Some of you might not have those advantages. Maybe you don’t have adults in your life who give you the support that you need. Maybe someone in your family has lost their job and there’s not enough money to go around. Maybe you live in a neighborhood where you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t right.
你们中有一些人可能没有那些有利条件。或许你们生活中没有成年人为你们提供你们所需要的支持。或许你们家中有人失业,经济非常拮据。或许你们生活在使你们感觉不安全的社区,或有朋友逼迫你们去做你们知道不对的事情。
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life -- what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home -- none of that is an excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude in school. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. There is no excuse for not trying.
然而说到底,你们生活的环境、你们的肤色、你们的原籍、你们的经济收入、你们家中的境况等等,这一切都不能成为你们不用功或不努力的理由。你们没有理由不服从你们的老师、逃学、或辍学。没有理由不付出努力。
Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s written your destiny for you, because here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future.
你们目前的状况并不决定着你们的未来。没有人决定你们的命运,在美国,你们决定自己的命运。你们掌握自己的未来。
That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
这就是像你们这样的年轻人每天都在做的事情,全美各地都是如此。
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when she first started school. Neither of her parents had gone to college. But she worked hard, earned good grades, and got a scholarship to Brown University -- is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to becoming Dr. Jazmin Perez.
来自得州罗马城的贾兹敏•佩雷斯(Jazmin Perez)就是一个例证,她刚开始上学时并不会说英文。她的父母都没有上过大学。然而,她非常勤奋,成绩优秀,获得了布朗大学的奖学金,她如今正在读研究生,攻读公共卫生专业,不久将成为贾兹敏•佩雷斯博士。
I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain cancer since he was three. He’s had to endure all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of which affected his memory, so it took him much longer -- hundreds of extra hours -- to do his schoolwork. But he never fell behind. He’s headed to college this fall.
我想起了加州洛斯阿尔托斯城的安多尼•舒尔茨(Andoni Schultz),他从三岁开始就一直与脑癌进行抗争,他不得不忍受各类治疗和手术带来的痛苦,其中一项手术曾影响了他的记忆,因此他花在功课上的时间比一般人长得多,要多出数百个小时。然而,他从未落后。他今年秋季将迈进大学。