mY rOle ModEl 1: Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey

Model of: Attitude and self-improvement

I knew her by seeing her on the show 1 or 2 years ago. At first, I didn’t know anything about her, didn’t even know that she was so famous but her style of talk and what she said really attracted me. ^^ I like her positive and stimulative thinking. She urges people to be optimistic, keep improving themselves, and never surrender to any obstacles in their lives. When I read her biography on the internet, I found her life wasn’t all a bed of roses and it’s been all herself that makes her life successful as today.

Childhood: Oprah Winfrey was born is Mississippi to unmarried teenage parents which later broke up. When she was born, her father was in the armed forces and her mother traveled north leaving her with her grandmother which was very poor. She moved to live with her mother when she was 6. Unfortunately, she had been sexually abused by her uncle and her cousin for years. So she decided to run away from home when she was 13 and was pregnant later on but her baby died shortly after birth. Her mother sent her to her father who encouraged her in education a lot. She became an honor student and also got a scholarship from Tennessee State University, studying in communication.

The Oprah Winfrey Show

Career: She started her career in a local radio station when she was in the last year in the university. Then, she worked as a news reporter on television. After that, she hosted a low-rated talk show of which rating dramatically increased until became a highest rated talk show in Chicago. This show was later renamed to the “Oprah Winfrey Show”. She also starred in a few films, published some magazines and books, and established her own website, oprah.com.

Oprah and her students

Present:
Because her style of talk are confessing intimate details about her life and crying alongside her guests, Time magazine credits her in creating a new form of media communication which distinguishes her show from the others. She earns from her show until she becomes the world’s richest African-American woman in 20th century and is ranked as the most influential woman in the world. She even made her show a legend when she once gave all her 276 audiences a car! She also establishes the “Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls” which is a girl boarding school in South Africa for providing educational and leadership opportunities to gifted South African girls from poor families.

Quote:

Oprah Magazine

“I trust that everything happens for a reason, even when we’re not wise enough to see it.”

“If you want your life to be more rewarding, you have to change the way you think.”

“Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.”

“Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new center of gravity. Don’t fight them. Just find a different way to stand.”

“You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.”