Duke School Under the Oak Magazine, Fall 2020

A Special Message to
Duke School Grads
Speech by Isaiah Bryant ‘10
Photo Credit: AY Bryant,
Duke School Alumni Parent
I'd love to start by thanking Jenny and Dave for
inviting me to share this very special day with
all of you.
This is a momentous day and so congratulations
to you, Class of 2020. This is your very first
graduation of many, and the beginning of a
new chapter for each of you. I wanted to briefly
share with you some of the things that I've
carried with me, being in your seat a decade
ago.
After graduating from Duke School in 2010, Isaiah
Bryant attended Jordan High School and the North
Carolina School of Science and Mathematics. He
went on to study biomathematics, bioinformatics,
and computational biology at Brown University and
graduated with a B.S. degree in 2018. He is now a
product business analyst at Sema4 in New York, NY.
definitely not making bricks—they have
machines for that.
As we are all aware, Duke School is a privileged
place with a great many things to offer—
excellent teachers, fantastic curriculum, great
friends. But, I wanted to focus on something
today that has helped me in particular, which is
the power of a project.
For some of you, this will be your ninth year
showcasing your curiosity through projects.
And for some of you, it's the end of your first.
But for all of you, it certainly will not be the last.
I remember some of my favorite Duke School
projects over the years. I had a chance to
explore the butterfly lifecycle in real time.
I stepped into the shoes of a brick mason as
part of the Williamsburg project. And I used my
eighth grade project to learn how to play the
Spanish flamenco guitar.
Today though, I'm not a professional guitarist.
I'm not a butterfly entomologist, and I'm
And while I learned several things about music,
nature and history, the most important things I
learned from those projects are the things that I
didn't even know I was learning.
Those are the abilities that you've been working
so hard toward: the ability to ask the questions
that you're curious about—whether it's an
investigation into something new or applied to
a problem that you found; the ability to plan
a way to answer those questions; the ability
to seek help when you get stuck; the ability to
do something with the answers you discover;
the ability to share those answers and those
solutions with those around you; and most
importantly, the ability to reflect about the
process and make it better in the future.
It's those skills that are the ones that I've taken
with me from Duke School along the way. And
since, I've been working on projects that have
been the most important to me—projects with
38 UNDER THE OAK