Shonda Rhimes gave a commencement speech at her alma mater Sunday and told graduates to avoid being assholes.
Speaking at Dartmouth College's commencement ceremony Sunday, Rhimes joked about how she got wasted the night before she graduated in 1991, unhappy that she'd be leaving her friends on campus. It was tough to transition from being "special" in college to the toughness of the real world, she said.
But fear not, said the writer and producer of "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scandal."
"We are incredibly lucky. We have been given a gift," Rhimes said. "An incredible education has been placed before us. We ate all the fro-yo we could get our hands on. We skied. We had EBAs at 1 a.m. We built bonfires and got frostbite and enjoyed all the free treadmills. We beer-ponged our asses off. Now it’s time to pay it forward."
Then Rhimes moved on to some real talk, where she criticized the millennial generation penchant for Twitter activism:
Find a cause you love. It’s okay to just pick one. You are going to need to spend a lot of time out in the real world trying to figure out how to stop being a lost loser so one cause is good. But find one. And devote some time every week to it.
And while we are discussing this, let me say a thing. A hashtag is not helping. #yesallwomen #takebackthenight #notallmen #bringbackourgirls #StopPretendingHashtagsAreTheSameAsDoingSomething
Hashtags are very pretty on twitter. I love them. I will hashtag myself into next week. But a hashtag is not a movement. A hashtag does not make you Dr King. A hashtag does not change anything. It’s a hashtag. It’s you, sitting on your butt, typing into your computer and then going back to binge watching your favorite show. For me, it’s Game of Thrones.
Volunteer some hours. Focus on something outside yourself. Devote a slice of your energies towards making the world suck less every week. Some people suggest that doing this will increase your sense of well-being. Some say it’s just good karma. I say that it will allow you to remember that, whether you are a legacy or the first in your family to go to college, the air you are breathing right now is rare air. Appreciate it. And don’t be an asshole.
Catch Shonda Rhimes' full speech in the video above, starting at 1:41:20. Medium has posted the full text of her speech.
[h/t BuzzFeed]