A group of young girls scribbled effusive, adulatory letters to Rowling on their laps. Others peered through binoculars to catch get a closer view of the author on stage. At least one graduating senior eschewed her mortarboard for a wizard’s hat.
Even University President Drew G. Faust, proclaiming herself “muggle-in-chief” for the day, announced in her introductory remarks that Harvard “would be hard pressed to measure up to the magic of Hogwarts.”
But despite the warm welcome, Rowling, by her own account, did not feel entirely in her element.
“The weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight,” said Rowling to sympathetic laughter and applause.
Rowling, who has a degree in French and the classics from the University of Exeter, said her greatest fear as a recent graduate was failure, adding that she “failed on an epic scale” in her early adult years as an unemployed single mother who was “as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless.”
As graduates of a world-renowned university and residents of the world’s last superpower, Rowling said, Harvard’s newest crop of alumni can touch the lives of others “simply by existing.”