with catastrophizing is that it's self-fulfilling. What we pay attention to determines what we find. So choose carefully. Look for what's good. And I say this with love: you will need to look up from your phone to do this. There is so much more to life than hunting for what's wrong and fixating on the problems. The world is also full of wonder and beauty. You just have to be looking in the right direction.
There's a show on Broadway right now called Every Brilliant Thing—the premise is simple: make a list of all the ordinary beautiful things that make you glad to be alive. There is so much on your list already. A few seniors told me theirs: seeing the chapel steeple from the top of School Road, sundaes on Sunday, hackysack on the quad, trying to figure out who the Case Screamer is...And the best way to keep that list growing? Assume the best in the people. Give them the benefit of the doubt before you give them the side eye.
Too often we underestimate how kind and caring people are. Researchers asked college students: "If you were struggling, would a classmate reach out to help?" Most said…no. But when asked, "Would you reach out to help someone else?" almost everyone said yes. They called it the empathy gap. So contrary to what TikTok tells you, for the most part, people are good.
I promise that if you bend toward goodness… goodness will bend toward you.
Oh, and one more thing. Please thank the people who got you here. The teachers, the coaches, the dorm parents—the ones who showed up for you every single day, often in ways you never noticed. And your family. The ones who sent care packages, cheered from the sidelines, proofread your essays before ChatGPT came along, and pretended not to cry at drop-off. The ones who have worried about you, believed in you, and loved you into being.
Someone once said that the decision to have a child means to forever have your heart go walking around outside your body. Knowing that you were walking around Millbrook made it a little easier for us. We knew our hearts were in a good place.
So graduates, as you go off to college, we are bracing ourselves, too. I think I speak for every parent here when I say… when we call, please just answer the phone. And don’t leave us on “read” when we text. And don’t start texting back so we see those three dots blinking and then suddenly stop. And enough with those ominous texts that just say “Mom” and nothing else. When we get those and there’s no follow up, we assume you’re in jail.
Today, it may feel like your Millbrook era is drawing to a close, but the truth is, you’re going to be marsh mucking your entire life. That means meeting challenges. Gaining knowledge. Being uncomfortable at times. And laughing with your friends even when you’re deep in the mud.
And when you return to Millbrook for your 5th–or 50th–reunion, I guarantee that what will make you happiest is not just the greatness that you have achieved, but the goodness you’ve put into the world.
I have watched this class from the sidelines for four years, and what I can tell you—as a psychiatrist, as a mom, as someone who has been paying attention—is that you are a good group of people, genuinely good. And the world needs what you have to offer. Not just your talent or your ambition—your goodness. It needs that most of all.
So this is it. No more storytime with Mr. Downs. Now it’s time to write your own stories! May there be goodness on every page. Congratulations!
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