Welcome to New York (University). 

Taylor Swift addressed New York University’s class of 2022 at their graduation ceremony on Wednesday after receiving an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the institution. 

Jason King, the chair of the university’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, introduced the Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, calling her a “pioneering and influential advocate for artists’ rights.” 

Surrounded by a sea of purple at Yankee Stadium, Swift said she was “elated” to join NYU’s students at their commencement. 

“Last time I was in a stadium this size, I was dancing in heels and wearing a glittery leotard,” she said, referring to her 2018 “Reputation” stadium tour. “This outfit is much more comfortable.”

A video Swift posted to TikTok before the ceremony showed her donning an NYU cap and gown as her father snapped a photo. 

“I’d like to thank NYU for making me technically, on paper, at least, a doctor,” Swift joked. “Not the type of doctor you would want around in case of an emergency, unless your specific emergency was that you desperately needed to hear a song with a catchy hook and an intensely cathartic bridge section.”

The 32-year-old artist, who released her first, eponymous album when she was 16, “never got to have a normal college experience, per se,” she recalled in her speech. 

“As a kid, I always thought I would go away to college, imagining the posters I would hang on the wall of my freshman dorm. I even set the ending of my music video for my song ‘Love Story’ at my fantasy imaginary college, where I meet a male model, reading a book on the grass, and with one single glance, we realize we had been in love in our past lives,” she said. “Which is exactly what you guys experienced at some point in the last four years, right?” 

“But I really can’t complain about not having a normal college experience to you, because you went to NYU during a global pandemic,” she added. “I imagine the idea of a normal college experience was all you wanted too.” 

“But in this case, you and I both learned that you don’t always get the things in the bag that you selected from the menu in the delivery service that is life. You get what you get,” she went on to say. “And as I would like to say to you wholeheartedly, you should be very proud of what you’ve done with it.” 

Swift, whose music and career were the focus of a course NYU offered this past semester, was among a slate of honorary degree recipients at Wednesday’s ceremony that included City University of New York Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Emerita and Professor of Neuroscience Susan Hockfield. 

After thanking her parents and brother for “the sacrifices they made every day so I could go from singing in coffee houses to standing up here with you all today,” the singer offered her fellow degree recipients some words of wisdom.

“The scary news is, you’re on your own now. But the cool news is, you’re on your own now,” she said. “And hard things will happen to us. We will recover. We will learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it. And as long as we are fortunate enough to be breathing, we will breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out.”

“And I am a doctor now, so I know how breathing works,” she joked. 

“I hope you know how proud I am to share this day with you,” she added. “We’re doing this together, so let’s just keep dancing like we’re the class of ‘22.”