Residents of Shondaland

Everyone has that person. One person who they look up to with unwavering fierceness. One person who lights the fire within their soul. One person who stands above as their role over all others, leading them, guiding them. Shonda Rhimes is that person for me. Her name represents courage. It represents fight. Beauty. Success. Worth. 

 

Shonda Rhimes was born in Illinois, completing her family as the youngest of six. Her parents served as her role models throughout her life. They worked in higher education her mother as an administrator, her father as a professor. But Shonda always had a different creativity. As a child, she could often be found in the pantry, playing with the soup cans, turning them to her own little characters in her own little world. She spent a lot of her childhood with imaginary friends. And it wasn't for the lack of friendships, either. She wanted this experience of creating her own characters with their own lives. Their own stories. Later, she went on to attend Dartmouth, earning her bachelor’s degree in English and film studies. Later, she graduated from USC with a master’s in film arts.

 

All of this is fascinating, but it isn't why she is my role model. Shonda became my idol after learning about else: Her Year of Yes. 

 

One orindary Thanksgiving afternoon, Shonda was chopping vegetables with one of her older sisters, Delorse. At this point, Shonda was living a life that was 75% work and 25% single motherhood. She had no time for herself. She was currently producing and writing for three television shows: Scandal, How to Get Away With Murder, and Grey’s Anatomy. They all aired on Thursday nights on ABC. In other words, Shonda Rhimes owned Thursday nights. Three Thursday night prime real estate from one of the most watched channels in the country belonged to her. Yet, she was not really living, even though she was thriving. Her sister noticed this and attempted to nip it in the bud by uttering six simple words to her that Thanksgiving afternoon: “You never say yes to anything”. These six words clung tightly to Shonda for the rest of the night. They weighed on her shoulders for the rest of the week. She replayed them over and over in her mind. But finally, decided to do something about it. She turned her sister’s snippety comment into a dare. A double dog dare, if you will. She turned it into a mindset, a lifestyle. She turned it into her year of yes. For an entire year, she challenged herself to say yes to everything: yes to going on Jimmy Kimmel, yes to speaking with Oprah, yes to difficult conversations, yes to losing weight, yes to giving Dartmouth's commencement speech. Yes, yes, yes.

 

She inspired me to begin this with my own life. I said yes to choosing myself more. Yes to celebrations. Yes to admitting when I am proud of myself. Yes to my friends. A lot of people need to say no. But, for people like Shonda and I, we needed to add some "yes" to our lives. And so, we did.

 

My project was inspired by Grey’s Anatomy, Shonda Rhimes’s first hit television show. Grey’s Anatomy has been airing for eighteen years and is still going strong. There is eighteen years of content to unpack and eighteen years of characters to analyze. But, eighteen years is not just the amount of time that has passed in the show. Eighteen years has also passed in real life, meaning that there are so many differences in how the show was conducted. There has been an evolution on-screen and off-screen. 

 

This website houses the culmination of my work throughout the semester. The project is a mixture of diary entries of various characters mixed with my analyses of the different events happening. I plan to continue this project over the next few months. For now, though, the project contains major events from the first seven seasons, mixed with some others from later seasons.

 

Grey's Anatomy was meant to be a story about Meredith Grey and the group's intern year. Even Shonda Rhimes thought that the cast and crew would film a few episodes and go their separate ways. But, the show kept succeeding. The show was beginning to take America by storm. So, they extended the show to be about their residency. The success continued, so the story did too: they kept it going by focusing on their life as attendings. For now, this project focuses on their intern journey and the beginning of residency. Please enjoy reading the inner thoughts and secrets of the side characters from Grey’s Anatomy, my rendition of the show’s journey, as well as a Grey's Anatomy dictionary, photos and video clips from the various adventures.