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.
但说到底,你们生活的环境——你们的长相、你们的原籍、你们的经济收入、你们家中的境况——这一切都不能成为你们不完成家庭作业活在学校表现差的理由。你们没有理由不服从你们的老师、或逃学、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。没有人为你们书写命运,因为这是在美国,你们书写自己的命运。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.
来自德克萨斯州罗马城的贾兹敏·佩雷斯就是一个例证。她刚开始上学时并不会说英文。她的父母都没有上过大学。但是她非常勤奋,成绩优秀,获得了布朗大学的奖学金——他如今在读研究生,攻读公共卫生专业,不久将成为贾兹敏·佩斯特博士。
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.
我想起了来自加利福利亚州洛斯阿尔斯城的安多尼·舒尔茨,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,因此他要花更多的时间——要多出数百个小时——在功课上。但是他从未落后。他今年秋季将迈进大学。