[ Silence ]
>> President Hamlin, faculty, staff, honored guests, parents, students, family, and friends,
good morning and congratulations to the Dartmouth graduating class of 2014.
[ Applause ]
So, this is weird, me giving a speech.
In general I do not like giving speeches, giving a speech requires standing in front
of large groups of people while they look at you and it also requires talking.
I can do the standing part okay, but the you looking and the me talking, I am not a fan.
I get this overwhelming feeling of fear, terror really.
Dry mouth, heart beats super fast, everything gets a little bit in slow motion,
like I might pass out or die or poop my pants or something.
I mean don't worry, I'm not going to pass out or die or poop my pants, mainly because just
by telling you that it could happen I have somehow neutralized it as an option.
Like as if saying it out loud casts some kind of spell where now it cannot possibly happen.
Vomit, I could vomit.
See, vomiting is now also off the table, neutralized it, we're good.
Anyway, the point is, I do not like to give speeches.
I'm a writer, I'm a TV writer, I like to write stuff for other people to say.
I actually contemplated bringing Ellen Pompeo or Carrie Washington here to say my speech for me,
but my lawyer pointed out that when you drag someone across state lines
against their will the FBI comes looking for you [laughter].
So, I don't like giving speeches in general because of the fear and terror, but this speech,
this speech I really did not want to give.
A Dartmouth commencement speech, dry mouth, heart beats so, so fast,
everything in slow motion, pass out, die, poop.
Like it would be fine if this were 20 years ago,
if it were back in the day when I graduated from Dartmouth.
Twenty-three years ago I was sitting right where you are now, and I was listening
to Elizabeth Dole speak and she was great, she was calm
and she was confident and it was just different.
It felt like she was just talking to a group of people, like a fireside chat with friends,
just [inaudible] and like 9000 of her closest friends, because it was 20 years ago
and she was just talking to a group of people.
Now, 20 years later, this is no fireside chat.
It's not just you and me, this speech is filmed and streamed and tweeted and uploaded and PR has
like a whole site dedicated to commencement speeches,
a whole site just about commencement speeches.
There are sites that rate them and mock them and dissect them.
It's weird and stressful and kind of vicious if you're a [inaudible] perfectionist writer
who [inaudible] public in the first place [laughter].
When President Hamlin called me --
and by the way I would like to thank President Hamlin calling me way back in January,
thus giving me a full six months of terror and panic to enjoy.
When he called me I almost said no, almost.
Dry mouth, heart beats so, so fast, everything in slow motion, pass out, die, poop.
But I'm here, I'm going to do it, I'm doing it.
You know why, because I like a challenge, and because this year I made myself a promise
that I was going to do the stuff that terrifies me and because 20 plus years ago
when I was trudging uphill from the river cluster through all that snow to get
to the [inaudible] for play rehearsal, I never imagined that I would one day be standing here,
at the old pine lector, staring out at all of you about to throw down on some wisdom
in the Dartmouth commencement address [cheering].
So, you know, yeah, moments.
Also, I'm here because I really, really wanted some EBA's.
Okay, I want to say right now that every single time someone asked me what I was going to talk
about in this speech I would boldly and confidently tell them
that I had all kinds of wisdom to share.
I was lying.
I feel wildly unqualified to give you advice.
There is no wisdom here.
So, all I can do is talk about some stuff that could maybe be useful to you
from one Dartmouth grad to another.
Some stuff that would never show
up in a [inaudible] voice over or a [inaudible] monologue.
Some stuff that I probably shouldn't be telling you here now, because of the uploading
and the streaming and the tweeting.
But I'm going to pretend that it is 20 years ago, that it's just you and me,
that we're having a fireside chat.
Screw the outside world and what they think, I've already said poop like five times anyway,
things are getting real up in here [laughter].
Okay, wait, before I talk to you, I want to talk to your parents, because the other thing
about it being 20 years later is that I'm a mother now,
so I know some things, some very different things.
I have three girls, I've been to the show.
You don't know what that means what your parents do.
You think this day is all about you, but your parents, the people who raised you,
the people who endured you, they potty trained you, they taught you to read,
they've survived you as a teenager, they have suffered 21 years
and not once did they kill you [laughter].
This day, you call it your graduation day, but this day is not about you.
This is their day, this is the day they take back their lives [applause].
This is the day they earn their freedom.
This day is their independence day.
So, parents I salute you and as I have an eight month old,
I hope to join your ranks of freedom in 20 years.
Okay, so here comes the real deal part of the speech or you might call it some random stuff --
some random [inaudible] things I should know before I graduate.
You ready?
When people give these kinds of speeches, they usually tell you all kinds of wise
and heartfelt things, they have wisdom to impart, they have lessons to share.
They tell you, follow your dreams, listen to your spirit, change the world, make your mark,
find your inner voice and make it sing, embrace failure, dream, dream and dream big,
as a matter of fact dream and don't stop dreaming until all of your dreams come true.
I think that's crap.
I think a lot of people dream, and while they are busy dreaming the really happy people,
the really successful people, the really interesting,
engaged, powerful people are busy doing.
The dreamers, they stare at the sky and they make plans, and they hope,
and they talk about it endlessly, and they start a lot of sentences with I want to be or I wish.
I want to be a writer, I wish I could travel around the world and they dream of it.
The button up ones meet for cocktails and they brag about their dreams
and the hippie ones have vision words and they meditate about their dreams and maybe you write
in journals about your dreams or discuss it endlessly with your best friend
or your girlfriend or your mother and it feels really good.
You're talking about it and you're planning it kind of, you are blue skying your life
and that is what everyone says you should be doing, right?
I mean that's what Oprah and Bill Gates did to get successful, right?
No. Dreams are lovely but they're just dreams fleeting, [inaudible], pretty.
But dreams do not come true just because you dream them,
its hard work that makes things happen, it's hard work that creates change.
So, lesson one I guess is ditch the dream and be a doer not a dreamer.
Maybe you know exactly what it is you dream of being or maybe you're paralyzed
because you have no idea what your passion is.
The truth is, it doesn't matter, you don't have to know, you just have to keep moving forward,
just to keep doing something, seizing the next opportunity,
staying open to trying something new.
It doesn't have to fit your vision of the perfect job or the perfect life.
Perfect is boring and dreams are not real, just do, So you think, I wish I could travel.
Great, sell your crappy car, buy a ticket to Bangkok and go, right now, I'm serious.
You want to be a writer?
[Inaudible] so start writing.
You don't have a job?
Get one, any job.
Don't sit at home waiting for the magical opportunity, who are you, Prince William?
No, get a job, go to work [laughter].
Do something until you can do something else.
I did not dream of being a TV writer, never, not once when I was here in the hallowed halls
of the Ivy League did I say to myself, self I want to write TV.
You know what I wanted to be?
I wanted to be Nobel prize winning author Toni Morrison, that was my dream.
I blue skied it like crazy, I dreamed and dreamed,
and while I was dreaming I was living in my sister's basement.
Dreamers often end up living in the basements of relatives, FYI.
Anyway, there I was in that basement and I was dreaming
of being Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison and guess what?
I couldn't be Nobel Prize winning author Tony Morrison, because Toni Morrison already had
that job and she wasn't interested in giving it up.
So, one day I was sitting in that basement and I read an article that said --
it was in the New York Times and it said it was harder to get into USC film school
than it was to get into Harvard Law School, and I thought I could dream
about being Toni Morrison or I could do.
At film school I'd start an entirely new way of telling stories, a way that suited me,
a way that brought me joy, a way that flipped the switch in my brain
and changed the way I saw the world.
Years later I had dinner with Tony Morrison and all she wanted to talk
about was Grey's Anatomy [laughter].
That never would've happened if I hadn't stopped dreaming
of becoming her and gotten busy becoming myself.
Lesson two --
[ Applause ]
-- lesson two is that tomorrow is going to be the worst day ever for you.
When I graduated from Dartmouth that day in 1991, when I was sitting right where you are
and I was staring up at Elizabeth Dole speaking,
I will admit that I have no idea what she was saying, couldn't even listen to her.
Not because I was overwhelmed or emotional or any of that,
but because I had a serious hangover [laughter], like an epic, painful hangover.
And here is where I might want to apologize to President Hamlin because I know
that you are trying to build a better and more responsible Dartmouth and I applaud you
and I admire you and it is very necessary,
but I was really freaking drunk the night before [laughter].
And the reason I'd been so drunk the night before, the reason I'd done upside
down margarita shots at Bones Gate, was because I knew that after graduation I was going
to take off my cap and gown and my parents were going to pack my stuff in the car
and I was going to go home and probably never come back to Hanover again.
And even if I did come back it wouldn't matter because it wouldn't be the same
because I didn't live here anymore.
On my graduation day I was grieving.
My friends were celebrating, they were partying, they were excited, so happy, no more school,
no more books, no more teachers, dirty looks.
And I was like, are you freaking kidding me?
You get all the froyo you want here, the gym is free, the apartments in Manhattan are smaller
than my suite in North Mass., who cared if there was no place to get my hair done.
All my friends are here, I have a theatre company here, I was grieving.
I knew enough about how the world works, enough about how adulthood plays out to be grieving.
Here's where I'm going to embarrass myself
and make you all feel maybe a little bit better about yourselves.
I literally laid down on the floor of my dorm room
and cried while my mother packed up my room [laughter].
I refused to help her like, hell no, I won't go, I non-violent protested leaving here,
like a protestor only without the chanting, it was really pathetic.
If none of you lay down on a dirty hardwood floor and cry today while your mommy packs
up your room, you are already starting your careers out ahead of me [laughter].
You are winning.
The thing I really felt like I knew was that the real world sucks and it is scary.
College is awesome, you're special here, you're in the Ivy League, you are at the pinnacle
of your life's goals at this point.
Your entire life up until now has been about getting into some great college
and then graduating from that college and now today you have done it.
The moment you get out of college you think you're going to take the world by storm.
All doors will be open to you, it's going to be laughter
and diamonds and [inaudible] left and right.
What really happens is that to the rest of the world you are now at the bottom of the heap.
Maybe you're an intern, possibly a low paid assistant, and it is awful.
The real world, it sucked so badly for me, I felt like a loser all of the time
and more than a loser I felt lost.
Which brings me to clarify lesson number two, tomorrow is going to be the worst day ever
for you, but don't be an asshole [laughter].
Here's the thing, yes, it is hard out there, but hard is relative.
I come from a middle class family, my parents are academics,
I was born after the Civil Rights Movement, I was a toddler during the Women's Movement,
I live in the United States of America, all of which means I'm allowed to own my freedom,
my rights, my voice and my uterus and I went to Dartmouth and I earned an Ivy League degree.
The lint in my naval that accumulated while I gazed at it, as I suffered from feeling lost
about how hard it was to not feel special after graduation,
that naval lint was embarrassed for me [laughter].
Elsewhere in the world girls are harmed, simply because they want to get an education,
slavery still exists, children still die from malnutrition.
In this country we lose more people to handgun violence than any other nation in the world,
sexual assault against women in America is pervasive and disturbing
and continues at an alarming rate.
So, yes, tomorrow may suck for you, as it did for me, but as you stare at the lint
in your naval have some perspective, we are incredibly lucky.
We have been given a gift.
An incredible education has been placed before us.
We ate all the froyo we could get our hands on, we skiid, we had EBA's at 1:00 a.m.,
we built bonfires and got frostbite, and had all the free treadmills,
we beer ponged our asses off.
Now it's time to pay it forward.
Find a cause you love, it's okay to pick just one, you're going to need to spend a lot of time
out in the real world trying to figure out how to stop feeling
like a lost loser, so, one cause is good.
Devote some time every week to it.
Oh, and while we are discussing this, let me say a thing.
A hashtag is not helping, hashtag yesallwomen, hashtag takebackthenight, hashtag notallmen,
hashtag bringbackourgirls,
hashtag stoppretending hashtags arethesame asdoing something.
Hashtags are very pretty on Twitter, I love them, I will hashtag myself
into next week, but a hashtag is not a movement.
Hashtag does not make you Dr. King, hashtag does not change anything, it's a hashtag.
It's you sitting on your butt, typing on your computer and then going back to bed
and watching your favorite show, I do it all the time, for me its Game of Thrones [laughter].
Volunteer some hours, focus on something outside yourself,
devote a slice of your energies towards making the world suck less every week.
Some people suggest doing this to increase your sense of wellbeing.
Some say it's good karma.
I say that it will allow you to remember that whether you are a legacy or the first
in your family to go to college the air you are breathing right now is rare air,
appreciate it, don't be an asshole.
Lesson number three.
[ Applause ]
So, you're out there and you're giving back and you're doing, and it's working and life is good,
you are making it, you are a success and its exciting and its great,
at least it is for me, I love my life.
I have three TV shows at work and I have three daughters at home
and it's all amazing and I am truly happy.
And people are constantly asking me, how do you do it?
And usually they have this sort of admiring and amazed tone, Shonda, how do you do it all?
Like I'm full of magical magic and special wisdomness or something, how do you do it all?
And I usually just smile and say, like, I'm really organized,
or if I'm feeling slightly [inaudible] I say I have a lot of help,
and those things are true, but they also are not true.
And this is the thing I really want to say to all of you, not just to the women out there,
although this will matter to you women a great deal as you enter the workforce,
and try to figure out how to juggle the work and family, but it will also matter to the men
who I think increasingly are also trying to figure out how to juggle work and family,
and frankly, if you aren't trying to figure it out men of Dartmouth, you should be.
Fatherhood is being redefined at a lighting fast rate and you do not want to be a dinosaur.
So, women and men of Dartmouth, as you try to figure out the impossible task of juggling work
and family and you hear over and over and over again that you just need a lot of help,
you just need to be organized, you just need to try a little bit harder.
As a very successful woman, a single mother of three,
who constantly gets asked the question, how do you do it all?
For once I'm going to answer that question with 100% honesty here for you now,
because it's just us, because it's our fireside chat,
because somebody has to tell you the truth.
Shonda, how do you do it all?
The answer is this, I don't.
Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life,
that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life.
If I am killing it on a scandal script for work,
I am probably missing bath and story time at home.
If I am at home sewing my kid's Halloween costumes,
I am probably blowing off a re-write I was supposed to turn in.
If I am accepting a prestigious award, I am missing my baby's first swim lesson.
If I'm at my daughter's debut in her school musical,
I am missing Sandra O's last scene ever being filmed at Grey's Anatomy .
If I am succeeding at one I am inevitably failing at the other, that is the trade off.
That is the [inaudible] bargain one makes with the devil that comes
with being a powerful working woman who is also a powerful mother.
You never feel 100% okay, you never get your sea legs, you are always a little nauseous,
something is always lost, something is always missing.
And yet, I want my daughters to see me and know me as a woman who works,
I want that example set for them.
I like how proud they are when they come to my offices and know that they come to Shonda land.
There is a land and it is named after their mother [laughter],
in their world mothers run companies, in their world mothers own Thursday nights,
in their world mother's work and I am a better mother for it.
The woman I am because I get to run Shonda land, because I get to write all day,
because I get to spend my days making things up, that woman is a better person
and a better mother because that woman is happy, that woman is fulfilled, that woman is whole.
I wouldn't want them to know the me who didn't get to do this all day long.
I wouldn't want them to get to know the me who wasn't doing.
So, lesson number three is that anyone who tells you they're doing it all perfectly is a liar.
Okay.
[ Applause ]
I fear I've scared you or been a little bit bleak and that was not my intention.
It is my hope that you run out of here excited,
leaning forward into the wind ready to take the world by storm.
That would be so very fabulous, for you to do what everyone expects of you,
for you to just go be exactly the picture of hardcore Dartmouth awesome.
My point I think is that it is okay if you don't.
My point is that it can be scary to graduate, that you can lay on the hardwood floor
of your dorm room and cry while your mom packs up your stuff.
That you can have an impossible dream to be Tony Morrison that you have to let go of.
That every day you can feel like you might be failing at work or at your home life,
that the real world is hard and yet you can still wake up every single morning and go,
I have three amazing kids and I have created work I am proud of,
and I absolutely love my life and I would not trade it for anyone else's life ever.
You can still wake up one day and find yourself living a life you've never even imagined
dreaming of.
My dreams did not come true, but I worked really hard and I ended up building an empire
out of my imagination, so, my dreams can suck it [laughter].
You can wake up one day and find that you're interesting and powerful and engaged.
You can wake up one day and find that you are a doer.
You can be sitting right where you are now looking up at me probably,
hopefully I pray for you, hung over, and then 20 years from now you can wake up and find yourself
in the Hanover Inn full of fear and terror
because you are going to give the commencement speech.
Dry mouth, heart beats so, so fast, everything in slow motion, pass out, die, poop.
Which one of you will it be?
Which member of the 2014 class is going to find themselves standing up here?
Because, I checked, and it's pretty rare for an alum to speak here, pretty much just me
and Robert Frost and Mr. Rogers, which is crazy awesome [laughter].
So, which one of you is going to make it up here?
And I really hope that it's one of you, seriously.
When it happens, you'll know what this feels like; dry mouth, heart beats so,
so fast, everything moves in slow motion.
Graduates, every single one of you be proud
of your accomplishments, make good on your diplomas.
You are no longer students, you are no longer works in progress,
you are now citizens of the real world.
You have a responsibility to become a person worthy of joining and contributing to society
because who you are today that's who you are.
So, be brave, be amazing, be worthy, and every single time you get a chance stand up in front
of people, let them see you, speak, be heard, go ahead and have the dry mouth,
let your heart beat so, so fast, watch everything move in slow motion.
So what, you what, you pass out, you die, you poop?
No, and this is really the only lesson you'll ever need to know, you take it in,
you breathe this rare air, you feel alive, you be yourself,
you truly, finally always be yourself.
Thank You.
Good luck.
[ Applause ] ------------------------------c11a5f166b16--