After years of failed acting, cold-calling, and getting fired from increasingly absurd jobs, Rosenthal's career finally took off when he pivoted from acting to writing—something he'd never planned. A friend suggested they write a spec script together, and Rosenthal drew on his real-life experiences: what if Roseanne's husband had to work as a night security guard at a museum and got fired for falling asleep on a 300-year-old bed? Studio people read it and marveled at his 'imagination.' Looking back at his circuitous path from Hofstra theater student to creator of one of television's most successful comedies, Rosenthal realized that all those classes he thought he'd never use—English, play analysis, art history—and all that suffering on his own had been preparing him for a career he couldn't have imagined. His message to the graduates was to stay open to the unexpected, because the path to your true calling is rarely a straight line.