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每一年的毕业季,是开心的季节也是感动的季节,2017年有一位哈佛大学的毕业生用自己鸡汤故事般的人生经历惹得大家即心疼又感动。
Shannon Satonori Lytle是一位来自俄亥俄州的哈佛大学毕业生,在毕业这一天,他终于能够穿上学士服,拿着哈佛颁发的学位证书骄傲地拍下这张照片。
回忆起自己之前的生活,Shannon很庆幸自己始终在为梦想而坚持、努力!
“我们家并不富裕,高中的时候每天都要去麦当劳打工这样才能够支付得起参加SAT考试的费用。
而除了学习和打工,我还要照顾自己的三个年幼的弟弟妹妹,经常都是等弟弟妹妹睡着之后自己才有时间写作业,从夜晚到凌晨,有时候直到4点才能睡觉。
因为买不起车,在完成课外活动之后也只能走路回家,即便要穿过危险的街区。”
“因为家里没有WIFI,晚上的时候我总是把电脑伸出窗外,这样才能蹭到邻居家的WIFI来完成作业。”
进入哈佛一直是Shannon的梦想,可是在高中的时候没人相信Shannon真的能够进入哈佛。
“我总是被嘲笑,人们告诉我:“在俄亥俄这个地方,只有医生和律师的孩子才能进藤校。”
“在大学的时候,当我的电脑坏了的时候我吓坏了,因为这意味着我要工作150个小时才能再买一个。”
“我刷厕所、用旧书、卖衣服这样我才能追逐我的梦想环游全世界。在我整个生命中,我总是想办法用各种优惠券省钱。”
“我是一个仓库工人的儿子,是一个移民,也是家里的第一代大学生。”
“今天,我从哈佛毕业了!”
小哥在Facebook分享了自己的故事后,迅速走红,这个暖心又励志的故事也激励了无数的人。
Twitter上的网友评论说:
从刷厕所、日夜打工到哈佛毕业
Talk about beating the odds.
Shannon Satonori Lytle, the son of a warehouse worker and an immigrant, became the first person in his family to earn a university degree when he graduated from Harvard on May 25, 2017.
He shared his accomplishment and the hard work it took to get him there in a post on Facebook, recounting flipping burgers in high school to pay for the SAT, caring for his younger siblings and hanging out his window to mooch off his neighbour’s wifi to finish his homework.
Lytle also wrote about the dismissive attitudes of people around him who didn’t think he’d ever reach his goals.
“I was scoffed at and told, "From this part of Ohio, only the children of doctors and lawyers get to go to Ivy League Schools,”’ the post reads.
He sure did prove them wrong.
Lytle also talked about his fear when his laptop broke, as it had cost him 150 hours of work to buy in the first place.
The new grad, who finished school with a degree in computer science, wrote in a separate, now unavailable, post that he began university with $120 and chose that area of study because it didn’t require as many textbooks, making the classes more affordable than other subjects, according to Teen Vogue.
Lytle also clarified in a later post that he was aware of SAT fee waivers and other initiatives to make applying to college more affordable to low-income students, but that the reality was many students don’t know these options are out there and applying to many schools can be unaffordable regardless.
This reality isn’t uncommon in the United States.
Tuition alone for undergraduate students at Harvard is over $40,000 USD per year, and other colleges in the U.S. aren’t doing much better, with tuition at public universities still averaging above the $20,000 USD mark, according to College Board.
Census data shows poverty rates among college students in the U.S. are higher than the general population, and when off-campus students are taken out of the equation, the poverty rates in many cities drop drastically, especially in college towns.
While the situation in Canada isn't as bad as our southern counterparts, students are still struggling. The average cost of tuition is over $6,000 per year, with the most expensive areas being Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia where students routinely pay over $7,000 on average.
In addition, according to a study by the charitable organization Meal Exchange, nearly 40 per cent of Canadian students are food insecure. Food bank usage by students has also risen dramatically as tuition rates continue to rise faster than inflation does. The stats are especially bad when marginalized communities are considered, with black and indigenous households experiencing the highest rates of food insecurity.
Food bank usage by students has also risen dramatically as tuition rates continue to rise faster than inflation does.
As for Lytle, he told Teen Vogue he wanted other people in his situation to know that they shouldn’t feel inferior because of their socioeconomic situations.
“No matter what your personal obstacle is, please don’t feel this way if you can help it. Raise your head, roll up your sleeves, and work hard knowing that every person is valuable and deserves a chance to become the person they want to be.”
这位小哥的故事也证明了“如果你愿意拼尽全力,那梦想其实也没那么远大!”Shannon Satonori Lytle的故事在网络上迅速走红,很多网友们看到他的故事都感到十分感动,看完这位小哥的励志故事,这也不禁让学霸君想起一部电影——风雨哈佛路(Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story)。片中的Liz也是承受着家庭的巨大压力下,却依然坚持不断地在追逐着自己的梦想,最终迈入了哈佛的校园。

Liz Murray演讲稿精选双语版
I don't know. I don’t know how long can you know that there is something bigger for you, and yet you ignore that.
我不知道。我不知道你要多久才能明白你有很重要的事要做,而你却仍旧忽视它。

Don’t we do that? We tell ourselves what? I’m gonna take on a bigger picture in myself, I really will recess my career, relationship, health.
我们不是这样吗?我们不是这样告诉自己吗?我真得对我的人生有个大计划,我真地会好好工作,好好处理人际管理,好好保持健康。

When? Later! Right?
什么时候呢?以后吧!是吗?

We always do this. I am. I just can’t because I’m busy right now, and we get so wrapped up in the moment we make this promise to ourselves later.
我们经常这么做。我是这样的。我不可以做因为我现在很忙。我们作出这样的反应,然后又对自己保证“以后……”。

I pushed away school to later. I pushed away taking, stepping into my life in the biggest sense. I push that away later. And when you push that away, you’ll push away even the most important things.
我推后了上学的时间,也推后了开始有意义的人生的时间。我把这件事拖后得太晚了。当你这样做时,你也会把,即使是最重要的事都拖后。

Cause I sat on my friend’s coaches and I realized they were complaining, and complaining and complaining, and I sat down and I said to myself. You know what, and I just stood up and look at my friends and say, “Guess what guys, I don’t know where I’m sleeping tonight, one of your houses maybe, maybe outside. I don’t know what I’m gonna eat, I don’t have... I don’t have... I don’t have...
所以我坐着,我的朋友躺着,我意识到,他们一直在抱怨、抱怨,不断地抱怨。我坐下对他们说:你们知道接下来怎么样吗,然后我站起来看着我的朋友,我说:“伙计们,你们猜怎么着,我不知道我今晚应该睡哪,也许住你们家,也许住外面。我不知道我该去哪吃饭,我没有这个……我没有那个……”
“But you know what I do have: two hands and two feet. I have a brain in my head and air in my lungs, and what else do I really need?”
“但是你们确实知道:我有两只手有两只脚,我的头里有大脑,我的肺里有呼吸,什么才是我真正需要的?”

Like what else do you really need to begin a today to lead the life you know you are meant to lead? You know in your heart what it is. And what more do you need to change before you step into that? I stood up, and I looked at them, and then next feeling which has been the biggest resource in my life since - “gratitude”.
就像是开始新的一天,什么才是你真正需要的?去领导生活,你知道你可能被生活领导,你知道你心里想要什么,你知道。但是如何在得到这之前改变自己?我站起来,看着他们,我感到。。。这感受后来一直成为我生活中最大的品质:感激。
You can either pick one thing in life, resentment or gratitude, get on the side, I promise you. I looked at that moment and realized I may not have my mother ever again, but I had these resources. I had myself and I could go forward.
你可以选择一中放入生活,愤恨或感恩,选择一个立场,我跟你保证。我看到那一刻,我的意思是我再也没有妈妈了,但是我有这些品质,我有我自己,并且我还可以继续向前走。

I remember that the feeling inside of me, and a need to change my life, and that voice at the back of my head - it took on the specific question, and the question was “What if ...?”
我记得我内心的感受,我脑袋后面响着“必须要改变自己人生”的声音。这里出现了一个很明确的问题,这个问题是“如果。。。会怎样?”

You know that voice in the back of your head and said “what if……”? “What if I tried that much harder?” “What if I pushed one more time?” “What if ...?” It’s the part of you that dreams.
你知道,我脑袋后面响着一个声音,说“如果…会怎样” “如果我再多努力一些呢?”“如果我再努力试一次会怎么样?”“如果。。。?”它是你梦想的一部分。

A disempowered conversation will do a couple of things that will look for blame, and it’s concerned with the past. It’ll go, “What happened before? Why didn’t it work out?” It will count what is not there.
让人失去动力的自我对话只会让你找个能责怪的人,这种对话永远只是关于过去的。对话里面只会说:“过去发生了什么?为什么没有成功?”这种对话里只有虚的东西。

An empowered conversation is unconcerned with blame. It simply says, “what’s next?” and it steps forward with a willingness to be responsible for what happens next. That is the difference between empowered and disempowered conversation. And I stood at that doorway and I knew nothing in my history took away from the fact that I still had a choice.
让人有动力的自我对话中不会出现你想要责怪的人。对话里只是说:“接下来怎么办?”并且你会为接下来发生的事情负责任。这就是让人有动力的自我对话和让人没有动力的对话之间的区别。我站在门铃前,我知道,我过去所有的经历都不会剥夺这个事实,那就是我还是有选择的。

Life is a miracle. You don’t have to be stuck in a situation that you are in. If there is something in your life that is holding you back, you have to identify what that is, because, I promise you, there is a way to break pasted.
人生就是一场奇迹。你不必受困于现在的处境。如果在你的生活中有些东西使你停滞不前,去认清那是什么。因为,我敢保证,必定会有一条出路。

I want you to identify that voice inside of yourself and begin to trust it. And ask yourself what is it that has been in my way and how do I unblock that? Dig deep inside.
我希望你能听从你内心发出的声音,相信这个声音。问问你自己,是什么在阻挡我前进?我应该怎么跨过这个障碍?更深地挖掘自己的内心。

Life does not wait for anyone, and your life isn’t later. Your life is right now.
人生不会等待任何人,你也不生活在“以后”。你就活在现在。
Liz Murray on For the Love of Possibility
Hello! Good Morning TEDx San Diego! Hey! So good to be here.
Today, I want to talk to you about one of the great loves of my life which is the love of possibility. And what I mean by that is the passion that you have inside of you to create the results that you know that you are meant to create in this world.
And in order to do that, I want to share with you a little bit about my journey of going from being a homeless person on the streets of New York City and transforming my life and going on to Harvard.
And another piece I want to share with you —  Actually, to start that conversation is to talk to you a bit today about one of my heroes, who is someone who has passed away who was with us as a young man and his name was Ben Underwood.
Ben Underwood is someone who became famous to us in this world because he was someone who we labeled as blind, but he actually had the ability to see in a different way. He had something called echolocation which you’ve heard about before with dolphins and bats. He, like some people who don’t have sight, found a way to create sound waves. He would — you know, some people pound their foot — he would actually use a clicking noise in his mouth to send sound waves bouncing off the walls around him so that he could actually navigate his way around the world.
I know it sounds crazy, but if you go on YouTube you can see tons of videos of Ben navigating his way around even though he had actually no eyes. And he’s an incredible person to me for a few reasons.
And one is I would watch these videos of Ben and be so moved by him because any day of the week that you went to his house, you could watch Ben and you would not be able to tell that he was blind. You would watch him run up and down the stairs in his home. His mother, Aquanetta, would call down to him, and he would get her things from her dresser upstairs, he would ride his bike around the neighborhood. He would hold the door open for people because he was able to make a noise that sounded a little like this [make sounds] send sound waves off and essentially see in a different way.
Now, scientists became fascinated by Ben. And they came from everywhere to study him. You would see scientists, and academics, and reporters would gather around Ben and they would put him through a series of tests, and you would watch them put a telephone on the table, or a plate, or something, and he would click and he would be able to tell you what was in front of him.
So people became fascinated by Ben’s story, but that’s not what moved me so much about Ben’s story. There was something else that was different about Ben that really touched my heart.
Now as much as I understand that people are fascinated at the result that he accomplished in his life, which was, let’s be straight, was incredible, what I was curious about in watching him was what is the thinking that gets somebody to create that kind of result in their lives? What is it inside of a person that refuses to say: “I will label myself as blind?” And find another way?
The answer to that question is something that moved me to tears when I learned about Ben’s story. And what that is, was a conversation that took place between Ben and his mother the day of his surgery.
Now, he was two weeks shy of his third birthday, and his mother had put him through intense chemotherapy because he had had cancer in both eyes. And, she had a choice to make: “Do I give Ben a ton of chemotherapy and keep risking his life and maybe save his eyes? Or do I remove his eyes entirely? And if I do, he’ll live, but he’ll have no sight.”
She made the tough call. They removed his eyes. And I’m just going to ask you for one moment to imagine, if you could, what you would say to your three-year old if they woke up from surgery without their eyes? What could you possibly say?
So I listened carefully at the words his mother Aquanetta chose to share. And what she did was, as soon as Ben woke up and said, “Mom, I can’t see,” she immediately said to him, “Ben, yes, you can.”
And in her own words, she said, “I took his little hands and I placed them on my cheeks and I said, “Ben you can see with your hands.” And then I said, “Ben, here,” and I gave him my arm, and I let him smell my skin. And she said: “Ben, you can smell my skin, and you can see with your smell.” And then I whispered in his ear: “Ben, you can absolutely see. You can see with your ears.”
And one, two, three, Aquanetta, his mother, went through the various ways in which Ben could see. And so, in teaching Ben to refuse to label himself as blind, she set his mind in motion in the search of a greater possibility. He began to ask himself not “Why can’t I see?”, but “In what ways can I see?”
And for the love and the passion of that possibility, he searched for his own and therefore it would only make sense that he would create a new way. That’s what inspires me about him, is when someone is so moved by what possibility can create in their lives — and don’t get me wrong, I marvel at his results, the fact that he could have echolocation, and that people would sit there and study him is incredible — but what moved me to tears again is the search for another possibility.
I relate to that in my own life because well, you guys know, that at some point, I ended up homeless in my life. And that happened because, I grew up in the Bronx in a very tough neighborhood. My parents, they had always used drugs, I mean, my whole life they had been getting high. And it was commonplace in my household to walk and see my parents shooting up drugs in my kitchen. And growing up, even though they were very loving to us, my sister and I, I watched them use drugs so frequently that that was just the way that our lives went.
That went on for so long. You can’t live like that forever. It catches up to you. Eventually, both my parents contracted HIV and by the time I was that age that most people are when they’re planning their prom or applying to college, what happened in my life, instead, was that my mother was without access to the medications they have now. She went from having HIV to full blown AIDS.
My father was living in a homeless shelter. I found myself, at 15 years old, sleeping in New York City streets, in parks, and subway stations. Many nights I would fall asleep with my backpack in my lap, and I would have my journal, my clothing, I had a picture of my mother when she was my age, and she was homeless in New York City when her family had fallen apart.
Now living this way, I know I sound pretty different from other people because it’s such an intense situation, but I actually think I was really just like everyone else. No matter what was in front of me, I had dreams that I wanted to accomplish. I mean, don’t we all?
I had things like I wanted to go to school, I wanted to have a family, I wanted to live a better life. But, you know, people listen when they hear my story and I guess much like Ben, when they study his echolocation, they want him to be able to distinguish the telephone from the computer, or whatever they did with him, people would often ask me very strange questions about being homeless. People would ask me, “Did you eat from the trash?” Or “Where did you sleep?”
The things that people are interested in, fascinate me. When instead, what really was in my heart, was probably the most amazing experience I had, was again, this internal experience. I had these dreams, but living in that kind of despair, I let them began to fade away.
Have you ever felt hopeless in your life? Where you had something that you wanted to do but it felt so much out of your reach? I had this voice in the back of my head that I believe we all have. I call it the ‘what if?’ voice. And the what if voice said, “What if you go to school? What if you change your life? What if you go back?” And I let that voice fade in all of this sadness that I was in.
And there is a quote that I love by Dr. Martin Luther King and what he says is: “Your life begins to end the day you become silent about things that matter.” And feeling that inside of me, that was the most dangerous thing about being in my situation, but what occurred was incredible. I had a transformational experience. Unfortunately, it came through tragedy. It was when my mother died.
But when she passed away, what my mother did for me, and maybe it was the intense love that we had for each other because we loved each other so much, her dying, it unlocked my mind to begin to think of possibility in my own life. And the best way I know how to explain this is there was something about knowing that at one moment I had a family, I had my mother, and then I lost everything.
And I realized that life changed pretty rapidly for the worst. But life changed. Life can change. And I was inspired by this belief that my life could, in fact, change. With that thinking in mind, I remember knocking on doors in high schools. I’d dust myself off after sleeping on the train, I’d knock on doors at high schools after years of being truant, and I would ask them to accept me. I should have been applying to college; I was applying to high school, that’s how old I was. I was knocking on doors asking for them to accept me.
And I went from school, to school, to school, and I experienced a lot of rejections. But there was this feeling in my heart, a feeling that I want so badly to transfer to everyone that I meet now, which is that passion that I felt for that “What would happen if I just kept going? Even if there was every evidence in the world that it wouldn’t work out, what if?”
And for the idea that even though it was unlikely after being told no so many times, it was possible that the next school would accept me. And so I continued to knock on doors. Until I was accepted.
And then I fell in love with what would be possible if I got straight A’s for the first time in my life? So I did that.
And then I fell in love with what would be possible if I applied to Harvard?
And I fell in love with what would be impossible, well, with applying for a scholarship from the New York Times.
And I had no idea how big this would get. I didn’t know that I would actually be able to lift myself out of homeless, go on to Harvard, graduate and entirely change my life.
Now, like Ben, who I mentioned in the beginning, people get pretty fixated and fascinated on the result.
Talk to me about Harvard.” Or, “Talk to me about the mechanics of how you did what you did.” People think about that.
And what I am moved by instead is falling in love with possibility in your life. Because haven’t you ever felt in a place of despair? You had a goal, you had something you wanted to accomplish, and you started feeling that fading feeling. In fact, I love when people talk to youth because you know what they will often say? I always hear people say: “It’s great you have all the passion you have. Get it done while you’re young.” Raise your hand if anyone’s ever told you ‘youth’ or ‘uniquely qualified.’
Say, “I.”
[Audience: I]
And so I hear this with youth, and I always thought that sounded kind of screwy because what’s the implication? That one day in your life, you will no longer be passionate. You will no longer be capable. And here’s what I believe: absolutely no one knows what’s possible until they’re already doing it. And each and every moment is always another chance. No matter what your history is, no matter where you’ve come from, every moment is a new possibility.
And if I could leave you with something, I’ll tell you that as I moved through these obstacles in my life, I was tempted so much to think that because of my past I could not change my future, but that feeling of, “Okay, I’ll let it go. What will happen if I apply to school? What will happen if I apply to the scholarship? What will happen if I put one foot in front of the other until my world changes around me?”
So any time that you are hunkered down in that feeling of despair, any time that you may ever doubt yourself or believe for a second that there was a before, an after, to your potential in this world, I’m standing here today to tell you that your potential is timeless. And will you do this with me now? As I leave here? Will you go, ‘new moment, new opportunity’? Do it with me now.
New moment, new opportunity. New moment, new opportunity.
And one more time, new moment, new opportunity.
Your potential in this world is timeless. My wish for you is that you fall in love with possibility, and you marvel in what it will create in your life and in this world.
Thank you so much for having me here today.
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