Julianna Margulies
Field: arts
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Julianna Margulies at Sarah Lawrence, 2010
A Sarah Lawrence address about already living in the real world, trusting possibility, choosing demanding work, and using an arts life as evidence for disciplined belief.
Speech arc
- 01Sarah Lawrence
Opening move
- 02Class of 2010
Speech beat
- 03Arts speaker
Speech beat
- 04Video available
Speech beat
- 05NPR indexed
Speech beat
- 06Transcript index
Speech beat
- 07Possibility plus work
Speech beat
- 08Already real world
Final charge
Return: An alumna addresses artists already in motion
Margulies speaks to Sarah Lawrence graduates as someone shaped by the college's creative training and its confidence in self-directed work.
Occasion
The repository records a 2010 Sarah Lawrence College commencement address with video and transcript-index provenance.
Speaker frame
Her actor profile makes the speech part of the archive's arts, practice, and vocation cluster.
Audience
The surviving transcript index emphasizes graduates who are not waiting for life to begin after the ceremony.
Margulies speaks to Sarah Lawrence graduates as someone shaped by the college's creative training and its confidence in self-directed work.
World: The real world is not a destination after college
The address pushes back on the idea that graduates are leaving a protected rehearsal space and only now entering consequential life.
Confidence
The public transcript index frames the class as unusually secure without false bravado.
Context
A difficult economy and unsettled public world appear as conditions graduates already know, not distant abstractions.
Agency
The message gives students credit for lives already underway and choices already carrying weight.
The address pushes back on the idea that graduates are leaving a protected rehearsal space and only now entering consequential life.
Work: Possibility needs discipline behind it
NPR's preserved summary signal centers belief joined to effort: aspiration matters because it is paired with demanding, repeated work.
Dream
The speech is indexed with dream and work-hard signals, placing it in a vocation-and-practice lane.
Choice
A later Sarah Lawrence commencement reference describes Margulies using a major career decision as an example of following the muse.
Craft
The arts frame makes ambition concrete: belief has to become rehearsal, refusal, revision, and sustained risk.
NPR's preserved summary signal centers belief joined to effort: aspiration matters because it is paired with demanding, repeated work.
• Key takeaways •
Graduates are already in the real world
Connects to creativity.
Confidence can be earned without bravado
Connects to work.
Possibility requires labor
Connects to confidence.
Arts lives test vocation
Connects to purpose.
Choice turns belief into practice
Connects to possibility.
Closing charge
The closing force of the speech is practical rather than sentimental: possibility becomes credible when graduates commit their labor to it.
Trust the possible, then do the work
Practice
Treat creative and professional life as something made through choices rather than passively received.
Temperament
Carry confidence without denying instability, competition, or uncertainty.
Outcome
The address leaves graduates with a compact operating rule: believe, work, choose, and keep living in the world already around them.
The closing force of the speech is practical rather than sentimental: possibility becomes credible when graduates commit their labor to it.
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Browse more visual maps from Sarah Lawrence College or continue with related mapped speeches below.
Transcript
The full transcript is hosted by the original publisher. Commencement Archive links to the source rather than republishing copyrighted text.
Read the full transcript at source →Provenance
Imported from NPR commencement archive; cross-referenced with Open Commencement DB
NPR archive last updated in 2015; destination availability has not been exhaustively rechecked | Open Commencement DB transcript; not independently verified against the original recording
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