I was pretty much silent, which no one believes.
Being kind to people and listening to people
tell you about their families and their lives.
People will think you’re not funny
because of the way that you look.
My favorite artists have always been the ones that
stick together with their group.
That feeling of waiting for this pregnant woman to leave
so I can finish writing my little weird plays
that I would write is when I was like
oh I love doing this.
It felt like you better get your own show
because that’s what everyone else is doing.
If anyone should be doing it right, it should be me.
And that makes sense and I actually like that.
Like I’ve never been just like one live for the moment
and who cares what happened like c’est la vie
like I was never that …
I was highly organized.
I just want to be skinny since I was 12 years old.
I’ve just been like, oh god I just wish
I could be one of the skinny girls.
Never happened.
I meet handsome men in cute and unusual ways on television
and next season my character might get a pet puppy.
– She’s an American actress, comedian and writer.
She’s the creator and star of the Fox sitcom
“The Mindy Project”.
She’s also known for her work on the NBC sitcom
“The Office”.
She’s Mindy Kaling
and here are her top ten rules for success.
– It is very important to be expressive
in so much that no one should ever be stopping you
from saying what you need to say
or you should ever have that fear.
However, I think as a young person,
it’s equally important, if not more important,
to be perceptive and to be sensitive.
And I feel like we don’t talk about that a lot
because we feel like the only way
to show that we’re empowered is by speaking it
and I think that, you know, when I was growing up,
I really thought that what my parents taught me …
I didn’t talk until I was like 15 years old.
I was pretty much silent, which no one believes
and it’s because I just was like listening
and paying attention to what everyone was saying
and trying to have a good social IQ,
which I think helped me a really,
which helped me later to become a good writer
and I think that that is the one greatest thing
is to really, you know, to listen to others
more than necessarily putting such a premium
on being able to say what you feel.
The best advice I ever got is probably from Greg Daniels
and he’s given me tons of good advice
but one piece of advice he gave me
which seems very simple but is very hard to follow
all the time is be kind.
If you’re in a room with kind of a bunch of like
sardonic, East coast educated,
kind of impatient writers
it’s very hard to show kindness
and I think that especially graduating from comedy writer
to running a show where you, like I’m a manager,
I can be sued for like human resources issues,
like that’s not something that I came into this doing.
Being kind to people and listening to people
tell you about their families and their lives
it’s like I think that was a very useful piece of advice.
I came up with people who wanted to …
Like I said the writers I work with identify as feminists,
they want to include women,
they’re excited about the voices of an Indian woman,
even if they are white men.
They way that I am also excited about female voices
in my writing staff and stand-up comedians,
but it is been challenging.
I think one of the things that’s been helpful to me,
is that I try not to think that much
about the fact that I’m an Indian-American.
So many people will look at me
and be like you’re different than everyone else.
But I can’t sort of think about it.
I can’t like think about my legacy or whatever
because it stops me from being productive.
It’s a distraction.
And I don’t want to deny who I am
cause it’s so important to me
but I can’t rely on it. – Right.
And that’s just been something that I think is so important
because people will try to make you feel like …
I felt that constantly.
People assuming I’m not funny in New York
or coming up as a stand-up
or coming up and doing improv and stuff.
People will think you’re not funny
because of the way that you look.
So you have to just be like
I’m not going to think in these terms at all.
I’m just going to ignore it. – Right.
And I think that’s my advice to people
is like you can get so hung up on being like
am I the victim of this situation?
And be like I’m in charge of it.
I think that’s been why I’ve been able to be successful
my singular crazy Richard Nixon-like focus.
(laughing) – Cool president to pick.
– Cool. Cool.
– He was focused!
– He was focused. (laughing)
My favorite artists have always been the ones
that stick together with their group.
Whether it’s Christopher Guest and his actors
who are often in a lot.
He seems like he’d have a company.
Or Woody Allen using Dianne Wiest and Mia Farrow.
And it also just makes the quality of life so much better
because my hours are so long and if I can just pack
the scenes and the writer’s room with my old friends,
first of all, things go faster
and second of all, you get to transition
from like work to social life much more easily.
Now that said all of my original friends at “The Office”
like Mike Schur, he went on to create
“Brooklyn” and “Parks”, he’s very busy.
Paul is running “Newsroom”,
B.J. has his second book out
and Greg is, you know, Greg,
but it’s great when they can just come in and do that.
Also, the tone of The Office is just great.
I know that it’s a mock documentary
and our show is very cinematic and it’s very different
but in terms of the types of jokes we write,
that is exactly the same I think.
I as a little kid,
my very very protective parents
who would not let me out a lot to do a lot of stuff,
I didn’t do any sports, I was not good at instruments,
we never really traveled or anything,
I was just like told to study both my parents worked,
study and read books.
And so I think that so much of my childhood
was sitting, my mom was a doctor and she’d have her office
where she would see patients and talk to them
and then the exam room and there was an extra room
that was for storage and for phlebotomy,
which is like drawing bloods,
my mom didn’t want to leave me with a nanny after school,
I would take the bus to her office,
go to this last room and I would sit there
with a typewriter and I would either read or write,
that was all I could do.
And then if someone had to come in
and take their bloods taken,
I would just get shuffled out. (audience laughing)
And then a pregnant woman would just be sitting there
getting her bloods drawn
and then I would kind of wait impatiently,
and then she’s leave and I’d come back in
and start writing again,
to the point where they would like read what I was writing
and I would write these stories
and I think that that feeling of like waiting
for this pregnant woman to leave so I could finish writing
my little weird plays that I would write
is when I was like oh I love doing this.
And I can do it without anybody else to entertain me.
– To have a successful pilot on network television right now
is so rare, you must have been over the moon.
How did it happen?
What was the secret to your success?
– Well I think that I had been …
It is very rare and it’s …
I was so lucky and I’ve had so many people
involved from all of our studio execs and Bela Bajaria
and everyone at Fox and Kevin Riley
who I had a long relationship with
but Greg Daniels had a writer’s room
in season two of “The Office”
it was like Gene Stupnitsky, Lee Eisenberg,
who then went on to start “Trophy Wife”
and write “Bad Teacher”.
B.J. Novak whose done a ton of amazing stuff.
Mike Schur who did “Parks and Rec” and then now whatever
Paul Lieberstein is now show writing “The Newsroom”
and does director episodes,
so of that group it’s not that weird to have your own show
– Right.
– We’re very competitive and sort of high-achieving people
in the season two writer’s room.
So it felt like you better get your own show
because that’s what everyone else is doing,
which is a good atmosphere to be in, I think.
– Diversity has become a thing with this show,
the topic of contention.
But I’m more interested in knowing how you feel about that
in terms of having to address it
and justify your decisions.
Has it been …
– You know, it’s so important to me
so I feel a lot of times when I talk about it that I get
really passionate about it. – Passionate. Yeah.
And I ultimately take it as a compliment
cause I just get held up to a higher standard
because there’s a sense that
if anyone should be doing it right, it should be me.
And that makes sense, and I actually like that.
I like that people have a higher expectation of me
than other shows.
I think we can always be doing better.
Sometimes what people don’t see behind the scenes
is like we want to get Kevin Hart on the show
or Dulay and they can’t do it cause of scheduling.
People don’t know that cause we don’t advertise it.
I love our cast.
I like Xosha is so funny and so great.
I think too, dark skinned women of color
as series regulars in a show, one of them as the lead,
I feel really proud of that.
And that said, we are always trying to do better.
– Do you have a blueprint for your career?
Not a blueprint cleanse but an actual blueprint.
– Yeah, I’ve always been one of those weird kids
when I would go to high school I would make lists
of all the things I wanted to do
and kind of check them off, like a serial murderer,
like did I do this, and do this, and do this.
And when I went to college I assessed what I thought
was cool to accomplish and then I checked it off.
Like I’ve never been just one live for the moment,
and who cares what happened, like c’est la vie,
I was never that, I was highly organized.
And so I think when I was younger,
this is one of the cooler things about my life
and I have to acknowledge it sometimes
cause when I get mad at it being humid or whatever,
that I was, I am living my life’s dream.
Like the job I had now, I had a plan up until now.
Which was to get my own television show
that I would create.
And so I have to start thinking more, unless I die.
(audience laughing) So I could die.
I could die this week or something that would
be pretty dramatic and cool (audience laughing)
But I borrowing that I have to make some more plans.
‘Cause now I’m looking inward, I’m like
oh I should maybe have kids, get married,
maybe that sort of thing, I should do that now.
What I’m interested in and when I’m telling stories
is that you think you want one thing your whole life.
For me, my whole life, I just want to be skinny.
Since I was 12 years old, I’ve just been like
oh god I just wish I could be one of the skinny girls.
Never happened.
And I wish I had thick, beautiful hair and everything else
and for this character, what’s been fun
is she just wanted to get married and now it’s happening
and she’s like I want more. (agreeing)
And that is something that is super relatable
and it’s the one thing that seems
when no matter who I meet whose a woman
that seems very constant.
So I like telling that story.
So even though I have no idea
why I was asked to speak here today,
I prepared this speech very carefully
the way that any Dartmouth educated graduate would.
I drank a 40 of jägermeister (audience laughing)
then I called my dad to see if he would get me out of it
he’s here today, he could not get me out of it.
So I tried to hire a college freshman to write it for me
in exchange for a $200 gift card to Newbury Comics.
That didn’t work out.
Finally, seeing that I absolutely had to do this
and couldn’t get out of it,
rolled up my sleeves, sat down at my computer,
and tried to buy a commencement address off of
movingcommencementspeeches.com.
My credit card was declined
so I had to write the thing myself and here we are today.
There are many, many distinguished speakers
who have spoken here today.
I am sharing the stage with Preet Bharara,
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York,
you’ve heard what a great guy he is.
In 2012, he was named by Time magazine
as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World,
which apparently they’re just giving out.
(audience laughing)
According to Time, he has battled terrorism,
as evidenced by his conviction of the Times Square bomber.
He’s crippled international arms dealers,
drug traffickers and dealt with financial fraud.
Clearly, Harvard wanted you to see the full range of
what India can produce here. (audience laughing)
Mr. Bharara fights finance criminals and terrorism,
I meet handsome men in cute and unusual ways on television,
and next season my character might get a pet puppy.
So is one more important than the other?
Who can say.
The real reason I am here is as Connie said,
I am obsessed with justice.
Not so much with the law but with justice.
Actually in my mind, law is that pesky thing that
often gets in the way of justice.
I believe in the Clint Eastwood school of the law.
An eye for an eye, I don’t think so.
That solves nothing.
You take my eye, I take your life my friend, okay?
In a duel. Aaron Burr style.
I don’t want your stupid eye.
For what, my eye collection?
You’re dead. Kay?
Yes, duels are the first thing that you learn
when you enter my graduate program.
The Harvard School of Vengeance.
But again that is not what I came to here
to talk to you about.
That’s for the reception after, we can talk about that more.
The Harvard Law School crest,
which you can see in front of you,
has the word veritas, which means truth in Latin.
I know this because though I have been known as Mindy
my whole life, my first name is actually Vera,
which also means truth.
It’s true, it’s actually too boring to make that fact up.
And if you look at the crest, you’ll notice
that under this hallowed word, there are
three bunches of asparagus. (audience laughing)
Because asparagus is the tallest and the proudest
of the vegetables.
The pilar of the vegetable kingdom
and it’s like the Latin …
Okay, that is not asparagus.
That is wheat.
Which makes also not a ton of sense either.
Okay, well that was like three pages of my speech.
Nope, that’s a callback to asparagus.
I have this really funny run about hollandaise.
You’ll never get to hear that.
You know this isn’t going anywhere.
I’m going to move passed trying to make sense of your crest
which makes no sense.
– Thank you so much for watching.
I made this video because obinna asked me to.
So if there’s a famous entrepreneur
that you want me to profile next,
leave it in the comments below and I’ll see what I can do.
I’d also love to know which of Mindy’s top ten rules
had the biggest impact on you and why.
Leave it in the comments and I’ll join the discussion.
Thank you so much for watching.
Continue to believe and I’ll see you soon.
”
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