Hi, I’m Taylor.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 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.
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. 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. 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. 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 homeschool 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, andmy 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.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?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.