Commencement Speaker Dr. Nicholas DeLuca III: What We Couldn’t Know Then

By: Staff Writer | May 11, 2026 | 8 min. read |

Nicholas DeLuca III, M.D./M.B.A., reflects on medicine as a transformative experience, urging humility, shared decision-making and lifelong camaraderie as the Class of 2026 begins residency.

Dr. Krisna Maddy speaks from the stage of the Miller School 2024 commencement ceremony

Nicholas DeLuca III, a graduate of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s M.D./M.B.A. program, was selected as the Class of 2026’s student commencement speaker for his exceptional academic performance, leadership and service. He earned a first-quartile class rank, excelled on USMLE Step 2 and was inducted into both the Gold Humanism Honor Society and Alpha Omega Alpha. His research during medical school explored AI-enabled screening, diabetic retinopathy and eye-care access, leading to publications in JAMA Ophthalmology and Current Ophthalmology Reports. Dr. DeLuca will continue his training as a resident physician at Wills Eye Hospital. Below is his address to the Class of 2026, delivered on May 9, 2026.

For the graduates in the audience, and for our gracious guests already in the profession, how many of you think you made a purely rational choice to become a doctor?

We like to think we did, right? We weighed the benefits. We tallied up the volunteering, the research, the service hours, and told ourselves we knew exactly what to expect. Some of us grew up with parents in medicine. I watched my own dad practice ophthalmology, so I figured I had a pretty clear map of the territory.

When I asked that question just now, you might have shifted in your seats a little. Is he going to talk about burnout? Is this a lecture on the grim realities of the profession? I promise you, it’s not. Instead, I want to invite you to consider an idea I first heard as an undergrad, but didn’t fully understand until right now. It’s from a philosopher named L.A. Paul. She writes about the overwhelming nature of “transformative experiences.” Her core argument is simple. You cannot fully understand a truly transformative choice until you’ve already made it.

You can read the driver’s manual. But until you get behind the wheel, you don’t know what driving means to you. Writing about the leap into parenthood, she says, “Like the experience of seeing color for the first time, the experience of having a child is not projectable.”

I think we can all find something familiar in those words today. When we first chose this field, when we first put on those white coats, could we have possibly known what we would feel on our worst and best days on rotations? How did it actually feel to see your own suture hold in a patient? What was it really like to carry the weight of a family’s joy or sit quietly in the room with their despair?

In an era where trust in our profession is eroding, taking the time to be a little humbler about our own rationality might just be the thing that helps us guide our patients through their own transformative experiences.
Dr. Nicholas DeLuca III

Choosing medicine, it turns out, alters the very way you perceive, categorize and comprehend the world. You can be a medical student obsessed with data. You can look at all the outcomes. But no matter what you did before you went through the fire of this training, you had not yet seen color for the first time. There is a “before” medical school and an “after.” We have tasted something bitter. We have heard the music.

So let me pause here. It seems we made neither a rational nor an irrational choice, but perhaps a choice with no import for rationality, an a-rational decision.

I know, I know. We are the paragons of data! I can hear the mumblings about the pyramid of evidence and the demands for randomized controlled trials right now. But it is true. We made a rational choice.

And honestly? How humbling is that?

As we go forth into residency, whether you’re heading off to OB,GYN, IM, dermatology or any of the wonderful medical specialties, I think understanding our own blind leap should color how we view our patients’ choices. How can we participate in true shared decision-making when our patients are staring down the barrel of their own unknowns? In an era where trust in our profession is eroding, taking the time to be a little humbler about our own rationality might just be the thing that helps us guide our patients through their own transformative experiences.

From our very first standardized patients to our last health fairs, I have had the privilege of experiencing profound growth alongside you. Do you remember what it felt like when you first heard yourself successfully guiding a first- or second-year student? Here at the Miller School of Medicine, we were gifted a foundation that truly sets us apart. But more than the clinical knowledge, we were gifted this fraternity. We enter a promise of lifelong companionship with the people sitting next to you right now, and for some of us, future spouses.

When we are called to stand together in the future, I hope we remember the little things that drew us together in the first place.

Like the first year, when a few of us decided to beat the hotel prices and camp out on the beach for the Keys health fair. Great idea in theory. In practice, the wind was so fearsome we had to tie our mini-tent town to our cars just to keep it from blowing into the ocean. The Key deer that decided to bed down on my tent ended up providing my only warmth that night. But the next morning? We rose on time. We performed our duties smiling, excited and with kindness. That was my first real taste of medical camaraderie.

For those of you who know me well, you know I was afflicted by a medical crisis during second year. It was my classmates who propped me up. These last few months can feel isolating as we scatter into our different specialties, but I implore you to remember these roots. There will be times when we must rise together to support our communities, our patients and ourselves.

Finally, thank you to my mentors, my family and the faculty. Without your careful guidance, I would not be here today.

Years ago, when I was applying to medical school, an advisor told me not to write my true “why medicine” in my essay. I thought it would be fun to revisit a draft to see how close those old feelings lie to my current ones. I’ll let you be the judge.

“At the interspace of mortality, doctors hold their profession with discrimination towards none and commitment to all. I cannot imagine a life in which I am unable to step in when others are in need. I want to take over the doctor’s watch, to hold open that space between death and life, and to ferry back those of us who have taken a fall.”

Thank you, Class of 2026. Let’s get to work.