Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein gave the keynote address at LaGuardia Community College's 41st commencement today at the Javits Center in Manhattan.
高盛集团首席执行官劳尔德-贝兰克梵在曼哈顿贾维茨中心参加了拉瓜迪亚社区大学的第41届毕业典礼并发表演讲。
He delivered his address to an audience of around 1,000 graduates from the college.
劳尔德-贝兰克梵在有约1000名毕业生参加的这次活动中发表了演讲。
In his commencement remarks, he talked about his life growing up in the projects in Brooklyn and working his way to becoming the CEO of Goldman Sachs.
他在发言中谈及了自己在布鲁克林街区长大,并最终成为高盛集团首席执行官的经历。
He also gave some advice for the graduating class telling them to be confident, find a job they like, be a "well-rounded, complete person", give back to the community, keep an open mind, surround themselves with ambitious people and put themselves in situations with the opportunity for growth.
他同时向毕业生们提出了一些建议,包括要自信,要找到自己喜欢的工作,做一个“全面、完整的人”,要回报社会,保持开放的心态,要与有野心的人为伍,要积极投身到有利成长的机会中。
Here's his full speech:
以下是劳尔德-贝兰克梵演讲的全文:
President Mellow, distinguished faculty, friends, family, and the Graduating Class of 2013.
麦罗校长,各位尊敬的老师,朋友,家人以及2013年的毕业生们:
It is a great honor for me to share in your accomplishment and pride today. But I must admit that I approached this address with some trepidation. I suppose that more commencement speeches have been delivered more seriously, listened to more attentively, and forgotten more promptly than any other form of human communication.
我很荣幸能在今天分享你们的成就和荣耀。但是我必须承认,我是带着一些不安来参加这次活动的。我想,曾经有更多更认真的毕业典礼发言,收到更加用心地倾听,但是相比其他任何沟通形式,也更加迅速地被遗忘。
So I will try to be brief and practical. My advice is grounded in my own experience. And my own experience, in many respects, is not that different from many of yours.
所以,我会尽量简短而实用。我的全部建议都是来自我自己的经历。而我的经历,从很多方面来看,和你们当中的很多并没有什么不同。
I grew up with the idea that college was more an aspiration than an expectation. I saw my parents struggle most of their lives and the daily battle to keep afloat sometimes even drained what hopes and dreams they had for me. They didn't go to college and neither did my only, older sibling.
在我成长的环境中,大学更多是一个美好愿望而不是理所当然的事情。我见证我父母大半生的奋斗,每天仅为了维持生计而努力工作,有时甚至会打消任何他们对我的期望和梦想。他们都没有上过大学,我唯一的兄长也没有读过大学。
My father sorted mail for the post office. He worked nights because it paid 10% more than a day shift. My mother was a receptionist at a burglar alarm company — one of the few growth industries in our neighborhood. I grew up in the Linden Houses, which, as some of you know, is a housing project in East New York.
我的父亲在邮局整理邮件。他选择夜班工作只是因为报酬比白班多了10%,我的母亲是一个防盗警报公司的接待员——这也是我所在社区为数不多的增长行业之一。我在林登小区长大,你们当中的很多都知道,这是纽约东区的一个住宅项目。
It was and is a tough neighborhood, though it produced some accomplished people who, despite or because of their background, did well. I attended Thomas Jefferson high school, which has since shut down as a high school and operates different training programs for various skills. Up until high school, I shared a small apartment with my extended family, which included my grandmother, my sister and my nephew.
它一直都是一个贫穷的社区,但是也产生了一些有成就的人,有些是因为这一背景而成功,有些是因为克服了这一背景而做出了成绩。我在托马斯-杰斐逊高中毕业,学校在之后关闭了高中部,仅仅提供多种技能培训项目。直到高中毕业,我一直和我庞大的家庭分享一间小小的公寓,包括了我的奶奶,我的妹妹和我的侄儿。
But looking back, I grew up in a world of unlimited opportunity. Each night I would read, and reading opened up the world to me. I love reading history and especially biography. In biographies, you are almost always reading about people who started out unimportant but ended up having a significant life.
但是回过头看看,我是在一个有着无限机遇的世界长大的。我每天晚上都会读书,阅读向我展开了整个世界。我喜欢读历史,尤其是传记。在传记里面,你总是能看到一个似乎是无足轻重的人,最终如何拥有与众不同的人生。
What I liked most about biographies then and now is that the person you are reading about is in his or her early life on page 50, doesn't know about the success he or she will achieve on page 300. They couldn't see the greatness that lay ahead.
不管是过去还是现在,传记最吸引我的一点是,书中的人物在自己生命的初期,也就是前五十页当中,是不会知道他或者是她会在第三百页的时候取得的成功。他们并不知道将会出现在自己面前的伟大。
If you think about it, that's a great justification for the optimism that you should have for the life ahead of you. All of you are only on about page 50 of your biography, with hundreds of pages to go.
仔细想想这点吧,这是对你们自己未来的生活保持乐观的一个极好理由。你们所有人都仅仅在自己那本传记的前五十页,还有几百页的路要走。
Growing up, my biggest goal was just to get out of East New York. I took the college entrance exam and committed myself to getting into college. I did. The day I left for college was one of the first trips I made out of New York City.
在漫长的成长中,我最大的目标就是走出纽约东区。我参加了大学入学试,发誓一定要进大学。我成功了。我去读大学的时候也是我第一次离开纽约市。
College was an intimidating place for me. The other students seemed naturally confident; many had traveled and seemed to understand the world. To this day, I can't forget how insecure I felt, but it made me work harder.
大学是一个令我心生敬畏的地方。其他学生似乎很自然的充满信心,很多人都曾到处旅行,看起来对这个世界十分了解。直到今天,我还是没有办法忘记我当时的不安全感,但是这种感觉让我更加努力地工作。
Once I realized I belonged, I became more ambitious. Ambition is your inner voice that tells you you can and should strive to go beyond your circumstances or station in life. You have overcome obstacles, pressures and self-doubt and you have done it because you have ambition.
当我认识到自己的定位时,我变得更有野心了。野心是你内心的声音,告诉你可以而且应该努力去超越人生的处境或者是限制。你必须克服障碍,扛住压力,打消自我怀疑,你能做到这些都是因为你有足够的野心。
You want to succeed for your families and yourselves. And there is no more powerful force through which to do that than through education and know how.
你想要为了你的家人以及你自己而成功,除了通过教育和学习,没有什么更强大的力量能做到这一点。
I'm proud that LaGuardia and Goldman Sachs have teamed up to support small businesses. Through this partnership, I've seen how many LaGuardia students are juggling school, job and family. And, I've seen how these students and all of you push yourselves and persevere.
我很自豪的是,拉瓜迪亚社区大学和高盛集团联手提出了对小企业的支持。通过这个合作,我也看到了多少拉瓜迪亚社区大学的学生在学校,工作和家庭中游刃有余。我也看到了这些同学,还有在座的所有人如何不断勉励自己,而且持之以恒下去。
By virtue of being here today, you have proven to yourself that you belong. And now that you belong, feed off your ambition. That means being focused, disciplined, demanding, self critical and open minded. Your challenges won't fall away. In fact, they may get steeper.
仅仅是今天能够出现在这里,你们已经证明了自己的定位。现在你们已经有了定位,接下来就去壮大自己的野心。这意味着专注,自律,严格,自我批判和开放的心态。事实上,你们要面对的挑战不会消失,而会更加严峻。
That, my friends, is life. But just as the struggles are great, so are the rewards. There's another way to look at it: ask yourself if you really have a choice. You already knew the answer to that question the first day you walked into LaGuardia. We owe it to our families and to ourselves to keep striving.
我的朋友们,这就是生活。但是奋斗越是艰辛,回报也会更加丰厚。用另一个方式看问题:问问你自己,你是不是真的有选择。当你们走进拉瓜迪亚社区大学的第一天,你们已经知道了这个问题的答案。我们必须为了自己的家庭和自己而不断努力。