向2013应届毕业生的致辞

Thank you, President and Trustees.
谢校长，谢谢校董们。

I have to confess that coming here to speak today raised a question in my mind: Now that high-school students are so accomplished and work so hard, would I even be admitted today to this eminent liberal arts school, from which I graduated 25 years ago? I was curious enough about this that I contacted an admissions officer here. I asked her to dig up my old application and give me a quick opinion.
我必须承认，今天来到这儿演讲使我的脑海中冒出一个问题：现在的高中生都那么有才华，学习又如此刻苦，如果放在今日，我还能被这所我于25年前毕业的名牌文科高校录取吗？对此我非常好奇，于是我联系了学校的一名招生人员，请她找出我以前的申请材料并迅速给我一个意见。

This turned out to be a grave mistake. Not only was her answer 'absolutely not, ' but a few days later I received a letter informing me that I had been retroactively denied admission to my own alma mater. To make matters worse, they culled through the entire cabinet of applications from my year and decided to revoke admission for 73% of my classmates.
事实证明这么做大错特错。她不仅以“绝对不能录取”回答我，几天之后我还收到一封信，通知我说我已被自己的母校追溯过往、拒绝录取了。更糟糕的是，他们还筛选了我申请入学那一年整个柜子的申请材料，决定撤销我73%的同学的入学资格。

If that includes any parents here today, I'm really sorry. I've printed out the non-admit list, and after my speech I'll nail it to the door of our 300-year-old memorial church, which has recently been transformed into the student-run coffee shop Jitters and Beans.
如果这其中包括今天在座的任何家长，我真的很抱歉。我已经把未予录取的名单打印出来，演讲结束之后我会把它钉在我们那座有300年历史的纪念教堂的门上，前不久它已被改造成了学生经营的Jitters and Beans咖啡馆。

If it happens that you're on the list, you will have the opportunity to reapply, so you'll probably want to work on bulking up your application right away. A good start would be to show up tomorrow at 8 a.m. for dorm cleaning crew. And maybe this summer you'll want to get an unpaid internship at the charity that you pretend to care about the most.
如果你的名字在那份名单上，你还有机会重新申请，所以你大概会想马上去充实你的申请材料。明早八点出现在打扫宿舍的队伍中会是一个不错的开端。另外，今年夏天你或许还想在你假装最关注的慈善组织获得一份无报酬的实习工作。

My own sudden lack of credentials caused me to reflect on the fact that I and apparently most of your parents couldn't hold a candle to you when we were applying to college. So I want to pay tribute to the spectacular collection of new graduates sitting here today.
突然失去文凭促使我开始反思，我──显然也包括大多数的家长──在申请大学时无法与你们相比。因此，我想向今天在座的人数蔚为壮观的应届毕业生们致敬。

In high school you were National Merit Scholars, student council presidents and captains of your fencing teams. You took dozens of practice SATs, practiced viola for thousands of hours (violinists are a dime a dozen) and French-braided the hair of homeless veterans.
你们在高中时是全国优秀学生奖学金(National Merit Scholarship)获得者、学生会主席、击剑队队长。你们参加了数十次SAT模拟考试，练习了几千个小时的中提琴（因为会拉小提琴的人比比皆是），并且还为无家可归的老兵编法式发辫。

You masterfully tied together a set of emotional symptoms that looked enough like attention deficit disorder to buy you extra time on all your finals and standardized tests. Plus, you got to take the exams in special quiet rooms, where a test facilitator would sharpen the pencils outside, because the grinding sound triggered your acute sensory overload. (Which somehow didn't preclude your part-time summer job at Blenders Juicery.)
你们巧妙地将一系列看上去足够像注意力缺失症的情绪症状结合在一起，以此在所有期末考试和标准化测试中赢取更多时间。此外，你们还得在安静的特殊考场考试，考试协调员会在考场外削铅笔，因为削笔的刺耳声音会刺激你们超负荷的敏锐神经。（不过这一点不会排除你曾于暑期在Blenders Juicery兼职的经历。）

You hired private college advisers to read your essays and hone your interview skills. Just think back to those valuable sessions where you learned to practically leap out of the chair talking about your passion for writing one-act plays in Cherokee, or how your heart raced that summer on the Mongolian steppes when you first spotted an ovoo monitor lizard, once thought to be extinct.
你们还聘请私立大学的指导老师阅读你的文章、磨炼你的面试技巧。回想一下那些助益匪浅的培训，你学会了要适时从椅子上蹦起来，当在谈论你多么想写一部有关切罗基人(Cherokee)的独幕剧时，又或是那年夏天你在蒙古大草原第一次见到曾被认为已经灭绝的敖包巨蜥时，你的心脏是如何剧烈地跳动。

And you learned to deftly walk the college interviewer through your many achievements while still showing carefully modulated self-effacement: 'Yes, I helped design the CO2 scrubber that will save humanity from global warming, but it was totally a team effort.'
不止于此，你还学会了灵巧地引导大学面试官了解你的众多成就，同时仍能表现出已经过细致调整的谦逊态度，比方说“是的，我帮助设计了将使人类免受全球变暖影响的二氧化碳洗涤器，但那完全是团队的努力。”

Then you arrived at this great institution, where you dabbled in a couple of your passions, only to quit them after freshman year because you found new ones: playing hundreds of rounds of 'Settlers of Catan' and having long debates into the night over which Stark son is hotter on 'Game of Thrones.'
后来，你们来到这所著名学府，在这儿浅尝了一两样爱好，但在大一过后就放弃了，因为你们找到了新爱好──打上数百轮《卡坦岛拓荒者》(Settlers of Catan)游戏，或是与人争辩《权力的游戏》(Game of Thrones)中史塔克(Stark)家的儿子哪个更帅气，直至深夜。

The keys of your $20, 000 Powell flute became rusted shut after it was put to use as a bong for the last two years. Your Wilson Pro H22 tennis racquet quickly became a drying rack for your underwear once you found out that the college tennis team was filled with power-hitting recruits from Estonia and the Ukraine who could knock a flash drive off the top of your head with a backhand.
你那管花了20,000美元的鲍威尔(Powell)长笛的吹孔已经生锈堵塞，因为它在前两年就一直被当作烟筒使用。当你发现校网球队满是来自爱沙尼亚和乌克兰的新生，他们击球强劲有力，能用一招反手抽击把你打得晕头转向时，你那副威尔逊(Wilson) Pro H22系列的球拍很快就变成了你晾晒内衣的架子。

So you relaxed into college life a well-deserved break after the exhausting race to get here. You've spent four years percolating in a warm stew of beer, gender studies and online pornography which led to the subject of your senior thesis, 'Jacobean Dramatic Tropes in Modern 'Massage Surprise' Videos.'
于是乎，你开始放松享受大学生活，在经历了那场把你送到这儿的让人筋疲力尽的竞争之后，休息一下理所应当。这四年时间你沉醉于令人兴奋的啤酒、性别研究以及网络色情图片──所以你毕业论文的题目就是《现代‘按摩惊喜’视频中詹姆斯一世时期的戏剧隐喻》(Jacobean Dramatic Tropes in Modern 'Massage Surprise' Videos)。

Fortunately, your parents, who had become so accustomed to guiding you through the myriad decisions you had to make to get into this place, have been able to stay in constant smartphone contact. You've been able to call them when you were at the salad bar and couldn't remember which salad dressing you like. You were able to email them your sociology paper and luckily, Dad's colleague Elliot at the firm had an M.A. in sociology and was able to make a few helpful suggestions, such as the central argument, supporting evidence and the pull-it-all-together conclusion.
幸运的是，在你们为进入这所学校必须做出无数决定的过程中，习惯了全程指引你们的父母能借助智能手机与你们保持联系。当你站在沙拉台旁、记不起自己喜欢哪种沙拉调料时，你还能给他们打个电话。你还能通过电子邮件把社会学论文发给他们，幸而你爸爸的公司同事艾略特(Elliot)是一名社会学硕士，能够给你提一些有用的建议，比如要有中心论点、支持论据以及总括全文的结论等等。

Mostly, though, you've spent your last four years being ... well, at home.
然而，在这过去的四年中，大部分时间你们都...呆在家里。

When I said goodbye to my son at freshman drop-off day, I was thrown into a black despair over how much I'd miss him. But as it turned out, he had so few weeks of actually being at college that I never had time to miss him. Misty-eyed, when the rest of the family was having dinner, I'd say, 'I wonder what Johnny's doing right now, ' and then I'd hear him call from the family room, 'I'm watching 'Arrested Development.''
把刚上大学的儿子送到学校的那一天，和他告别后，想到今后我会无比地想念他，我陷入了深深的绝望之中。然而，事实证明，他真正呆在学校的时间实在太短了，我还从来没时间去想念他。当家人围坐在一起吃晚饭时，我眼眶湿润地感慨道：“不知道强尼(Johnny)现在在干吗”，接着我就听到了他从家中房间传来的喊声：“我在看《发展受阻》((Arrested Development)呢。”