Jenna Ellis

Mrs.Godfrey

Hon Leadership

13 September 2019

OW​ ​Commencement​ ​Speech​ ​Questions​ :

1. What are the three main points that Oprah shares in her speech? ​Oprah’s three main

points that she shares have to do with feelings, with failure, and with finding happiness.

The three main points that Oprah shares in her speech were to never lose sight of your

goals and be driven to achieve them, always push yourself to do the best that you can do

by continuously raising the bar, and there is no such thing as failure because we all make

mistakes and learn from them. Oprah mentions that one of the secrets to getting ahead in

life is being open to all of life’s lessons. If it doesn’t feel right, then don’t do it. Harness

your power to your passion. What matters most in on the inside, people’s integrity,

quality, and beauty.

2. What values emerge from the lessons she shares and the stories she highlights in the

speech that give you a sense of her personal integrity and/or leadership stature?

Some of the values that emerged from the lesson was that failure is just life trying to

move us in another direction, of course it is okay to feel down when we make mistakes

and mess up, but that’s just part of being human. Everyone makes mistakes but the key to

life is figuring out our internal moral, emotional g.p.s that will tell us which way to go.

Oprah also mentions that even though graduating from such a prestigious university and
that it is accounted for when CEOs look over your resume, it’s not all that they look at.

Your resume shouldn’t be a long rattled list of what you want to be but rather who you

want to be, it should also explain what you want to accomplish and why. Oprah shares

the story of when she first started working as a nightly news anchor on television and her

boss told her that they didn’t like her name of the way she looked, and that’s when Oprah

knew that she didn’t just want to read a script on tv. After they asked her to leave the

show they sent Oprah to Baltimore where she would host a talk show and the minute she

sat down on that show she knew this was what she wanted to do and that she was home.

Oprah finally discovered that she could use the talk show as a platform for service and

actually make a difference in others' lives. Later on in her speech she goes on to talk

about her work with the Angel Network, Oprah had been on television ever since she was

nineteen years old and one interview of a little nine year old girl in 1994 gave her the

clarity in her life that she didn’t know she needed. The little girl simply had a big heart

and a bucket and wanted to raise money from spare change in order to help others in

need. Out of all Oprah’s years on television, this little girl gave her the realization that if

this nine year old girl could do so much good on her own, what could Oprah do? She also

mentions the story of her father telling her that since she did not get a degree, when she

was one credit short of graduating, that she needed that degree to become successful in

life even though she already had her own talk show on television. When she finally

earned that one credit she got her degree and her father was incredibly proud of her

because he told her that, “The beautiful thing about learning is that nobody can take that
 away from you.” The best compliment Oprah was given when being interviewed was,

“You really haven’t changed, you just became more of yourself.”

3. What elements or techniques does she employ to secure the attention of her

audience and how effective are these? ​During Oprah’s commencement speech she uses

a variety of personal stories that make connections to her road to success and what being

a leader means to her. Oprah relates to the graduates through stories of her best friend’s

daughter, Kirby. She also goes on to explain to the graduating class that failure is not a

bad thing and that everyone experiences this in life, but failure does not mean that you

didn’t accomplish that goal, it means that life is meant to take you in a different direction.

Oprah does an incredible job of captivating the audience with real world stories that

either happened personally to her, or to someone that she knows, and through all of the

lessons she gives countless advice to the graduates. Her body language also asserts her

powerful charisma and personality, she really opens up so that people hear her and listen,

as well as projecting her voice loud and clear.