Taylor Swift Speaks At NYU Class Of 2022 Commencement: ‘Live Alongside Cringe’

Taylor Swift matched thousands of NYU graduates today who flooded to Yankee Stadium to graduate as part of the huge university’s class of 2022. Swift was this year’s Commencement Speaker and gave a 20-minute speech on Wednesday afternoon giving her support for the new grads and sharing some “life hacks” she has picked up as a pop music superstar. These nuggets of wisdom included a sober reminder that “life can be heavy,” and the funnier sentiment of advising the NYU grads to “learn to live alongside cringe.”

Swift began her speech in good humor with the joke, “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.” She also worked in a joke about her discography at the beginning of the speech, saying “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.

Swift first related hearing commencement speeches to all the “unsolicited advice” she received from people when beginning her music career at the age of 15. She said she was initially afraid of mistakes, but realized, “My experience has been that my mistakes led to the best things in my life.”

The singer’s speech struck a great balance between being uplifting, encouraging, and funny, but also realistic about the challenges ahead of these grads and the fact that she has no perfect answers for everyone.

“We are led by our gut instincts,” Swift said towards the end of her speech. “Our intuition, our desires, our fears, and our dreams. And you will screw it up sometimes. So will I. And when I do, you will most likely read about it on the internet. Anyway… hard things will happen to us. We will recover. We will learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it.”

You can watch Swift’s full speech on the NYU YouTube channel below: