to deliver the 142nd Commencement address

of Boston University.

Members of the Class of 2015, parents, President Brown,

trustees, honored guests, faculty, friends...

How cool is this?! This is pretty cool, right?! I only wish there had been

gin in my bottle instead of water, but hey...

And I know what was in yours! Alright...

I find it so fitting that Boston University started out as a school of

theology because today parents are saying,

"Thank you, God! We thought this day might never come."

After years of hard work and sacrifice

they sit here behind you clutching their tissues

while beaming with pride, and all they want in return is a simple hug

and "I love you, Mom, Dad. Thanks."

My youngest, Lily, graduates from Northwestern in a few weeks

and that's all I want. So this is a good day to show your parents how much you

really appreciate them

and hit them up for a loan while they're still vulnerable.

Do that. It'll work

I didn't attend BU, but I believe my presence here today

is kismet. Let me explain. Last February, after six long years and one Blizzard delay,

the Terriers took back what is rightfully theirs: the Bean Pot.

Alright, here's the kismet part. When my mother was a little girl, she had a

Boston Terrier named "Beans."

When I was a little girl, I was forced to eat franks and beans

every Saturday and they made me sick to my stomach,

which is exactly how I feel right now. Kismet. You see, I don't normally give

speeches, especially ones which require

offering advice and inspiration. I'm more your mother

than I am Mother Teresa. Just the thought of standing up here gave me such

agita that I originally said no. But the person asking me was my dear friend

and illustrious BU grad, Andy Lack, the new Chairman of

NBC News and MSNBC.

So in the end, I couldn't resist.

And by the way, I fully intend to remind him of this in a few months

when my contract comes up for renewal because at sixty-one, I need the job security.

So here I stand a nervous wreck,

worried I'll say the wrong thing, you're going to end up years from now drowning

your sorrows at Tavern in the Square...

...wondering, "Where'd we go wrong? Oh yeah, it all started with that damn commencement speech."

Or perhaps even more humiliating, you won't remember the speech at all,

much less who gave it. But that's the future,

this is now, and if I'm nervous, maybe you are, too.

Maybe you're anxious about what comes next, feeling the pressure to have all the

answers,

to get it right right out of the box. Listen,

you do not know what's about to hit you. And that's the great thing about life.

How boring with the journey be if you already knew for sure the final

destination?

Listen, you're Terriers. When terriers go for a car ride, they don't know where they're

going. They don't care where they're going.

They stick their head out the window, they let the wind rush over them,

and they enjoy the ride.

That's faith. Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole

staircase.

I never intended to become a broadcaster. It wasn't even on my radar screen.

When I was a senior in college, I was a lost English major.

I think that's the same thing, right? Um, really didn't know what I was going to do.

My mother had actually sent me to secretarial school, Katie Gibbs, the summer before

because she said you're not coming home

no matter what. But I took a course my senior year, January,

in radio broadcasting a few months before graduation.

A visiting professor from CBS News after hearing my voice on tape

pulled me aside, and to my utter disbelief, told me I had a future

in broadcast journalism, and offered me an internship

at WEEI when it used to be an all news radio station.

For whatever reason, mostly because no one ever told me that

I would amount to anything basically, I said,

"Yeah, okay." I took the first step, albeit blindly,

and it put me on the path to where I am today.

So if you haven't found a job or decided on a career path yet,

don't freak out. Don't let fear or frustration,

or the fact that others around you seem to be all set

immobilize you. But do, from this day forward,

open yourself up possibilities you might never have considered.

Step up. Step out of your comfort zone. Consider saying "yes"

even when "no" feels much safer. I'm not suggesting that it's going to be easy.

Your journey forward comes with some built-in stumbling blocks.

When that radio internship ended, the News Director kept me on as his secretary--

thank you, Katherine Gibbs--for a few months while I tried to figure out my

next move.

A short stint reading news headlines at a top 40 station in Worcester

made me question what I was doing and why.

And then came the offer to be a weekend television reporter at WJAR in

Providence, Rhode Island,

my hometown. It didn't matter that I had no on-air experience.

It was 1976 and I filled

a quota. Women and African-Americans were suddenly

in hot demand. That is, until we were hired

and then almost no one rooted for us to succeed.

I learned pretty quickly that the only way to gain respect

would be to out work everyone else,

to actually earn what I felt I was entitled to.

That ethic has served me well and I highly recommend it.

The fact is, your generation also has

and entitlement problem. Fairly or not, a large number of businesses

don't want to hire you because they perceive you to be self-entitled,

lazy, high maintenance, and disloyal. As a mother of three twenty-somethings and

host a show where 30% of the staff

are millennials, I know thats bull.

I have met some kids who are full of themselves, but numbskulls

span all generations, trust me. Most of the young people I know are incredibly

hard-working

and extremely motivated. As for loyalty,

it's a two-way street. Used to be you worked for a company for fifty years before

retiring with the send-off dinner and a fancy gold watch.

Somewhere along the way, employers began to see their employees

as replaceable widgets. Maybe you've seen it happen to your mom or dad.

Maybe you seen them struggle to balance home life with an inflexible

work environment. Maybe you want something more,

and I don't blame you. Companies can't expect your loyalty

unless they inspire it. [Applause]

However, you're not off the hook.

There is still no substitute for hard work and humility,

and if you want to get your foot in the door, it helps to get your fingers off the

smartphones, look people in the eye,

engage. You want people to actually like you and not just give you "likes."

Ultimately... those are the parents applauding...

Ultimately, your future is in the hands humans,

not electronic devices. Unless of course, people like Stephen Hawking,

Elon Musk, and Steve Wozniack are right about artificial intelligence,

in which case we'll all end up family pets to some android.

As for you graduates who already know what you're doing next, who have it all mapped out,

don't be so sure. Life is famous for throwing curveballs when you least

expect them.

My first big one came on a Friday afternoon.

After about a year at WJAR, I decided, "You know what?

Journalist might really be for me." I was happily typing up a story when my News

Director called me into his office,

told me I didn't have what it takes, and fired me.

I drove to my family's home, flung myself dramatically across my bed,

and sobbed. And that's how my dad found me.

When I explained what had happened, he asked me one question:

"Do you think you have what it takes?" I said,

"Yes," to which he replied, "Then it doesn't matter what

anyone else says. There will always be people putting you down,

always be people rooting for you to fail." The following Monday I went back to work

and I confronted that little weasel, I mean, my News Director,

and I told him I plan to succeed no matter what he thought.

I may have also pinned him up against the wall--like I said, he was little.

But he gave me my job back on the spot, and that's great that he did, but that's

not the point in the story.

The point is, you have to believe in yourself or no one else will.

In order to swim, you have to drown out

the naysayers. You're all smart, right? Or you wouldn't be here today.

I imagine you all strive for success and will undoubtedly find it.

But when you do, you just may discover does nothing to do with how much money

you make,

how big a house to live in, or how prestigious your job might sound

to someone else. I thought I'd found success

in 1989 when after several years in the business I arrived at 60 Minutes.

I just had our first son Ben and this was the only job I'd ever truly coveted.

I quickly became the media's poster woman for having it all.

Except for one thing, the only thing I had was a constant knot

in my stomach. When I was traveling the world covering stories, I literally

ached for my child. When I was home, I felt guilty

not hanging around the corridors of CBS and chatting up my boss

Don Hewitt. Eventually something had to give.

I became pregnant with our second son Gabe, and Don and I immediately butted

heads

over which baby should take precedence. His baby, 60 Minutes,

on mine? I remember sitting across from him when I suddenly had a flashback.

Several years earlier while still single and working my way up the ladder,

I had grabbed drinks with a seasoned and respected female producer.

After probably one too many, she confided in me that her biggest regret

was never marrying or having children. Something she could not

admit publicly. It just wouldn't look good, but she had given everything for her job

including herself. Flash forward,

Don probably thought I'd had one too many when I abruptly ended our heated

conversation.

I believe the words I uttered as I walked out the door were,

"I'm outta here." Not very mature, but that night

I slept like a baby as the knot in my stomach unraveled.

The fallout was fast incoming. On the one side, I had people, mostly women,

who were furious with me for destroying their dream of having it all.

For setting back the cause of feminism. On the other side were those who called me

brave for taking a stand for motherhood.

In fact, neither entered my thinking when I quit.

I left because it was the right decision for me and me alone.

[Applause]

There's a reason I've always loved Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken,"

because I think he was onto something. Following the road less traveled

really does mean making all the difference. Heck, I'm still forging my own

way

trying to balance work and family. Throughout your life,

you'll have to set your own priorities, make your own decisions,

and they won't always be the best or the brightest ones, but that's how you learn

and come to understand who you really are and what matters to you.

I have to tell you, I've known plenty of people who have

sacrificed their values for instant gratification.

Do that enough, and you will lose yourself. Only authenticity will keep your head on

straight

and your feet firmly planted, so don't strive for somebody else's notion of

perfection.

It's an unattainable and ultimately ridiculous

goal. Strive instead to be uniquely yourself.

And when in doubt, listen to your gut because it already knows

what you want to become. We are so condition, all of us, to think in terms of

the big job, the big salary,

in the case of journalism, the big scoop, that we sometimes forget

to see the big picture. That came into focus for me on the campus of another college,

Virginia Tech, just days after the tragic shooting there in 2007.

A co-host of the Today Show at the time, I was part of the team sent

to cover the story. It was during a campus candlelight vigil for the 32

victims

when a young coed in tears approached me an asked if

I would hold her. She was scared and she needed a parent's embrace because

her family was so far from Virginia Tech at that point,

and I had come into your home every morning, I was the closest thing

available to her in that moment. As it turned out we held each other

and we cried together and it was an incredibly humbling experience for me

because I realized