Learn English with Jennifer Coolidge. In her 2025 commencement address at Emerson College, the award-winning actress and proud alum shares hilarious childhood memories, heartfelt advice, and her lifelong journey of self-belief. With humour and honesty, she encourages graduates to trust their path, embrace sensitivity, and believe in the power of their dreams.
Who This Speech Is For
Learners who enjoy humour, storytelling, and personal life lessons.
Those navigating self-doubt, rejection, or big dreams.
Intermediate learners ready to hear emotional and expressive spoken English.
How This Speech Helps Your English
Develop listening skills with real-life emotional storytelling.
Build vocabulary around ambition, rejection, and resilience.
Understand informal speech, rhetorical humour, and metaphor.
Learn how native speakers structure anecdotes for impact.
Why This Speech Matters
Shows how humour can coexist with deep, personal truth.
Encourages learners to embrace their own voice and sensitivity.
Reminds us all that belief in yourself often comes before success.
”Find Your Own Path
Transcript
Wow, wow! You all made it, look at you, all of you made it this morning. I don’t know how you did it. I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for having me. This is incredible to be with you today. And I just also, thank you so much to President Bernhardt and the Board of Trustees and faculty members. And I will repeat what’s been said. Happy Mother’s Day. And those very proud moms out there.
I don’t know if any of you know this, so I’m gonna tell you. I have always wanted to do this. And during COVID, I pitched myself for this job. And I even put myself on tape. I really did. And it’s still on my Instagram. I did a speech in front of some scary looking dolls at my house. And I did it, this was during the very center, the scariest part of lockdown. And I ended up getting a note back and they said, “We’ve decided to go in a different direction.” And I guess I just want to say, I guess it wasn’t my year.
I want you all to know that I grew up just 40 miles down the road in Norwell, Massachusetts. I did. And if you had told the kids that I grew up with that I would once, one day, I would have this opportunity like this, they would have laughed in your face. And I’m being honest. And to be fair, I kind of get it, ’cause I was a very, very strange kid. And I guess you had to be there, but… I was really kind of odd. And I promise you, my parents will vouch for me.
And to all the parents and caregivers in the audience that are worried about their kids succeeding, I just wanna say, don’t. And I say that because when I was in the first grade, the last day of school was called field day. And field day was a really big deal. It was when grades one through six competed all together at Osborne Elementary. And my teacher took our class out to the obstacle course. And before we ran it, she just wanted us to know what we had to do. And she walked us all through pointing out everything. You have to go through the tires. You have to go under. You have to go under a log. You have to jump over this. You have to swing on the ropes. And then you have this last sprint to the end. And that’s when you finish, you cross the finish line.
And when the gun went off, I ran like hell. I did, and I was running alongside Kathy Merritt, the fastest girl in school, and I crossed the finish line ahead of her, and I was so elated that I had won. You know, it meant to me… it just meant that I was going to get the blue ribbon. And then the teacher came up to me and told me that I didn’t win the blue ribbon because I was disqualified. And it turns out I had skipped all of the obstacles. I just ran along the outside and it was just incredibly traumatizing because… the whole school started to shame me about this.
I mean it was this was like 15 years ago so it feels like yesterday. I carried a lot of shame with that obstacle course debacle and it was mostly it was just it was my classmates. They teased me for so many years about it and they had pretty thick Boston accents, which made it sound so much meaner. They were saying stuff like, “Good going Jennifer, you friggin idiot.” And, “Who taught you directions? Amelia Earhart?” And “Jennifer, the clams in my chowder are smarter than you.” You know, gold socks.
You have to understand that I became completely paranoid as a little girl and that I didn’t understand. It was completely clear that I didn’t understand what was going on and I kind of didn’t, I was unaware. And I realized I was gonna go the rest of my life as a joke and I was so uncomfortable with myself. I began to completely live in my head from that moment on. And even as a child who was scared, I just couldn’t comprehend the world somehow. I made the decision in this moment, and I remember it well, that you just have to have insane expectations and believe they’re going to come true.
My mother had a magazine in the living room and it had Grace Kelly on the cover and inside there was a full photo spread of her, you know, her lavish royal wedding and a story about how she became the queen of Monaco. And it was all in this moment that I realized that I wanted to be queen of Monaco. Genuinely, I’m not kidding. I convinced myself that I had a chance at it and I almost hypnotized myself into an impossible life. I planted the seed, something so far beyond something realistic in my brain and I expected something great would really happen to me.
And in retrospect, it was the one and only thing I really had going for me. I had this thing inside of me telling me that I could achieve anything, anything in this world. And there was just nothing to back it up. And I’m really talking severe depression aside, my fantasies somehow they sort of gained momentum and I sort of started to power my reality somehow. You can always probably relate to really wanting something. I bet everyone in this this room really wants something. Maybe it’s a writer here, you want to be a famous writer, or just a decent writer, or a great director, or an actress who gets a job or two, whatever you want. It’s all okay, it’s all totally okay, but when you find the thing that you want to do, I really want to highly recommend just frigging go for it.
You really have to psych yourself up into believing absurd possibilities, and you have to believe that they are not absurd. You know, there’s nothing foolish. There’s nothing accidental, about expecting the seemingly… things are unattainable for yourself. I don’t care so much about what other people think right now. For so much of my life, I was in this constant state of just recovering from something that someone had said to me or had said about me. And that’s what you get if you’re overly sensitive. I’m sure a lot of you can relate to this. There is a benefit to being overly sensitive. I don’t know, I think somehow you’re better at stuff. I mean, somehow you’re taking in, it’s such a hard hit when people say stuff and you see no one else is sort of reacting and you take it hard. But I swear to God, you benefit from the hit. And I don’t even regret that anymore.
I just want you all to hear me say that don’t listen to the people who mess up the real story that you’ve got going. Because Emerson has ignited these seemingly unattainable possibilities for you that now can be your reality. And it is your ability to convince yourself you really can make it, because you really have to be your own champion. This is my advice. And that really was my advice, the main part of my advice.
But I do have one last little confession to make. And that was that… the story I told you about the obstacle course, it was just a metaphor. No, no, I’m joking. No, no, no, no, no. Wait, before you turn to me, I just want you to know, it really did happen. It really did. And it was super traumatizing, and I’ve somehow lived through it, and I brought it up to all of you today, not to rehash old wounds or anything, but rather so I could tell you that, I mean, it really doesn’t matter what anyone thinks or says.
I mean, when it comes to the obstacle course of your life, you have to find your own path. And you can’t perfectly plan it out from the beginning. And part of directing your life is just letting it unfold. So let it. And personally, the best thing that happened to me is that it didn’t happen to me for a very long time. It just didn’t happen early on. I think that is what kept me going with my unrealistic belief in myself and what was possible.
All of the hideous rejection, it just went on. I mean, I got turned down, like I would go in for an audition where my only line was to get in an elevator and just say, “Going up?” And they didn’t want me. But it’s the incredible belief in yourself. And rejection, I say, “Take the rejection, you can handle it.” And it looks like it’s easy for me to say that now, but it was really hard. I have to say it was, and it still is hard. It really is. I mean, like I told you before, it took me two tries to even get this gig. That’s okay.
And it’s okay to be sensitive and feel things. I just want to say feel things profoundly. You’re so young, and you really can handle it. I promise you. You may be leaving Emerson, but you are not leaving one another. I know we’re living in very scary times. I just want to say, hold on to each other. There are no great expectations to be realized without great people to realize with them. I very strongly feel that way. I am so, I mean, I just can’t, I’m just, it’s hard not to cry, but I’m just so unbelievably proud of all of you, and I cannot wait to see what’s ahead for you.
And lastly, I just want to say, you have my permission to relax for a while now because you’ve earned it. And so, what I’m saying is, give yourself the weekend, or maybe the summer until Labor Day. I mean, Labor Day is basically Thanksgiving, and then after that, it’s practically the holidays. So, you might wait until the new year to really lock in. The pure wins in life really call for celebration, and this today for all of you is a pure win. And… I want to encourage you to stand up for what you believe in and for what Emerson stands for. And now I really just want to say to the great class of 2025, Congratulations, and as Elle Woods, my co-partner in crime, would say, “we did it!”
