Shonda Rhimes returned to her alma mater, Dartmouth College, to deliver a commencement speech to its 2014 graduating class.
Rhimes, who graduated from the Ivy League school in 1991, admitted that she was afraid to give the speech, but she did it because she likes a challenge.
Amid using the word “poop” seven times to illustrate how nervous she was (and to act as an effective way to address doing things that make us scared in life), Rhimes shared three lessons she learned since she graduated and went on to form her own world, “Shondaland,” from which “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Private Practice,” “Scandal,” and the upcoming “How to Get Away With Murder.”
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In the very practical speech, she admits to never dreaming about being a TV writer.
“You know what I wanted to be? I wanted to be Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison. That was my dream,” she revealed.
She would also say that years later, after becoming a TV writer, she would have dinner with her role model.
“All she wanted to talk about was ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’” She remembered, “That never would have happened if I hadn’t stopped dreaming of becoming her and gotten busy becoming myself.”
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Find out the three lessons Rhimes passed on during the speech in the video above. Her speech starts at 1:41 in.
