Graduation: Be the Second Bravest Person

I was determined this year not to tell our graduates to be the best at something. Not the boldest, not the kindest, nor the first. My worry is that if we spend so much time telling young people to be exceptional (which I think we probably do), they might end up believing their education was never about purpose, but about competition and getting ahead of the next person. So I eventually settled on asking them to be the second bravest person¹ in the room…

Closing Address to the Class of 2026 on 23 May 2026

Look around you. 

Who do you think is the bravest person in this room today? Is it you? A friend? Me, perhaps? Your parents?

I’m not sure, to be honest. But I think it’s fair to say our graduating scholars are a pretty brave bunch.

Today, on behalf of all 24 of our graduating scholars, I would like to share a special video with you.

(VIDEO)²

Could I ask our scholars to stand, please?

You came from different countries, different starting points, different realities. You arrived here knowing, or at least suspecting, that you would be uncomfortable, out of context, and far from everything familiar. 

And you came anyway. 

That takes a particular kind of bravery. Not the bravery of the familiar, but the bravery of the unknown. For two years, you have grown with us, as we have grown with you. 

Please take a bow.

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Good morning. My name is Damian Bacchoo, and as your High School Principal, I have the honour of the closing words today.

Class of 2026…school’s out.

No more IB. No more deadlines. No more CAS conversations or asking whether this counts for Creativity. No more grace periods. No more Sound Asylum. No more pretending that Crocs and slides are part of the school uniform. And no more Diana chasing you up for skipping mentor time.

But you will also never again be at a SEASAC, never again be backstage at Culturama or Kahaani, or debating at an MUN conference. You will never cry again at a Grand Walk, and never be in a room with all these people.

I’m sorry.

Every journey forward starts from a firm sense of where you have been. So before you look ahead — and there is plenty to look ahead to — look back. Be proud of all of it. Especially the moments where things felt particularly difficult, and you had to find something in yourself to get through them.

It’s why we talk a lot at UWC about bravery.

But actually, my message today is not that you should always try to be the bravest person in the room.

No, my hope is that you will find it in you to be the second bravest.

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Let me share a story that explains what I mean…

When I was a child, my mum used to tell an old story about a butterfly³. In the story, a man notices a butterfly struggling to emerge from its cocoon. He watches for a while, taking in the effort, the strain, the slow work of transformation. The butterfly is pushing, little by little, against the narrow opening. It looks difficult. It looks uncomfortable. It looks like something that ought to be helped.

And so, wanting to help, the man intervenes.

He takes a small pair of scissors and gently cuts the cocoon open.

The butterfly emerges easily.

But it never flies.

Because the struggle, the very thing that looked like the problem, was what would have made its wings strong enough for flight.

That story has stayed with me, and I share it because there will have been moments, many of them probably, when the people who love you wanted to make the hard thing disappear. They could have stepped in earlier. They could have made things easier. And as a parent myself, I know I would want to do that too.

Which is why, if we were looking around for the bravest people in this room, I think it might actually be the people who love you most.

Because they have already learned something important: that bravery is not always about stepping forward. Sometimes, bravery is stepping back. Sometimes it is watching someone you love struggle, and resisting every instinct to rescue them, because you know that growth is happening there.

I know this because I have felt that struggle myself.

I remember one time standing at the bottom of a climbing wall, watching one of my children frozen halfway up. Perfectly safe, but utterly convinced they could go no further. They looked down at me with an expression that said, very clearly: surely this is the moment you make the uncomfortable thing disappear.

Every instinct in me wanted to intervene. But I didn’t. I just said:

You’re OK. Take your time. You’ve got this.

After some muttering and what I suspect was a brief negotiation with God, they found the next hold and kept going. It was only a few feet up a wall. But I remember thinking: this is what bravery sometimes looks like. Not removing the struggle, but staying with someone while they do it.

My son was brave in climbing… I had to be brave in not climbing it for him.

That kind of bravery rarely gets celebrated. We call it love. And one of the great acts of love is knowing when to step back.

But stepping back is not the end of your story today.

The cocoon opens. The struggle has done its work. The wings are there, and they are stronger than the butterfly knew.

And there is more in you than you know, too.

For the people who love you, bravery has often meant stepping back. But for you, from this day forward, it will often mean stepping forward. And in those moments, every instinct may tell you to stay where things are known and familiar.

But the life you want is rarely built there.

We rightly celebrate the person who goes first, who speaks first, risks first, and says the thing everyone else is still afraid to say. They are often the ones we remember. The spark, as it were.

But I am less interested in where you are going to university than in who you are going to become when you get there. 

I’m less interested in the job you land than in what you do with it. 

And I’m less interested in the life you build for yourself than in what you build it for.

And that is why I am asking you to be the second bravest.

Because it is the second bravest person who turns a moment into a movement.

History knows this, too.

Do you remember the name of that brave black woman who refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955? She’s known as the mother of the civil rights movement in the US.

Rosa Parks – that’s right. Her bravery sparked the Montgomery bus boycott and later helped end segregation. She started a movement.

What many people don’t realise, however, is that it was a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl who was arrested nine months earlier who was the first person to refuse to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus. Her name was Claudette Colvin⁴.

Apparently, when Claudette Colvin refused to move, she was thinking about a paper she had written at school that day about the Jim Crow laws that prohibited Black people from using dressing rooms in department stores. I suspect that would have made an interesting Extended Essay to read.

Claudette Colvin was brave first. Rosa Parks was brave second. Different bravery. But it was Rosa who sparked the movement.

That is the kind of bravery I want for you. Not always the bravery to go first — though sometimes life will ask that of you too — but the bravery to step forward early enough, before it is socially comfortable, to show that change is possible.

The world you are flying into needs that. It needs people brave enough to say that no cause makes the killing of children acceptable, and brave enough to say that we cannot keep treating the planet as though it were somebody else’s problem. 

And when someone says those things first, and the room goes quiet, and everyone is deciding what happens next, it will need people like you who will not leave them standing there alone.

That is the promise of a UWC education. Not that you leave here unafraid. But that you leave here unwilling to look away. That you recognise when it is time for you to step in.

Class of 2026, the cocoon has opened.

The struggle has done its work.

Your wings are there, and they are stronger than you know.

Now, go fly.

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Could I ask the Class of 2025 to please stand and turn to face your audience…

Distinguished guests, for the final time, let’s give them all a huge round of applause as they lead us out of this wonderful venue.  Have a great day, we’re looking forward to seeing you later.

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1. I got inspiration for this idea after reading this article by Adam Mastroainni in 2024. ↩︎
2. I’ll share this heartwarming video as soon as I get the link. ↩︎
3. Paulo Cohelo shares “Lesson of the Butterfly” here. ↩︎
4. Drawing from Wikipedia here, so I am sure that there is much more to this story. ↩︎