I sat where you are not so long ago, diploma in hand, equal parts excited and terrified. I left Manchester for college, dental school, and then orthodontic residency. I collected miles and lessons along the way, and then — I came back. I took over my father’s orthodontic practice, the one where I’d spent time playing with plaster as a child and filing charts as a teen during the summers. (Back when plaster and paper charts were still used in dental offices!)

Coming full circle taught me a few things I wish someone had told me at graduation. So here is the advice I would give my younger self, standing right where you are now.

Whatever you study or pursue next, you will be new at it — and that is a gift, not a weakness. Learning to work with my hands in small, dark, wet spaces was a huge challenge at first. Orthodontics is a craft; so is adulthood. Give yourself permission to learn without already knowing. The people who flourish are almost never the ones who had it all figured out at eighteen. They’re the ones who stayed curious.

I moved away and experienced new places, met people with different upbringings and worldviews, and I am better for it. But I also carried my community with me — the values my parents taught me, the kindness of neighbors and teachers who knew my name, the sense that who you are matters more than how impressive you appear. The wide world will offer you many versions of yourself to become. Choose the one that makes you genuinely proud.

I am an orthodontist. I could tell you my success is about science and technique, and, yes, those matter. But the truest reason patients trust me — the reason families have been coming to see my dad and me for two generations — is that I care about them as people. Whatever field you enter, you will find that the same is true. Invest in your relationships. Show up for people. Treat everyone with genuine warmth, not because it’s strategic, but because it is the right way to move through the world.

You do not need to have your life mapped out this weekend. I changed directions more than once. I second-guessed myself in graduate school. I made choices that looked unconventional from the outside. None of that was wasted. Every detour taught me something that a straight road wouldn’t have. Trust the process, even when (especially when) it feels messy.

To the Class of 2026: you were raised by a wonderful community, and this community is cheering for you — loudly and with tremendous pride. Go out and do the remarkable things you are capable of. And know that whatever roads you travel, there will always be a place here that is glad to have you back.

With warmth and great hopes for your journey,

Dr. Sogole Moin