By
AP
Music superstar Taylor Swift received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from New York University on Wednesday and celebrated by blowing kisses as the crowd roared at a packed Yankee Stadium.
Wearing her trademark red lipstick and brand new honorary robe, Swift joked to the thousands of graduates in attendance: "I'm 90% sure the main reason I'm here is because I have a song called 22."
“I never got to have a normal college experience per se.
I went to public school through 10th grade and then I finished my education doing homework on the airport terminal floor
,” Swift said in her commencement address.
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The singer-songwriter, producer and director said she began her musical career at the age of 15, touring different radio stations across the country.
She today is an artist who has sold more than 100 million records and won album of the year at the 2021 Grammys for
Folklore
, becoming the first woman to win the category three times.
Her previous wins were in 2010 for
Fearless
and 2016 for
1989
.
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Swift winked at the crowd when Jason King of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music mentioned her re-recorded albums, including
Fearless
.
"Never be ashamed to try"
Swift gave some advice to the class of 2022, but cautioned that "in no way do I feel qualified to tell you what to do.
You have worked and fought and sacrificed and studied and dreamed your way here today.
I won't tell you what to do because no one likes that, but I'll give you tricks from when I was starting to dream of my career nonetheless."
“Never be ashamed to try.
Lack of effort is a myth,
” she said.
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Swift concluded her speech by saying that making mistakes is inevitable, but
“when hard things happen to us, we will bounce back, we will learn from it, we will be more resilient because of it.
As long as we are lucky enough to be breathing, we will inhale, inhale, take a deep breath and exhale.
I'm a doctor now, so I know how breathing works,” she joked.
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"I hope you know how proud I am to share this day with you," she said.
"We're doing this together, so let's keep dancing."