Full transcript Taylor Swift’s NYU Commencement Speech:

[02:51:27 - 02:52:59]
Last time I was in a stadium this size, I was dancing in heels and wearing a glittery leotard.
This outfit is much more comfortable.
I’d like to say a huge thank you to NYU ‘s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Bill Berkeley
and all the trustees and members of the board, NYU’s President Andrew Hamilton, Provost
Katherine Fleming, and the faculty and alumni here today who have made this day possible. I
feel so proud to share this day with my fellow honourees 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.
[02:53:08 – 02:54:27]
Not a single one of us here today has done it alone. We are each a patchwork quilt of those
who have loved us, those who have believed in our futures, those who showed us empathy
and kindness or told us the truth even when it wasn’t easy to hear. Those who told us we
could do it when there was absolutely no proof of that. Someone read stories to you and
taught you to dream and offered up some moral code of right and wrong for you to try and
live by. Someone tried their best to explain every concept in this insanely complex world to
the child that was you, as you asked a bazillion questions like ‘how does the moon work’ and
‘why can we eat salad but not grass.’ And maybe they didn’t do it perfectly. No one ever can.
Maybe they aren’t with us anymore, and in that case I hope you’ll remember them today. If
they are here in this stadium, I hope you’ll find your own way to express your gratitude for
all the steps and missteps that have led us to this common destination.
[02:54:36 – 02:55:23]
I know that words are supposed to be my ‘thing’, but I will never be able to find the words to
thank my mom and my dad, and my brother, Austin, for the sacrifices they made every day so
that I could go from singing in coffee houses to standing up here with you all today because
no words would ever be enough. To all the incredible parents, family members, mentors,
teachers, allies, friends and loved ones here today who have supported these students in their
pursuit of educational enrichment, let me say to you now: Welcome to New York. It’s been
waiting for you.
[02:55:30 – 02:56:12]
I’d like to thank NYU for making me technically, on paper at least, a doctor. Not the type of
doctor you would want around in the case of an emergency, unless your specific emergency
was that you desperately needed to hear a song with a catchy hook and an intensely cathartic
bridge section. Or if your emergency was that you needed a person who can name over 50
breeds of cats in one minute.
[02:56:19 – 02:56:51]
I never got to have the normal college experience, per se. I went to public high school until
tenth grade and finished my education doing home-school work on the floors of airport
terminals. Then I went out on the road on a radio tour, which sounds incredibly glamorous
but in reality it consisted of a rental car, motels, and my mom and I pretending to have loud
mother daughter fights with each other during boarding so no one would want the empty seat
between us on Southwest.
[02:56:55 – 02:57:28]
As a kid, I always thought I would go away to college, imagining the posters I’d hang on the
wall of my freshmen dorm. I even set the ending of my music video for my song “Love
Story” at my fantasy imaginary college, where I meet a male model reading a book on the
grass and with one single glance, we realize we had been in love in our past lives. Which is
exactly what you guys all experienced at some point in the last 4 years, right?
[02:57:35 – 02:58:42]
But I really can’t complain about not having a normal college experience to you because you
went to NYU during a global pandemic, being essentially locked into your dorms or having
to do classes over Zoom. Everyone in college during normal times stresses about test scores,
but on top of that you also had to pass like a thousand COVID tests. I imagine the idea of a
normal college experience was all you wanted too. But in this case you and I both learned
that you don’t always get all the things in the bag that you selected from the menu in the
delivery service that is life. You get what you get. And as I would like to say to you, you
should be very proud of what you’ve done with it. Today you leave New York University and
then you go out into the world searching for what’s next. And so will I.
[02:58:53 – 02:59:37]
So as a rule, I try not to give anyone unsolicited advice unless they ask for it. I’ll go into this
more later. I guess I have been officially solicited in this situation, to impart whatever
wisdom I might have and tell you the things that helped me in my life so far. Please bear in
mind that I, in no way, feel qualified to tell you what to do. You’ve worked and struggled and
sacrificed and studied and dreamed your way here today and so, you know what you’re
doing. You’ll do things differently than I did them and for different reasons.
[02:59:39 – 02:59:57]
So I won’t tell you what to do because no one likes that. I will, however, give you some life
hacks I wish I knew when I was starting out my dreams of a career, and navigating life, love,
pressure, choices, shame, hope and friendship.
[02:59:59 – 03:01:02]
The first of which is…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 by 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. Oftentimes
the good things in your life are lighter anyway, so there’s more room for them. One toxic
relationship can outweigh so many wonderful, simple joys. You get to pick what your life has
time and room for. Be discerning.
[03:01:05 – 03:01:39]
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. Cringe is unavoidable over a
lifetime. Even the term ‘cringe’ might someday be deemed ‘cringe.’
[03:01:41 – 03:02:14]
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. For example, I
had a phase where, for the entirety of 2012, I dressed like a 1950s housewife. But you know
what? I was having fun. Trends and phases are fun. Looking back and laughing is fun.
[03:02:16 – 03:03:26]
And while we’re talking about things that make us squirm but really shouldn’t, I’d like to say
that I’m a big advocate for not hiding your enthusiasm for things. It seems to me that there is
a false stigma around eagerness in our culture of ‘unbothered ambivalence.’ This outlook
perpetuates the idea that it’s not cool to ‘want it.’ That people who don’t try hard are
fundamentally more chic than people who do. And I wouldn’t know because I have been a lot
of things but I’ve never been an expert on ‘chic.’ But I’m the one who’s up here so you have
to listen to me when I say this: Never be ashamed of trying. Effortlessness is a myth. The
people who wanted it the least were the ones I wanted to date and be friends with in high
school. The people who want it most are the people I now hire to work for my company.
[03:03:33 – 03:04:28]
I started writing songs when I was twelve and since then, it’s been the compass guiding my
life, and in turn, my life guided my writing. Everything I do is just an extension of my
writing, whether it’s directing videos or a short film, creating the visuals for a tour, or
standing on stage performing. Everything is connected by my love of the craft, the thrill of
working through ideas and narrowing them down and polishing it all up in the end. Editing.
Waking up in the middle of the night and throwing out the old idea because you just thought
of a newer, better one. A plot device that ties the whole thing together. There’s a reason they
call it a hook. Sometimes a string of words just ensnares me and I can’t focus on anything
until it’s been recorded or written down.
[03:04:30 – 03:05:45]
As a songwriter I’ve never been able to sit still, or stay in one creative place for too long. I’ve
made and released 11 albums and in the process, I’ve switched genres from country to pop to
alternative to folk. This might sound like a very songwriter-centric line of discussion but in a
way, I really do think we are all writers. And most of us write in a different voice for
different situations. You write differently in your Instagram stories than you do your senior
thesis. You send a different type of email to your boss than you do your best friend from
home. We are all literary chameleons and I think it’s fascinating. It’s just a continuation of
the idea that we are so many things, all the time. And I know it can be really overwhelming
figuring out who to be, and when. Who you are now and how to act in order to get where you
want to go. I have some good news: It’s totally up to you. I also have some terrifying news:
It’s totally up to you.
[03:05:47 – 03:07:37]
I said to you earlier that I don’t ever offer advice unless someone asks me for it, and now I’ll
tell you why. As a person who started my very public career at the age of 15, it came with a
price. And that price was years of unsolicited advice. Being the youngest person in every
room for over a decade meant that I was constantly being issued warnings from older
members of the music industry, the media, interviewers, executives. This advice often
presented itself as thinly veiled warnings. See, I was a teenager in the public eye at a time
when our society was absolutely obsessed with the idea of having perfect young female role
models. It felt like every interview I did included slight barbs by the interviewer about me
one day ‘running off the rails.’ That meant a different thing to everyone person said it me. So
I became a young adult while being fed the message that if I didn’t make any mistakes, all the
children of America would grow up to be perfect angels. However, if I did slip up, the entire
earth would fall off its axis and it would be entirely my fault and I would go to pop star jail
forever and ever. It was all centered around the idea that mistakes equal failure and
ultimately, the loss of any chance at a happy or rewarding life.
[03:07:39 – 03:08:23]
This has not been my experience. My experience has been that my mistakes 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.
The times I was told no or wasn’t included, wasn’t chosen, didn’t win, didn’t make the cut…
looking back, it really feels like those moments were as important, if not more crucial, than
the moments I was told ‘yes.’
[03:08:25 – 03:10:22]
Not being invited to the parties and sleepovers in my hometown made me feel hopelessly
lonely, but because I felt alone, I would sit in my room and write the songs that would get me
a ticket somewhere else. Having label executives in Nashville tell me that only 35-year-old
housewives listen to country music and there was no place for a 13-year-old on their roster
made me cry in the car on the way home. But then I’d post my songs on my MySpace and
yes, MySpace, and would message with other teenagers like me who loved country music,
but just didn’t have anyone singing from their perspective. Having journalists write in-depth,
oftentimes critical, pieces about who they perceive me to be made me feel like I was living in
some weird simulation, but it also made me look inward to learn about who I actually am.
Having the world treat my love life like a spectator sport in which I lose every single game
was not a great way to date in my teens and twenties, but it taught me to protect my private
life fiercely. Being publicly humiliated over and over again at a young age was excruciatingly
painful but it forced me to devalue the ridiculous notion of minute by minute, ever fluctuating
social relevance and likability. Getting cancelled on the internet and nearly losing my career
gave me an excellent knowledge of all the types of wine.
[03:10:29 – 03:12:14]
I know I sound like a consummate optimist, but I’m really not. I lose perspective all the time.
Sometimes everything just feels completely pointless. I know the pressure of living your life
through the lens of perfectionism. And I know that I’m talking to a group of perfectionists
because you are here today graduating from NYU. And so this may be hard for you to hear:
In your life, you will inevitably misspeak, trust the wrong people, under-react, overreact, hurt
the people who didn’t deserve it, overthink, not think at all, self-sabotage, create a reality
where only your experience exists, 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 mistakes 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.
[03:12:16 – 03:14:48]
Now you leave the structure and framework of school and chart your own path. Every choice
you make leads to the next choice which leads to the next, and I know it’s hard to know
sometimes which path to take. There will be times in life when you need to stand up for
yourself. Times when the right thing is to back down and apologize. Times when the right
thing is to fight, times when the right thing is to turn and run. Times to hold on with all you
have and times to let go with grace. Sometimes the right thing to do is to throw out the old
schools of thought in the name of progress and reform. Sometimes the right thing to do is to
listen to the wisdom of those who have come before us. How will you know what the right
choice is in these crucial moments? You won’t.
How do I give advice to this many people about their life choices, I will not. The scary news
has you’re on your own now. But the cool news is you're on your own now. I leave you with
this, we are led by our gut instincts, our intuition, our desires, and fears, our scholars in our
dreams. You'll screw it up sometimes. So will I. And when I do you will most likely read
about it on the inner way internet. Anyway, hard things will happen to us. We'll recover. Will
learn from it, will grow more resilient because of it. And as long as we are fortunate enough
to be breathing, we will breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out. I'm doctor
now, so I know how breathing works. I hope you know how proud I am to share this day with
you. We're doing this together, so let's just keep dancing like we're the class of 22.