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    Oprah Winfrey's Harvard Commencement Speech

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    Dharun Viswa
    In her Harvard commencement speech, Oprah Winfrey encouraged graduates to not see failures as a lack of success, but instead as opportunities to grow. She shared stories of people who overcame hardships through compassion and determination to inspire the graduates to use their education and influence to help others. By ending with examples of children fundraising to help those in need, Oprah called on the graduates to find purpose in applying their passions for the benefit of all people.

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    Oprah Winfrey's Harvard Commencement Speech

    Uploaded by

    Dharun Viswa
    98 views3 pages
    In her Harvard commencement speech, Oprah Winfrey encouraged graduates to not see failures as a lack of success, but instead as opportunities to grow. She shared stories of people who overcame hardships through compassion and determination to inspire the graduates to use their education and influence to help others. By ending with examples of children fundraising to help those in need, Oprah called on the graduates to find purpose in applying their passions for the benefit of all people.

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    In her Harvard commencement speech, Oprah Winfrey encouraged graduates to not see failures as a lack of success, but instead as opportunities to grow. She shared stories of people who overcame hardships through compassion and determination to inspire the graduates to use their education and influence to help others. By ending with examples of children fundraising to help those in need, Oprah called on the graduates to find purpose in applying their passions for the benefit of all people.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    98 views3 pages

    Oprah Winfrey's Harvard Commencement Speech

    Uploaded by

    Dharun Viswa
    In her Harvard commencement speech, Oprah Winfrey encouraged graduates to not see failures as a lack of success, but instead as opportunities to grow. She shared stories of people who overcame hardships through compassion and determination to inspire the graduates to use their education and influence to help others. By ending with examples of children fundraising to help those in need, Oprah called on the graduates to find purpose in applying their passions for the benefit of all people.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    Oprah Winfrey’s Harvard

    Commencement Speech

    In Oprah Winfrey’s Harvard Commencement Speech,


    like most graduation speeches aims to inspire the new
    graduates to enter the world with confidence and
    optimism. She encourages the graduates to force
    themselves to think the same way about failure as she
    does, or not see a lack of success as failure. For many, it
    will be the first time experiencing the real world, so she
    encourages all in the audience to not only redefine
    failure and hardship but also use their acquired
    knowledge for the benefit of all people. Oprah uses
    humor, optimism and inspiration, and life stories to help
    her audience understand how to define and overcome
    their own failures. In her call to action, Oprah talks
    about a little boy who became a quadruple amputee but
    overcame this struggle and joined his school lacrosse
    team. Upon hearing about the victims of the Boston
    Marathon, he created a fundraiser “to raise $1 million
    for other amputees”. She also mentions a 9-year-old girl
    who collected change “to help other people in need.” By
    including these similar anecdotes in her speech it shows
    that anyone can make a difference, even those without a
    lot of power or education behind them. This inspired
    those with a Harvard education to realize their potential
    and never settle until they have made a positive
    influence on another’s life. By ending her speech
    mentioning these two devoted children, she inspires all
    to find the innocence and compassion of a little kid and
    pour their passion for whatever they majored in. Using
    anecdotes, Oprah calls the Harvard class of 2013 to go
    out into the world and find a way to help people using
    their own influence. Having Harvard on their resume
    will act as an important calling card, Winfrey told the
    new graduates. But she urged each of them to build a
    resume that is not just a collection of titles, but is based
    on a “story that is really about your purpose, because
    when you inevitably stumble and find yourself stuck in
    a hole, that is the story that will get you out.”
    As Harvard graduates, she told the audience, they are
    able to understand the nation’s difficult challenges, such
    as a polarized electorate plagued by cynicism, the lack
    of a fair path to citizenship for 12 million
    undocumented immigrants, and a lagging public
    education system.

    She also mentioned to have more face-to face


    conversations with people you disagree with, she urged
    the Facebook and Twitter generation. Personal
    interactions are critical to keeping dialogue open, to
    helping people remember what it’s like to be in
    someone else’s shoes, and to validating others’ points
    of view.
    After every interview she conducts, Winfrey said,
    presidents and performers alike ask her the same
    question: “Was that OK?” What they really want to
    know, she said, is: “Did you hear me? Do you see me?
    Did what I say mean anything to you?”

    The end

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