Shonda Rhimes Delivers Book Talk At the Hop’s Reopening Festivities

On October 16, Dartmouth alumna, television creator, author, and Shondaland CEO Shonda Rhimes ’91 came back to her alma mater to discuss the 10th anniversary of her memoir Year of Yes. Her visit comes weeks after the announcement of her $15 million donation toward the construction of a new dormitory hall on campus – the first dorm named after a Black alumna.

Rhimes wished to inspire the future generation of Dartmouth graduates to prevent them from going through the same process she did when she was starting her career. She began recounting her early career, during which she struggled to find a source of mentorship. Rhimes argued that people in a similar situation to herself would look for a mentor in a way that construes a necessity for permission in pursuing their goals, since the experience a mentor carries becomes useful by guiding the inexperienced in a new field of discovery.

Despite this, as a Black woman in Hollywood, she faced a great barrier. Those in power tend to mentor those who look, sound, or think like them. In that sense, she, as an underrepresented minority, struggled greatly in finding a way to move forward. Importantly, she reframed the situation from a negative scenario into a positive one that propelled her career forward. She became her own mentor and stopped waiting for the external validation and security that actual mentors could offer her. Even “paper mentors,” as she calls them, could be inextricably valuable. Looking at role models that she could relate to in her own identity was extremely important to ensuring that she would not fail in her progress.

Her memoir recounts how she spent a year saying yes to the things that would initially scare her, but in some way force her out of her comfort zone in a positive way. To stay hidden behind the certainty of what is already discovered, safe, and charted by others gives you a security that what she did would never place you in places where growth becomes necessary. To stick yourself outside of your comfort zone is an irreplaceable feat since it is unique to oneself and so overwhelmingly global a feeling that Rhimes’s ideas were easily able to reverberate across society. The 10th anniversary edition adds to her experience in a way that reflects on her previous experiences: namely, what worked, what didn’t, and how her life currently is.

Rhimes believes that boundaries are crucially inseparable from yes in the sense that there are “yeses that complete you” and “yeses that deplete you,” and it is up to you to discern one from the other. To that end, one must be able to navigate through life and, necessarily, engage in both. One of her most striking pieces of advice was to not beat around the bush, say the hardest part first, and then talk it through when in situations of conflict. She says that she used to cushion tough news with praise and ended up lessening or not saying the thing that she originally intended to say. One of her anecdotes even remarked on a time when her “firing” of a person was so soft that the person came the next day because she “couldn’t get it out.” This is, in many ways, relatable to the general public. People often try to reduce or soften arguments to preserve their self-image in the face of others, and in that sense, Rhimes’s recommendation helps to foster a stronger individual autonomy and the capacity to endorse discussion with finality rather than banter.

Rhimes brought everything back to Dartmouth. The College was not built in her image, but her name on a residence hall would give students who have perhaps seen themselves as marginalized or different a sense of community, the idea that Dartmouth is theirs too. Her gift to the community is more than a monetary donation: it’s a signal that the values of Dartmouth endorse the support of all, regardless of their backgrounds, and consolidate the campus as a supportive place for people to get chosen – “a mark that says this is a place for you.”

Her final prescription for the students was simple in phrasing and yet carried a deeper message. To succeed, sometimes one must become one’s own mentor and reserve oneself by deciding when it is needed to deplete oneself and when to lead through difficulty. She sees failure not as disqualifying, so long as it is borne as oneself and not as a mimic of the former. To repeat, to appear, and to put yourself out there is her ultimate recommendation – everyone should bolster themselves and try out a year of yes.