Ephron's closing line was a direct repudiation of everything her generation had been taught at Wellesley. Being a 'lady' — avoiding extremes, making nice, smoothing over disagreements — had been the explicit goal of their education. The dean's advice to take a year off to be a wife or to take a year to work before having children was all aimed at producing the same thing: a lady who would preside with intelligence and grace but never rock the boat. By urging the 1996 graduates not to be ladies, Ephron was giving them permission to be loud, difficult, ambitious, and disruptive. She specifically asked them to make some of that trouble on behalf of women — a reminder that the fight for equality was far from over. It was a fitting conclusion to a speech that had begun with Ephron remembering how she had sat in these same seats thirty-four years earlier, terrified, hoping for 'some terrific secret' that never came. The secret, it turned out, was that there was no secret — only the courage to make your own messy, complicated, interesting life.