At just 18 years old, Tagouri will become on May 24 the youngest commencement speaker in Prince George’s Community College’s history. Her family is from Libya and was active in supporting humanitarian efforts in the country’s recent revolution. She came to PGCC as a freshman at age 16 and will be transferring to the University of Maryland, College Park, to study broadcast journalism. Are you nervous?
I’m more excited than nervous — I love public speaking and talking to other people. After all, my major’s going to be broadcast journalism.
What will be your message to your graduating classmates?
I want to share my story and help inspire people. What I learned at college is that every opportunity handed to me that I took led to a bigger opportunity. I have a very big dream. I want people to understand this if you take the time, your destiny is bound to happen anyway, so you just have to make sure you don’t walk away from anything that could help you accomplish it.
How can your classmates put that idea into action?
Don’t just go to campus and leave without looking at a flier, without talking to a faculty member. When they see that you care and you’re determined, faculty puts 10 times more into you than if you just passed them in the hallway.
Congratulations on Maryland. How did you pick broadcast journalism?
Every little kid says they want to do X, Y and Z, but the one thing I always had that I wanted to do, was I remember just coming home, getting off the bus and walking to the house and my mom was cooking and Oprah was on. I’d be like, “Man, I want to be just like her. I want to be Oprah and I want to talk to people.”
– Lisa Gartner
