Taylor
Swift

I am pleased to introduce Taylor Swift, who will respond on behalf of the honorary degree recipients.

我很高兴向大家介绍泰勒·斯威夫特，她将代表荣誉学位获得者做出回应。

Hi, I’m Taylor. Last time I was in a stadium this size, I was dancing in heels and wearing a glittery leotard. This outfit is much more comfortable. I would like to say a huge thank you to NYU’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Bill Berkley, and all the trustees and members of the board, NYU’s President Andrew Hamilton, Provost Katherine Fleming, and the faculty and alumni here today who have made this day possible.

嗨，我是泰勒。上次我在这么大的体育场里，我穿着高跟鞋和闪闪发光的紧身连衣裤跳舞。这套衣服舒服多了。我想对纽约大学董事会主席比尔·伯克利、所有受托人和董事会成员，纽约大学校长安德鲁·汉密尔顿、教务长凯瑟琳·弗莱明，以及今天在座的、让这一天成为可能的教职员工和校友表示诚挚的感谢。我很自豪能与我的同胞荣誉学位获得者苏珊·霍克菲尔德和菲利克斯·马托斯·罗德里格斯分享这一天，他们用自己的工作改善我们世界的方式让我感到卑微。至于我，我百分之九十确定我站在这里的主要原因是因为我有一首歌叫《22》。我只想说，我很高兴今天能和你们在一起，在我们庆祝纽约大学2022届学生毕业的时候。

I feel so proud to share this day with my fellow honorees, Susan Hockfield and Félix Matos Rodriguez, who humble me with the ways they improve our world with their work. As for me, I’m 90% sure the main reason I’m here is because I have a song called “22.” And let me just say, I am elated to be here with you today as we celebrate and graduate New York University’s Class of 2022. Not a single one of us here today has done it alone.

我很自豪能与我的同胞荣誉学位获得者苏珊·霍克菲尔德和菲利克斯·马托斯·罗德里格斯分享这一天，他们用自己的工作改善我们世界的方式让我感到卑微。至于我，我百分之九十确定我站在这里的主要原因是因为我有一首歌叫《22》。我只想说，我很高兴今天能和你们在一起，在我们庆祝纽约大学2022届学生毕业的时候。我们今天在这里的每一个人，都不是独自做到这一点的。

We are each a patchwork quilt of those who have loved us, those who have believed in our futures, those who showed us empathy and kindness, or told us the truth even when it wasn’t easy to hear. Those who told us we could do it when there was absolutely no proof of that. Someone read stories to you and taught you to dream and offered up some moral code of right and wrong for you to try and live by. Someone tried their best to explain every concept in this insanely complex world to the child that was you as you asked a bazillion questions like, how does the moon work and why can we eat salad but not grass?

我们每个人都是一张由那些爱过我们、相信我们未来、向我们展现同理心和善良、或者在我们不爱听的时候告诉我们真相的人所织成的“拼凑被子”。那些在完全没有任何证据的情况下，仍然告诉我们“我们能做到”的人。有人给你讲故事，教你做梦，并为你提供了一些是非对错的道德准则，让你尝试以此去生活。在这个疯狂复杂的世界里，有人尽了最大的努力向你这个孩子解释每一个概念，而你当时问了一大堆问题，比如“月亮是如何运作的？”和“为什么我们可以吃沙拉，但不能吃草？

And maybe they didn’t do it perfectly. No one ever can. Maybe they aren’t with us anymore. In that case, I hope you’ll remember them today.

可能他们做得并不完美，从来没有人能做到完美。也许他们现在已经不在我们身边了，如果是这样的话，我希望你今天能记住他们。

If they are in this stadium, I hope you’ll find your own way to express your gratitude for all the steps and missteps that have led us to this common destination. I know that words are supposed to be my thing, but I will never be able to find the words to thank my mom and dad, my brother Austin, for the sacrifices they made every day so I could go from singing in coffee houses to standing up here with you all today because no words would ever be enough. To all the incredible parents, family members, mentors, teachers, allies, friends, and loved ones here today who have supported these students in their pursuit of educational enrichment, let me say to you now, welcome to New York. It’s been waiting for you.

如果他们在这个体育场里，我希望你能用自己的方式来表达你的感激之情，感谢所有让我们走到这个共同目的地的步骤和错误。我知道文字应该是我的本行，但我永远也找不到足够的言语来感谢我的父母和我的兄弟奥斯汀，感谢他们每天所做出的牺牲，才让我能从在咖啡馆唱歌，走到今天能和你们站在一起，因为任何言语都不足以表达我的感激之情。对于今天在座的、支持这些学生追求丰富教育的所有不可思议的父母、家庭成员、导师、教师、盟友、朋友和亲人，让我对你们说：欢迎来到纽约，它一直在等你。

I’d like to thank NYU for making me, technically, on paper at least, a doctor. Not the type of doctor you would want around in case of an emergency. Unless your specific emergency was that you desperately needed to hear a song with a catchy hook and an intensely cathartic bridge section. Or if your emergency was that you needed a person who can name over 50 breeds of cats in one minute.

我要感谢纽约大学，至少在纸面上把我变成了一位“博士”。当然，我不是那种在紧急情况下你急需的医生，除非你的特殊紧急情况是——你迫切需要听到一首朗朗上口的歌，以及一段强烈宣泄的桥段；或者你的紧急情况是——你需要一个能在一分钟内说出50多种猫咪品种的人。

I never got to have a normal college experience per se. I went to public high school until 10th grade and then finished my education doing homeschool work on the floors of airport terminals. Then I went out on the road for radio tour, which sounds incredibly glamorous, but in reality it consisted of a rental car, motels, and my mom and I pretending to have loud mother-daughter fights with each other during boarding, so no one would want the empty seat between us on Southwest. As a kid, I always thought I would go away to college, imagining the posters I would hang on the wall of my freshman dorm.

我从来没有过正常的大学经历。我上公立高中到十年级，然后在机场航站楼的地板上做着家教完成了我的学业。接着我出去进行电台巡演，这听起来非常迷人，但实际上它是由一辆租来的车、汽车旅馆，以及我和我妈妈在登机时假装激烈吵架组成的，这样就没人会想要坐西南航空里我们之间的空座位了。小时候，我一直以为我会去上大学，想象着我会挂在新生宿舍墙上的海报。

I even set the ending of my music video for my song “Love Story” at my fantasy imaginary college, where I meet a male model reading a book on the grass, and with one single glance, we realize we had been in love in our past lives. Which is exactly what you guys all experienced at some point in the last four years, right? But I really can’t complain about not having a normal college experience to you, because you went to NYU during a global pandemic, being essentially locked into your dorms and having to do classes over Zoom. Everyone in college during normal times stresses about test scores, but on top of that, you also had to pass like a thousand COVID tests.

我甚至将我的歌《Love Story》的音乐录像带结尾设定在我幻想的大学里：在那里我遇到了一个在草地上看书的男模，仅仅是对视一眼，我们就意识到我们在前世曾经相爱过。这正是你们在过去四年的某个时刻所经历的，对吧？但是，我真的不能向你们抱怨没有正常的大学经历，因为你们是在全球大流行期间上的纽约大学，基本上被锁在宿舍里，不得不通过Zoom上课。在正常时期，大学里的每个人都会对考试成绩感到压力，但最重要的是，你们还必须通过上千次的COVID检测。

I imagine the idea of a normal college experience was all you wanted too. But in this case, you and I both learned that you don’t always get all the things in the bag that you selected from the menu in the delivery service that is life. You get what you get. And as I would like to say to you wholeheartedly, you should be very proud of what you’ve done with it.

我猜正常的大学经历是你们最渴望的。但在这件事上，你我都明白了，在生活这个送餐服务中，你并不总是能把所有从菜单上选择的东西都装进袋子里。你得到什么就是什么。而我想全心全意地对你们说：你们应该为自己所做的一切感到无比骄傲。今天你离开纽约大学，走向世界，探索下一步是什么，我也会一样。

Today, you leave New York University and then go out into the world searching what’s next. And so will I. So as a rule, I try not to give anyone unsolicited advice unless they ask for it. I’ll go into this more later. I guess I have been officially solicited in this situation to impart whatever wisdom I might have to tell you things that have helped me so far in my life. Please bear in mind that I in no way feel qualified to tell you what to do. You’ve worked and struggled and sacrificed and studied and dreamed your way here today. And so you know what you’re doing.

今天你离开纽约大学，走向世界，探索下一步是什么，我也会一样。所以通常来说，我尽量不给任何人未经请求的建议，除非他们主动要求，我稍后会更深入地讨论这个问题。我想在这种情况下，我是被正式邀请来传授一些我所拥有的智慧，告诉你一些在我生命中帮助过我的事情。请记住，我绝不觉得自己有资格告诉你该怎么做。你们通过努力、奋斗、牺牲、学习和梦想才走到了今天。所以，你们知道自己在做什么。

You’ll do things differently than I did them and for different reasons. So I won’t tell you what to do because no one likes that. I will, however, give you some life hacks I wish I knew when I was starting out my dreams of a career and navigating life, love, pressure, choices, shame, hope, and friendship.

你们做事情的方式会和我的不同，原因也会不同。因此，我不会告诉你该怎么做，因为没人喜欢那样。不过，我会给你一些我希望在开始时就知道的生活小技巧，当时我正带着对事业和人生的梦想，在生活、爱情、压力、选择、羞耻、希望和友谊中摸索。

Oftentimes the good things in your life are lighter anyway, so there’s more room for them. One toxic relationship can outweigh so many wonderful, simple joys. You get to pick what your life has time and room for. Be discerning.

你生命中的美好事物往往更轻，所以放手能为它们腾出更多空间。一段有毒的关系会压过许多美好的、简单的快乐。你可以选择让你的生活有什么样的空间和时间。请保持敏锐。

It seems to me that there is a false stigma around eagerness in our culture of unbothered ambivalence. This outlook perpetuates the idea that it’s not cool to want it, that people who don’t try are fundamentally more chic than people who do. And I wouldn’t know, because I’ve been a lot of things, but I’ve never been an expert on chic. But I’m the one who’s up here, so you have to listen to me when I say this:

在我看来，在我们的“无所谓”和冷漠文化中，对热切渴望存在一种错误的耻辱感。这种观点延续了“想要做好某事是不酷的”想法，认为不努力尝试的人根本上比尝试的人更潇洒。我不知道，因为我经历了很多事情，但我从来不是时尚专家。但我是站在这里发言的人，所以你得听我说：

I started writing songs when I was 12, and since then it’s been the compass guiding my life, and in turn, my life has guided my writing. Everything I do is just an extension of my writing, whether it’s directing videos or a short film, creating the visuals for a tour, or standing on a stage performing. Everything is connected by my love of the craft, the thrill of working through ideas and narrowing them down and polishing it all up in the end, editing, waking up in the middle of the night, throwing out the old idea because you just thought of a new or better one, or a plot device that ties the whole thing together. There’s a reason they call it a hook. Sometimes a string of words just ensnares me, and I can’t focus on anything until it’s been recorded or written down. As a songwriter, I’ve never been able to sit still or stay in one creative place for too long. I’ve made and released 11 albums, and in the process, I’ve switched genres from country to pop to alternative to folk, and this might sound like a very songwriter-centric line of discussion, but in a way, I really do think we are all writers, and most of us write in a different voice for different situations. You write differently in your Instagram stories than you do your senior thesis. You send a different type of email to your boss than you do your best friend from home. We are all literary chameleons, and I think it’s fascinating. It’s just a continuation of the idea that we are so many things all the time, and I know it can be really overwhelming figuring out who to be and when, who you are now, and how to act in order to get where you want to go. I have some good news.

我十二岁就开始写歌了，从那以后它就成了我人生的指南针；反过来，我的生活也指引着我的写作。我所做的一切都是我写作的延伸，不管是导演MV还是短片、为巡演设计视觉效果，还是站在舞台上表演，一切都与我对这项手艺的热爱联系在一起。通过想法并缩小范围，最后把一切润色编辑，半夜醒来抛弃旧观念只因为你刚刚想到一个新的、更好的点子，或者是把整件事联系在一起的情节装置——他们称它为“钩子”（hook）是有原因的。有时一句话就能把我套牢，我无法专注于任何事情，直到它被录制下来或写下来。作为歌曲作者，我从来没有办法在同一个地方静静地坐太久。我制作并发行了11张专辑，在从乡村音乐到流行音乐，再到民谣音乐的风格转换中摸索。这听起来像是一个非常围绕词曲作者中心的讨论，但在某种程度上，我真的认为我们都是作家。我们大多数人在不同的情况下用不同的声音写作。你在Instagram Story上写的东西，和你的毕业论文是完全不同的；你给老板发邮件的语气，也不同于给你最好的朋友发的消息。我们都是文学上的变色龙，我觉得这很有趣。这只是我们总是在扮演许多不同角色这一想法的延续。我知道弄清楚自己现在是谁、在什么时候是谁，以及如何行动才能到达你想去的地方，是一件非常让人不知所措的事情。

It’s totally up to you. I have some terrifying news. It’s totally up to you. I said to you earlier that I don’t ever offer advice unless someone asks me for it, and now I’ll tell you why.

我有一个好消息：这完全取决于你自己。我也有一个可怕的消息：这完全取决于你自己。我之前跟你说过，我从不主动提供建议，除非有人向我要，现在我来告诉你为什么。

As a person who started my very public career at the age of 15, it came with a price, and that price was years of unsolicited advice. Being the youngest person in every room for over a decade meant that I was constantly being issued warnings from older members of the music industry, media, interviewers, executives, and this advice often presented itself as thinly veiled warnings. See, I was a teenager at a time when our society was absolutely obsessed with the idea of having perfect young female role models. It felt like every interview I did included slight barbs by the interviewer about me one day running off the rails, and that meant a different thing to every person who said it to me.

作为一个在15岁就开启了公众生涯的人，这是有代价的，而这个代价是多年来未经请求的建议。十多年来一直作为每个房间里最年轻的人，意味着我总是收到音乐界前辈、媒体采访者和高管的警告。这些建议经常以几乎不加掩饰的警告形式出现。看，我当时还是个青少年，而我们的社会完全执迷于塑造“完美年轻女性榜样”的想法。感觉我接受的每一次采访中，采访者都在暗讽我总有一个会“出轨”，这对每个对我说这话的人来说都意味着不同的事情。

So I became a young adult while being fed the message that if I didn’t make any mistakes, all the children of America would grow up to be perfect angels. However, if I did slip up, the entire Earth would fall off its axis, and it would be entirely my fault, and I would go to pop star jail forever and ever. It was all centered around the idea that mistakes equal failure and ultimately the loss of any chance at a happy or rewarding life. This has not been my experience. My experience has been that my mistakes led to the best things in my life, and being embarrassed when you mess up is part of the human experience. Getting back up, dusting yourself off, and seeing who still wants to hang out with you afterward and laugh about it, that’s a gift.

所以我在成长的过程中被灌输了这样一种观念：如果我没有犯任何错误，我就是个天使；但如果我真的犯错了，整个地球都会从其轨道上掉下来，这会是我的错，我会去“流行歌星监狱”永远被关押。这一切都围绕着这样一个想法：错误等于失败，最终会让你失去获得快乐或有意义的生活的机会。但这并不是我的经历。我的经验是，我的错误导致了我生命中最好的事情。当你把事情搞砸时感到尴尬是人类经验的一部分。站起来，掸掸身上的灰尘，看看谁还想和你在一起，然后和他们一起自嘲——这是一个礼物。

The times I was told no or wasn’t included, wasn’t chosen, didn’t win, didn’t make the cut, looking back, it really feels like those moments were as important, if not more crucial, than the moments I was told yes. Not being invited to the parties and sleepovers in my hometown made me feel hopelessly lonely. But because I felt alone, I would sit in my room and write the songs that would get me a ticket somewhere else. Having label executives in Nashville tell me that only 35-year-old housewives listen to country music, and there was no place for a 13-year-old on their roster, made me cry in the car on the way home. But then I’d post my songs on my MySpace, and yes, MySpace, and I would message with other teenagers like me who loved country music, but just didn’t have anyone singing from their perspective.

我被拒绝、没有被选中、没有赢、没有成功的次数，回首往事时，我真的觉得那些时刻与我成功的时刻同样重要，甚至更为关键。是的，没有被邀请参加家乡的派对和过夜让我感到无可救药的孤独。但正是因为我感到孤独，我会坐在我的房间里写歌，这成了我通往其他地方的门票。在纳什维尔，有唱片公司高管告诉我“只有35岁的主妇才听乡村音乐，我们这里没有一个13岁孩子的位置”，这让我在回家的车上大哭。但后来我把我的歌发布在我的Space上（是的，MySpace），我与那些同样喜欢乡村音乐但只是没有人从他们的视角唱歌的其他青少年留言交流。

Having journalists write in-depth, oftentimes critical, pieces about who they perceived me to be made me feel like I was living in some weird simulation, but it also made me look inward to learn about who I actually am. Having the world treat my love life like a spectator sport in which I lose every single game was not a great way to date in my teens and twenties, but it taught me to protect my private life fiercely. Being publicly humiliated over and over again at a young age was excruciatingly painful, but it forced me to devalue the ridiculous notion of minute-by-minute, ever-fluctuating social relevance and likeability. Getting cancelled on the Internet and nearly losing my career gave me an excellent knowledge of all the types of wine.

记者们写的那些对我认知的批判性文章，虽然让我觉得自己生活在某种奇怪的模拟世界中，但也迫使我向内看，去了解真正的自己。将我的恋爱生活当成一场观赏性运动，并在其中输掉每一场比赛，对于十几岁和二十几岁的我来说虽然很糟糕，但它教会了我要极其强烈地保护我的私生活。在很年轻的时候一次又一次在公众面前受辱是非常痛苦的，但它迫使我贬低了那种不断波动、极度荒谬的“社交相关性”和“讨人喜欢”的概念。在网上被“取消”（cancelled）并差点失去我的职业生涯，至少让我对所有类型的葡萄酒都有了很好的了解。

I know I sound like a consummate optimist, but I’m really not. I lose perspective all the time. Sometimes, everything just feels completely pointless. I know the pressure of living your life through the lens of perfectionism, and I know that I’m talking to a group of perfectionists because you are here today graduating from NYU. So this might be hard for you to hear. In your life, you will inevitably misspeak, trust the wrong person, underreact, overreact, hurt the people who didn’t deserve it, overthink, not think at all, self-sabotage, create a reality where only your experience exists, ruin perfectly good moments for yourself and others, deny any wrongdoing, not take the steps to make it right, feel very guilty, let the guilt eat at you, hit rock bottom, finally address the pain you caused, try to do better next time, rinse, repeat. And I’m not going to lie. These mistakes will cause you to lose things.

我知道我听起来像个完美的乐观主义者，但我真的不是。我总是会失去方向，有时候一切都觉得毫无意义。我知道在完美主义的镜头下生活的压力有多大，我知道我在和一群完美主义者交谈，因为你们今天站在这里，从纽约大学毕业。所以，这可能听起来很难接受：在你的生活中，你一定会说错话、信任错误的人、反应不足、反应过度、伤害那些不值得被伤害的人、想得太多、根本没有思考、自我毁灭、创造一个只有你的经验存在的现实、为自己和他人毁掉原本美好的时光、否认自己有任何不当行为、不采取措施纠正错误、感到无比内疚、让内疚吞噬你直至跌入谷底，然后最终去面对你造成的痛苦，并下一次努力做得更好。周而复始。我不想撒谎，这些错误会让你失去一些东西。

I leave you with this. We are led by our gut instincts, our intuitions, our desires and fears, our scars and our dreams. And you will screw it up sometimes. So will I. And when I do, you will most likely read about it on the Internet. Anyway, hard things will happen to us. We will recover. We will learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it. And as long as we are fortunate enough to be breathing, we will breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out. And I am a doctor now, so I know how breathing works.

我把这句话留给你们：我们被我们的直觉、本能、直觉、欲望、恐惧、伤疤和梦想所指引。而且，你有时会搞砸的。我也会一样。当我们搞砸时，你很可能会在互联网上读到相关报道。无论如何，困难的事情会发生在我们身上，但我们会康复的，我们会从中学习，我们会因此变得更有弹性。只要我们还有幸能够呼吸，我们就深吸气，吸入，呼出。我现在是个“博士”了，所以我知道呼吸是如何运作的。

I hope you know how proud I am to share this day with you. We’re doing this together. So let’s just keep dancing like we’re the class of 22.

我希望你们知道，能和你们分享这一天我感到多么自豪。我们正在一起经历这一切。所以，让我们继续像2022届毕业生那样，尽情起舞吧。