Taylor Swift received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from New York University on Wednesday and delivered the commencement address at the 2022 graduation ceremony at Yankee Stadium.
In her speech, the 11-time Grammy winner joked, “I’m 90% sure I’m here because I have a song called ’22′” and shared that she “never had normal college experience,” citing the fact that she only went to public high school until 10th grade so she could pursue her music career.
Swift also poked fun at herself, saying, “I would like to thank NYU for technically, on paper at least, making me a doctor. Not the type of doctor you would want to have in case emergency, unless your specific emergency was that you desperately needed to hear a song with a catchy hook and an intensely cathartic bridge section.”
Ahead of Wednesday’s ceremony, Swift’s fans began making offers to NYU students online, asking them to buy their debut tickets for a chance to see the superstar. Some fans offered hundreds of dollars for tickets to the ceremony, but university policy prohibited students from selling or auctioning their tickets and limited each student to two tickets.
For the lucky students in the class of 22 who got to see Swift, they got to hear her advice, including “never be ashamed to try. Lack of effort is a myth.”
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“I know it can be very difficult to figure out who to be and when. Who you are now and how to act to get where you want to go,” she said. “I have good news: it’s up to you. I also have terrifying news: it’s up to you.”
Swift concluded her speech by telling graduates that making mistakes is inevitable – but she said ‘when tough things happen to us, we will recover, we will learn from them, we will become more resilient because of it’.
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