Savannah Guthrie broke down into tears during an emotional commencement address given to her alma mater’s graduating class, telling the 2023 grads, “Don’t play it safe.”
The TODAY anchor appeared at Georgetown Law School’s graduation ceremony over the weekend to share advice and encouragement to the graduates—just over two decades after her own graduation from the law school in 2002.
Savannah Guthrie Imparts Life Lessons To Grads: ‘Bet On Yourself’
Savannah herself graduated from the University of Arizona in 1993 with an undergrad degree in journalism, but after spending time in local television news, decided to go a different direction: law school. This decision brought her to Georgetown, where she graduated in 2002.
“I worked in local television news, rising from market to bigger market with my reporter’s notebook and helmet hair and red blazer‚ when I decided to blow it all up and go to law school,” said Savannah in her commencement address. “Lesson one: High school slackers can turn it around. Lesson two: Don’t play it safe.”
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The multi-hyphenate worked at a law firm after departing Georgetown, but found her way back to the news with renewed expertise. Her particular combination of media savvy and law smarts turned into a correspondent position for legal cases on CourtTV, which eventually ended up bringing her to NBC News and TODAY.
"Maybe law school was a big gamble for you, as it was for me. Or maybe, it was your safety net. Maybe it was your way of avoiding the scarier path," ruminated Savannah. "Whatever the case, I’m telling you, anything interesting you want to do, anything meaningful you want to accomplish, it is waiting for you, it is possible for you, but it is on the other side of a big risk‚ on the other side of a big bet."
She joked that, no, the bet she was talking about wasn't related to cryptocurrency: "A bet on yourself, real skin in the game. It might work out, it might not. But the riskier step will be not to try."
From Journalism To Law School And Back Again
Savannah, of course, made that exact "big bet" when she decided to attend law school in the middle of her burgeoning journalism career, and again reinvented herself as a media personality years after that. The risks paid off, and the former White House correspondent clearly has no regrets.
"If you do see my old self walking around somewhere today, this was what I was thinking you could tell her: Don’t worry so much," she told the Georgetown graduates. "Don’t sweat every tiny thing like it’s the ultimate end-all, be-all thing...It’s good to have a plan but it’s also good to take it, rip it up and do something wild and daring, even if it feels like you’re taking everything you’ve worked so hard for and lighting it on fire."
Savannah reflected extensively on her time at Georgetown and how hard she and her classmates all worked to earn their degrees—"We were all pushing ourselves as hard as we could push, and we all found out what we could do. And I think that’s the value of doing something like going to law school."
She summed up her advice to the new grads in two powerful sentences: "Push yourself, stretch yourself, find out who you are. This is the only way, you have to do it by doing the hard things."
