Harry Potter author J.K Rowling’s commencement speech at the Annual Meeting of Harvard Alumni Association offers advice to overachievers and to dreamers who dares to dream.
Back in 2008, J.K. Rowling delivered an inspiring commencement speech at Harvard. In the first part of the speech, she spoke about the benefits of failure.
She talked about how, in her late twenties, all the fears her parents had for her had come to pass. She was jobless and already had a failed marriage behind her.
She argued that this was the catalyst she needed in order to truly change; that her failure gave her determination to succeed because she had already survived her greatest fear.
The second part of her speech dealt with the importance of imagination.
Rowling turned to a personal experience of working at the African research department in order to illustrate her point.
J.K. Rowling’s speech asserts that our ability to empathize with people whose experiences we haven’t shared is one of our most virtuous traits.
Author J.K Rowling Commencement Speech
If you’re a successful student or alumni, at some point your university might ask you to deliver a commencement address to a class of graduates.
Here’s how to succeed in that – and at other speeches, too: How to deliver a memorable graduation speech – Graduateland