Max Delgado: ‘Don't Protect Your Heart’

The following is the Class of 2025 Commencement Speech by CA Upper School Principal, Max Delgado:

Seniors, it’s my honor today to speak to you on behalf of the faculty who have had the joy of teaching you and being taught by you over these past four years.

On a personal level, I'm feeling more than a touch of nostalgia seeing you depart, having been fortunate enough to serve as your Ninth Grade dean when you first got here. You've been special to all of us.

But it’s your teachers, of course, who shape the academic program. Because of them, you've been exposed to the world of ideas, introduced to disciplines that might inform your life's work, and been taught to think and analyze.

But, of course, it hasn't been just about the books.

All the adults at the Upper School have tried to teach you how to be good human beings–how to find a purpose beyond yourself, so you can join a world beyond CA.

You've likely understood this as two separate BUT vital components of your education: the academic program and social-emotional program. Or put more bluntly, what you do in the classroom as opposed to what you do in advisory, class meetings, or Town Hall. And while this distinction is broadly true, there's a deeper truth: the academic program and the social-emotional program are not independent of each other.

They've always been the same.

But we don't expect that to be totally apparent yet.

The relationship between your books and your heart will reveal itself slowly. What I hope to do today, on behalf of your teachers, is to illustrate how the academic program will inform your adulthood. And pass along the best piece of advice my grandmother gave me during my own graduation season.

But let me start with the books, and let me start by stating the obvious: your days of getting grades are numbered. Sure, there's still college, and assuming many of you continue on to graduate school, you can tack on another two years. 

For those who really push yourselves, add another seven or so. But those years will pass by in a flutter. So the salient point remains: at some point, the world won't assign you grades anymore. And one of the rubrics that has defined your understanding of progress will dissolve.

Now, in part, this shift has already begun.

Some of the things you're leaving CA most proud of – the shows you performed in, the games you won, the competitions, the debates, the clubs, and the student leadership roles you held – these things won't appear anywhere on your transcript, but the inherent dynamics of those activities will define your adulthood: teamwork, problem solving, execution, adaptation.

But don't be surprised if, at some point over the next decade, you begin to miss grades. I know that seems hard to believe, but what I'm really saying is that you'll miss the simplicity of looking at an A and thinking: "I figured it out. There's nothing left to do here.”

Or looking at a grade you'd wish was stronger, and thinking: "A few points will fix that." There will be very few things in your adulthood that will ever feel as neat, as binary, or as finished as what a letter grade suggests.

The world will feel daunting when you don't know how to keep score anymore.

What your teachers want you to know is that sometime between your mid-twenties and early thirties, you, along with your classmates, will begin debating over how to keep score now that grades are gone. 

Maybe it'll be the title you hold, the books you write, the businesses you start, how many kids you have, the quarterly profits you generate, what zip code you live in, how many lives you prolong, how many children you educate, what laws you change, how many injustices you right, how much human suffering you decrease in the world, or any combination of these things, pulled from the countless combinations of amazing things we know you'll do.

And just when you think you've settled that debate, just when you decide which accomplishments matter most to you, those very metrics will dissolve as well. You'll then be presented with the only measure that truly matters when you reflect on how you spend your precious time in these precious days: Are you comfortable in your own skin? 

Now that sounds pretty vaporous and wispy. And that's because it is. 

And while it's a simple idea, it's not an easy goal to achieve. 

Researchers have actually studied this question. They call it "overall life satisfaction"—a measure that draws from an index of self-identified values and priorities, combined with attention to how our actions shape our thoughts, which shape our temperament and well-being. 

But really, that's just eggheads giving an analytic definition to a feeling that we hope settles over you in your private moments – calm acceptance, quiet agency.

Now for my grandmother's advice: Back when I was a senior, my grandmother was dispensing advice to me like crazy. I think it was because she secretly suspected that I'd never return to Toledo, Ohio, after leaving for college. Maybe it was because I'd been telling everyone that since I was 12. Some people just pick up on things like that. But sometime before I left, we were standing in her kitchen. She took me by the wrist.

"Don't protect your heart," she told me.

At first, this seemed like terrible advice — even dangerous. Look what happens when you toss a ball at someone who isn't expecting it. But she explained that the instinct to protect my heart would be the most significant obstacle to my growth as an adult.

How could that even be possible?

Seniors, your teachers have taught you to be suspicious of your first ideas. Think about the feedback they gave you on early drafts, or the long pause they held after you explained you didn't need to go to Help Time. 

The scientific method is built around this principle: assume you're probably wrong until you have good reason to believe otherwise. Our entire academic program has been oriented around this idea—that our initial beliefs, hypotheses, and theories are likely incomplete or incorrect until rigorously tested, and shored up with knowledge that preceded you.

I won't lie to you: some of the content you've learned over the last four years will fade as you head into adulthood. But we hope the mindset won't: true scholarship is about staying open to the very likely idea that you don't know the whole picture, and that exposure to what others have said, done, and studied is the only way to get closer to the truth. 

This intellectual humility—this willingness to assume you could be wrong before reflexively assuming that you're right—isn't just about academic curiosity.

It's a design for living.

In the years ahead, when you get into a fight with a loved one, or when you disagree with your boss, or when someone says "no" when you wanted a "yes," or when you get tempted into believing that your own experience is sufficient for drawing absolute conclusions, the scholarly mindset will be your lifeline.

It'll give you just enough confidence to pursue the right questions fearlessly, but just enough humility to not make an idiot of yourself. If you can internalize the idea that the more right you feel about something, the higher the likelihood you're missing the big picture, then you’ll be eons ahead of most adults you ever meet. 

My grandmother believed you should wary of people who think they know the score – who think the world would be perfect if everything ran the way they prescribed. Who need to convince you that they’re right. They're so afraid of being wrong that they protect their heart with certitude.

But have empathy for them. We all naturally protect our worldviews and interpretations. Your teachers have spent the last four years trying to train you out of this instinct. They understand that protecting your first ideas and your first drafts has been the most significant obstacle to your growth as students. By and large, you've overcome this instinct. But it's a mindset that takes tending.

As you get older, as you have more to lose, as you get further away from the habit of being a student, you'll fall back into that trap of looking at any given problem, and thinking: "I figured it out. There's nothing left to do here." Your teachers want you to know that intellectual protectionism will keep you small and hide how vast and complicated the world really is.

But there’s an antidote: Don't protect your heart.

Like many people of her generation, my grandmother lived and died within a three-mile radius of where she was born. She spent her entire life watching her childhood friends become her adolescent friends, become young adults, become parents, become middle-aged, become grandparents. "And now I'm an old woman," she told me in her kitchen. "And I can tell which of my friends are comfortable in their own skin. And which are not."

The ones most comfortable in their skin were not the ones who avoided heartbreak or risk or loss or who limited their lives for fear of looking silly, wrong, or dumb.

They were the ones who'd rather get knocked out in the ring than never step into it. Who'd rather get rejected than never try. Who failed but knew that if you don't play, you can't win. And who, when they lost, healed. My grandmother believed that scar tissue on your heart is something to be proud of–it is proof that you have actually cared about something.

Seniors, earlier this week, I shared a conversation with one of your parents. We both reflected on the beauty and lunacy of loving and having children. If you want to protect your heart, having children is a fool's errand. 

We raise you, we feed you, we love you, and then we give you away to a game we don’t fully trust—knowing that your ability to look over your shoulder at us as you run out into the world is one of the greatest rewards we can imagine. You have made our hearts big and defenseless.

What your teachers have been building in you isn't just knowledge—it's capacity. Empathy through literature, context through social studies, inquiry through science, reasoning through math, creation through art, logic through computer science, and connection through world languages.

But perhaps most importantly, the academic program has developed what many consider the most crucial ingredient for “overall life satisfaction”: delayed gratification—the long game.

If we had marched you from ninth-grade orientation straight to this graduation stage, you would've missed all of it. The booms and busts. The memories and friendships that could only've been stitched together slowly. Collecting good things and the hard things. If you end up walking across this stage with a handful of successes in one pocket and a handful of failures in another, then we've done our job. 

The goal was never perfection—it was balance.

Graduation itself stands as the ultimate expression of delayed gratification. It proves that you can commit to something meaningful, learn from others, and emerge transformed—and it teaches us that time is a necessary ingredient for understanding and appreciation. 

When you apply this same mindset to the rest of your life—when you use it as a lens to reinterpret even the hardest experiences you've been through—this final lesson from the academic program can be emotionally corrective.

Books and heart have always been the same.

So, Class of 2025, don't protect your heart.

Someone once told me: the heart is an instrument. Some people are so worried about banging it up or playing the wrong note that they go their whole lives without taking it out of its case. 

So go play your instrument. Join the rest of the band. You're part of the show now, and we're excited to welcome you.

Thank you.

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Senior Tributes

Class of 2025 Commencement Candids

Commencement Eve Reception

Processional/Recessional

Ceremony

Diploma Photos

Stage Portraits

Class of 2025 Formal Photo