Nazario: ‘There is no single definition of growth’

Good morning everyone. Before I begin, I would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who is here with us today—family, friends, staff and students, and all of those who may not have been able to make it today but are still present in our hearts.

And of course, a special welcome to our graduating Class of 2026.

One of the strange things about a graduating class is that people talk about it as if it were one thing—one group, one story.

But for a moment, I want our class to take a look at those you share this moment with, and we can see the narrative of “one story” is obviously not true.

We spent the same four years in the same hallways, yet somehow lived completely different lives. Some people built themselves on fields or stages, some in studios, some in classrooms, and some quietly, without recognition at all. Some people arrived here carrying certainty. Others carried questions they still don’t have answers to. One thing about Lakeland is that everyone here has a different story that led them to sitting here today.

We were never united by sameness.

And yet, despite all our differences, I think there was one experience almost all of us understood in some form: pressure.

Not just academic pressure, though there was plenty of that. I mean the quieter kind—the pressure to become someone, to make sacrifices feel worth it, to meet expectations, to decide who to be before feeling old enough to know, and to pretend confidence while still figuring yourself out in private.

For a long time, I thought pressure was purely destructive—something to survive, something that slowly wears people down.

But I think pressure also reveals things.

Coal and diamonds are made of the same material. The difference is the pressure they endure.

And I don’t say that because I think struggle automatically makes people stronger or wiser. Sometimes hardship is just hardship. But I do think there’s something undeniable about what happens when people continue forward despite uncertainty—something quiet and remarkable about endurance.

Over these years, I watched people remake themselves. I watched friendships survive distance and change. I watched people fail publicly and still return the next day. I watched people carry responsibilities no one else saw. I watched people learn how to exist in worlds that constantly asked them to prove themselves.

None of that appears on a transcript—but it matters.

And what I admire most about this class is that nobody transformed in the same way.

Some people became softer.

Some became more disciplined.

Some learned confidence.

Some learned humility.

Some learned that survival itself is an accomplishment.

There is no single definition of growth, and I think we’ve spent enough years trying to measure ourselves against one another to finally understand that.

Today isn’t really about polished accomplishments or perfect futures. Most of us are walking into uncertainty, whether we admit it or not. And maybe that’s appropriate. After all, this moment was never meant to be an ending wrapped neatly with certainty.

It’s simply a threshold.

A brief pause between who we were and who we are still becoming.

Years from now, we probably won’t remember every assignment or exam score, but we will remember fragments: conversations, people, versions of ourselves, spirit weeks, games in the courtyard, the fall formal, and the times we all ended up outside after fire alarms went off.

We will remember the moments when life felt heavy, and the moments when it unexpectedly felt light again.

And maybe we’ll realize that what shaped us most was never success alone, but the weight we learned how to carry.

So wherever you go next, I hope you remember this:

Pressure can crack people. But it can also clarify them.

And in different ways, through different lives, I think this class learned how to emerge from pressure not untouched, but refined by it.

So cheers to the Class of 2026—the class that turned pressure into diamonds, and the class that will enter what awaits for us shining brighter than any other.

Read Nazario’s entire speech at theyorktownnews.com