Oprah Tells Class Of 2023 To Follow ‘Still, Small Voice’

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE – On Saturday, Oprah Winfrey spoke to graduates at her alma mater, Tennessee State University, about how she fell one credit short of graduating as she began the media profession that would make her a household figure.

During her graduating speech at the historically Black university, Winfrey recalled living in East Nashville with her father while attending college, working in his store, and presenting the weekend news on a Black radio station. The primary anchor of the local CBS television affiliate heard her voice there. He approached her at school and asked if she wanted a job.

“I replied, ‘No, sir. TV? “Not at all, sir, because my father says I have to finish school, which is just too important,” Oprah Winfrey explained.

Oprah returned to class and told her scene design professor about the exchange, who “looked at me as if I didn’t have the brains that God gave lettuce,” Winfrey claimed.

He approached her father, and Winfrey accepted the position. Beginning in the second semester of her sophomore year, Winfrey scheduled her classes to end at 2:00 p.m., allowing her to work at the television station from 2:30 to 10:30 p.m. and be home by her father’s 11:00 p.m. curfew.

Winfrey’s career was well underway by the conclusion of her senior year in 1975. So she wasn’t too surprised when she found out she was one credit short of graduation. On the other hand, her father would not let go of the subject, bugging her for years, “‘ When are you going to get that degree?'” she remarked.

“So I got my degree from Tennessee State, right around the time I got my third Emmy,” Oprah Winfrey explained.

Finally, in 1988, she was permitted to compose a paper and submit some of her performances for final credit.

“So I got my degree from Tennessee State, right around the time I got my third Emmy,” Oprah Winfrey explained.

Oprah’s success in life has resulted from God’s grace and listening to the “still, small voice” inside while filtering out the world’s noise. As a result, “you begin to know your own heart and figure out what matters most,” according to Oprah Winfrey. “Every right move I’ve made has come from listening deeply and following that still, small voice.”

In many ways, Oprah Winfrey said the class of 2023 they are living in a terrible period.

“Unfortunately, you will come across people who insist it is impossible to make a difference,” she remarked. But Oprah cited Tennessee state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson as examples of people “using their lives to prove the cynics wrong.”

Last month, the Republican majority ejected two young Black Democratic legislators for violating House etiquette by protesting for tighter gun legislation on the House floor. Within days, their respective municipal councils reinstated them on an interim basis, and they now face a special election to reclaim their seats.

The United States is “not a finished product,” Oprah says. “Everything is feasible. The wheels are still turning. Saints are present among us. And, as Nelson Mandela so brilliantly demonstrated, it is preferable to be hopeful rather than scared, if only because optimism gets us one step closer to joy.”

SOURCE – (AP)