‘My makes led to the best things in my life’: Taylor Swift

Singer-songwriter, Taylor Swift, earned an honours causa doctorate in Fine Arts and as the Commencement speaker for the Class of 2022, she made her audience both smile and tear up at the same time.

She begins, “I feel so proud to share this day with my fellow honorees Susan Hockfield and Felix Matos Rodriguez, who humble me with the ways they improve our world with their work. As for me, I’m…90% sure the main reason I’m here is because I have a song called “22.” And let me just say, I am elated to be here with you today as we celebrate and graduate New York University’s class of 2022.”
Her speech is the perfect mix of warmth and humour. Some of the most special moments of her speech also include the part where she gives her audience ‘life hacks’ to help her fellow graduates out.
“Life can be heavy, especially if you try to carry it all at once. Part of growing up and moving into new chapters of your life is about catch and release. What I mean that is, knowing what things to keep, and what things to release. You can’t carry all things, all grudges, all updates on your ex, all enviable promotions your school bully got at the hedge fund his uncle started. Decide what is yours to hold and let the rest go.” she says, explaining her first life hack.
She continues, “Secondly, learn to live alongside cringe. No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively. The cringe is unavoidable over a lifetime. Even the term cringe might someday be deemed “cringe.” I promise you, you’re probably doing or wearing something right now that you will look back on later and find revolting and hilarious. You can’t avoid it, so don’t try to.”
And “My experience has been that my makes led to the best things in my life. And being embarrassed when you mess up is part of the human experience. Getting back up, dusting yourself off, and seeing who still wants to hang out with you afterward and laugh about it? That’s a gift.”
Her speech includes a lot of other relatable moments that make her audience and leners around the world feel seen and understood. “I know the pressure of living your life through the lens of perfectionism. And I know that I’m talking to a group of perfections because you are here today graduating from NYU.”
Her candidness, openness and wisdom shine through every word.
“In your life, you will inevitably misspeak, trust the wrong people, underreact, overreact, hurt the people who didn’t deserve it, overthink, not think at all, self-sabotage, create a reality where only your experience exs, ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and others, deny any wrongdoing, not take the steps to make it right, feel very guilty, let the guilt eat at you, hit rock bottom, finally address the pain you caused, try to do better next time, rinse, repeat.  And I’m not gonna lie, these makes will cause you to lose things. I’m trying to tell you that losing things doesn’t just mean losing. A lot of the time, when we lose things, we gain things too.”
And being a role model for so many young people, her speech proves exactly why she is the one endowed with that title.
“I leave you with this: We are led our gut instincts, our intuition, our desires and fears, our scars and our dreams. And you will screw it up sometimes. So will I. And when I do, you will most likely read about it on the internet. Anyway…hard things will happen to us. We will recover. We will learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it.” she says in her speech.
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