霉霉获纽约大学荣誉博士学位并发表演讲

当地时间5月18日，“霉霉”泰勒·斯威夫特（Taylor Swift）被纽约大学授予荣誉博士学位，并在2022年毕业典礼上发表演讲。

无注释原文：

Taylor Swift Delivers NYU Commencement Address: “My Mistakes Led to the Best Things in My Life”

The Hollywood Reporter

Taylor Swift may have released a song celebrating the fun of being 22 years old back in 2012, but now a decade later, she’s still celebrating — only this time with the graduating class of 2022.

“I’m 90 percent sure the main reason I’m here is because I have a song called ’22,'” Swift jokingly told students as she delivered the New York University commencement speech at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday after being awarded an honorary doctorate of fine arts. Swift received her doctorate from Jason King, chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.

“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,” she quipped.

Throughout her speech, Swift offered words of encouragement to students as they embarked on the next chapter of their lives while also acknowledging the unconditional support loved ones may have offered along the way. Despite her motivational words, Swift couldn’t help but poke fun at herself, joking that she’s “not the type of doctor you would want around in the 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.”

Swift went on to explain the honor of speaking in front of students even though she “never got to have the normal college experience.” After attending public high school until 10th grade, Swift recalled finishing her education by “doing homeschool work on the floors of airport terminals. Then I went out on the road on a 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’d hang on the wall of my freshman dorm. 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?” she joked.

The artist then acknowledged that students recently had to endure the normal stresses of college while also being in the midst of a global pandemic. “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, you should be very proud of what you’ve done with it. Today you leave New York University, and then you go out into the world searching for what’s next. And so will I,” she said.

Swift continued her speech by offering “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.” Her “life hacks” included reminders that “life can be heavy,” to “learn to live alongside cringe” (“For example, I had a phase where, for the entirety of 2012, I dressed like a 1950s housewife. But you know what? I was having fun. Trends and phases are fun. Looking back and laughing is fun.”) and to “never be ashamed of trying.”

Swift also took a moment to reflect on her career and the varied music genres she has experimented with, explaining that though “it can be really overwhelming figuring out who to be, and when,” the students in the audience are in control of their own trajectories. After her public career jump-started when she was 15, Swift also reflected on how that early success “came with a price,” which was “years of unsolicited advice.”

She told students, “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, the media, interviewers, executives. This advice often presented itself as thinly veiled warnings. See, I was a teenager in the public eye 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.’ … 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.”

She then noted, “This has not been my experience. My experience has been that my mistakes led to the best things in my life.”

Swift said she experienced label executives informing her there was no place for a 13-year-old on their roster, had journalists write “in-depth, oftentimes critical, pieces about who they perceive me to be” and saw her love life treated like a “spectator sport.”

“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 likability,” she said. “Getting canceled on the internet and nearly losing my career gave me an excellent knowledge of all the types of wine.”

Swift reminded students that she knows “the pressure of living your life through the lens of perfectionism” but told them to expect the inevitable slip-ups whether it be misspeaking, trusting the wrong people, self-sabotaging or mistakes that will “cause you to lose things.” She noted, “A lot of the time, when we lose things, we gain things, too. Now you leave the structure and framework of school and chart your own path.”

The singer-songwriter later offered one final reflective thought: “We are led by our gut instincts, our intuition, 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 on the internet. … Hard things will happen to us. We will recover. We will learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it. As long as we are fortunate enough to be breathing, we will breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out. And I’m a doctor now, so I know how breathing works.”

The speech finished with nod to a lyric from her song, “22”: “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.”

- ◆ -

注：中文文本为机器翻译仅供参考，并非一一对应

含注释全文：

Taylor Swift Delivers NYU Commencement Address: “My Mistakes Led to the Best Things in My Life”

The Hollywood Reporter

Taylor Swift may have released a song celebrating the fun of being 22 years old back in 2012, but now a decade later, she’s still celebrating — only this time with the graduating class of 2022.

泰勒·斯威夫特（Taylor Swift）可能早在2012年就发布了一首庆祝22岁乐趣的歌曲，但十年后的今天，她仍然在庆祝--只是这次是和2022届毕业生一起庆祝。

1）表示“学位授予典礼；毕业典礼”，英文解释为“a ceremony at which students formally receive their degrees”

2）表示“开始；开端”，英文解释为“the beginning of something”举个🌰：Would passengers please turn off their mobile phones before the commencement of the flight.

请乘客们在飞机起飞前关闭手机

“I’m 90 percent sure the main reason I’m here is because I have a song called ’22,'” Swift jokingly told students as she delivered the New York University commencement speech at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday after being awarded an honorary doctorate of fine arts. Swift received her doctorate from Jason King, chair of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music.

“我90%确定我在这里的主要原因是我有一首歌叫《22》，”斯威夫特在周三被授予荣誉艺术博士学位后在洋基体育场（Yankee Stadium）发表纽约大学毕业典礼演讲时开玩笑地对学生说。斯威夫特从克莱夫戴维斯音乐学院主席杰森·金（Jason King）手中接过她的博士学位证。

表示“（尤指学位）荣誉的，名誉的”，英文解释为“(especially of a degree) given as an honour to someone who has not done a course of study”举个🌰：

She received an honorary doctorate from LR University.

她被授予LR大学荣誉博士头衔。

doctorate = doctor's degree 表示“博士学位”，英文解释为“the highest degree from a university”。

“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,” she quipped.

“上次我在这么大的体育场，我穿着高跟鞋和闪亮的紧身衣跳舞。这套衣服要舒服得多，”她调侃道。

本身表示“鞋跟”，英文解释为“the raised part at the back of a shoe, under your heel”，也可以指“脚跟”，英文解释为“the rounded back part of the foot”。

表示“闪烁，闪耀，闪光”，英文解释为“producing a lot of small flashes of reflected light”如：glittery eye shadow 亮彩眼影膏。

leotard /ˈliː.ə.tɑːd/ 表示“（女舞蹈演员或女运动员穿的）紧身衣，体操服”，英文解释为“a tight piece of clothing that covers the body but not the legs, usually worn by female dancers or women doing physical exercise”

outfit表示“全套服装，装束（尤指为某场合或目的）”（a set of clothes that you wear together, especially for a particular occasion or purpose）如：a wedding outfit 一套结婚礼服。

此前在美国女子坚持浇花两年，忽然发现是假花？？？一文中就出现过这一说法，quip作动词，表示“说俏皮话，说妙语”，英文解释为“to say something clever and amusing”，举个🌰：

‘Giving up smoking is easy,’ he quipped. ‘I've done it hundreds of times.’

“戒烟很容易啊，”他风趣地说，“我已经戒过几百次了。”

🎬电影《拉瑞·克劳》（Larry Crowne）中的台词提到：I believe it was George Bernard Shaw who once quipped, 我记得萧伯纳曾说过，

Throughout her speech, Swift offered words of encouragement to students as they embarked on the next chapter of their lives while also acknowledging the unconditional support loved ones may have offered along the way. Despite her motivational words, Swift couldn’t help but poke fun at herself, joking that she’s “not the type of doctor you would want around in the 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.”

在她的演讲中，斯威夫特向踏上人生新篇章的同学们给予了鼓励，同时也感谢亲人在此过程中可能提供的无条件支持。尽管她说的是激励的话，但斯威夫特还是忍不住自嘲，她开玩笑说，她“不是那种在紧急情况下你想在身边的医生，除非你的紧急情况是你迫切需要听到一首有朗朗上口hook和强烈宣泄bridge的歌。或者如果你的紧急情况是你需要一个能在一分钟内说出超过50种猫的名字的人。”

表示“开始，着手做（新的或重要的事情）”，英文解释为“to start something new or important”如：embark on a new journey 开启新征程，举个🌰：

We're embarking upon a new project later this year.

今年晚些时候我们会启动一个新项目。

表示“取笑，奚落；打趣”，英文解释为“to make someone/something seem stupid by making jokes about them or laughing unkindly”。

catchy /ˈkætʃi,ˈketʃi/ 表示“（乐曲、名字、广告）引人注意的；容易记住的”，英文解释为“If you describe a tune, name, or advertisement as catchy, you mean that it is attractive and easy to remember.”如：a song with catchy lyrics 歌词琅琅上口的歌曲。

cathartic /kəˈθɑːtɪk/ 表示“精神宣泄的”，英文解释为“Something that is cathartic has the effect of catharsis.”举个🌰：

His laughter was cathartic, an animal yelp that brought tears to his eyes.

他宣泄地大笑着，声如野兽，却把眼泪都笑出来了。

📍Hook是一种音乐的表现形式，通常出现在副歌的位置，但hook并不是副歌。hook的原意是“钩子”，引申开来，在音乐上，hook指的是一首歌曲中最能钩人的部分。Hook可以是简洁的音乐和单纯的歌词反复，歌曲开头那段钢琴，BAD ROMANCE里的吼叫，副歌过渡的鼓点，或者一些很有味的歌词…他们都是Hook，也可以叫做歌曲记忆点（无定称），一首好歌就是由很多hook搭建起来的。（百度百科）

📍Bridge 桥梁音乐或桥段，一般在第一段副歌后面。可能是紧接着第一段副歌的间奏后面，也有可能是在第二段和第三段副歌之间。

Swift went on to explain the honor of speaking in front of students even though she “never got to have the normal college experience.” After attending public high school until 10th grade, Swift recalled finishing her education by “doing homeschool work on the floors of airport terminals. Then I went out on the road on a 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.

斯威夫特接着解释了在学生面前演讲的荣幸，尽管她“从未有正常的大学经历”。在公立高中读到10年级后，斯威夫特回忆说，她是通过“在机场航站楼的地板上做作业”完成学业的。然后，我进行了电台巡回演出，这听起来非常迷人，但实际上包括租车、汽车旅馆，以及我和妈妈在登机时假装母女之间大声争吵，这样就不会有人想要我们之间的西南航空的空座位。

glamorous /ˈɡlæm.ər.əs/ 表示“有魅力的；令人向往的；富于刺激的；独特的”，英文解释为“attractive in an exciting and special way”如：a glamorous woman/outfit 迷人的女子/华丽的套装。

“As a kid, I always thought I would go away to college, imagining the posters I’d hang on the wall of my freshman dorm. 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?” she joked.

“小时候，我一直在想我会去哪上大学，想象着我在大一宿舍的墙上挂的海报。我甚至把我的歌《Love Story》的MV结尾设定成了在我幻想中的大学，在那里我遇到了一个在草地上看书的男模特，只看了一眼，我们就意识到我们在过去的生活中曾经相爱过--这正是你们在过去四年的某个时刻所经历的，对吗？”她开玩笑说。

The artist then acknowledged that students recently had to endure the normal stresses of college while also being in the midst of a global pandemic. “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, you should be very proud of what you’ve done with it. Today you leave New York University, and then you go out into the world searching for what’s next. And so will I,” she said.

这位歌手随后承认，学生们最近不得不忍受大学的压力，同时还处于全球新冠疫情期间。“我所想象的正常大学经历，也是你们想要的。但在这种情况下你我都知道，你并不总是能得到你在生活这个‘配送服务’菜单上选择的所有东西。你会得到你所得到的。正如我想对你们说的，你应该为你所做的事情感到非常自豪。今天你离开了纽约大学，然后你走向世界，寻找下一个目标。我也将如此，”她说。

表示“正当…的时候；在…之中；当某事发生时；在某人做某事时”，英文解释为“while sth is happening or being done; while you are doing sth”举个🌰：

She discovered it in the midst of sorting out her father's things.

她在整理父亲的东西时发现了它。

I'm sorry but I'm too busy - I'm in the midst of writing a report.

恐怕我太忙了——我正在写一份报告。

📍2020年8月《经济学人》（The Economist）一篇讲述卡车业文章的标题就叫：The trucking industry is in the midst of upheaval—and hype 卡车运输业正在经历剧变，以及炒作。

Swift continued her speech by offering “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.” Her “life hacks” included reminders that “life can be heavy,” to “learn to live alongside cringe” (“For example, I had a phase where, for the entirety of 2012, I dressed like a 1950s housewife. But you know what? I was having fun. Trends and phases are fun. Looking back and laughing is fun.”) and to “never be ashamed of trying.”

斯威夫特接着分享，“我希望我在开始我的职业梦想，以及在生活、爱情、压力、选择、羞耻、希望和友谊中航行时知道的一些生活小窍门”。她的“生活小窍门”包括提醒人们“生活会很沉重”，“学会与尴尬共存”（“例如，我有一个阶段，在整个2012年，我穿得像一个50年代的家庭主妇。但你知道吗？我当时很开心。流行趋势和人生阶段是有趣的。回顾过去并大笑是很有趣的。”）以及“永远不要为尝试而感到羞耻”。

hack作名词，此处有“好的方案；好的建议”的含义，英文解释为“a good solution or piece of advice”如：a kitchen hack 可以理解为厨房窍门，厨房妙招，举个🌰：

Here are 10 life hacks that will change your life for the better.

这是10个会让你人生更美好的建议。

可以作名词，也可以作动词，1）表示“感到尴尬不安；觉得难为情”，英文解释为“to feel very embarrassed and uncomfortable about sth”举个🌰：

I cringe when I think of the poems I wrote then.

每当我想起我那时写的诗歌就感到很难堪。

2）表示“畏缩；怯退”，英文解释为“to move back and/or away from sb because you are afraid”，如：a child cringing in terror 吓得直退缩的小孩。

Swift also took a moment to reflect on her career and the varied music genres she has experimented with, explaining that though “it can be really overwhelming figuring out who to be, and when,” the students in the audience are in control of their own trajectories. After her public career jump-started when she was 15, Swift also reflected on how that early success “came with a price,” which was “years of unsolicited advice.”

斯威夫特还花了一些时间来反思她的职业生涯和她所尝试的各种音乐类型，并解释说，虽然“弄清楚要成为谁以及何时成为，可能真的令人不知所措”，但观众席上的学生们可以控制自己的轨迹。斯威夫特在15岁时就出道，她还反思了早期的成功是如何“有代价的”，即“多年的不请自来的建议。”

overwhelming /ˌəʊvəˈwɛlmɪŋ/ 1）表示“难以抵挡的；无法抗拒的；强悍而令人难以应对的”，英文解释为“difficult to fight against”举个🌰：

She felt an overwhelming urge/desire/need to tell someone about what had happened.

她感到有一种抑制不住的冲动/欲望/需要想告诉别人所发生的事情。

2）表示“巨大的，极大的；（数量上）压倒性的”，英文解释为“You can use overwhelming to emphasize that an amount or quantity is much greater than other amounts or quantities.”举个🌰：

An overwhelming majority has voted in favour of the proposal.

绝大多数的人投票赞成该提议。

表示“未经要求的；自发的；自我推荐的 ”，英文解释为“not asked for and sometimes not wanted”，unsolicited advice 主动提出的忠告。

She told students, “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, the media, interviewers, executives. This advice often presented itself as thinly veiled warnings. See, I was a teenager in the public eye 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.’ … 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.”

她告诉学生们，“在十多年里，作为每个房间里最年轻的人，意味着我不断地被音乐界的前辈、媒体、采访者、高管发出警告。这些建议往往是不加掩饰的警告。你看，我是一个在公众眼中的青少年，当时我们的社会绝对痴迷于拥有完美的年轻女性榜样的想法。感觉上，我所做的每一次采访都包括采访者对我终有一天会‘翻车’的微词。......所以我成为一个年轻的成年人，同时被灌输这样的信息：如果我不犯任何错误，所有美国的孩子都会成长为完美的天使。然而，如果我真的翻车了，整个地球就会从地轴上掉下来，而这完全是我的错，我就会永永远远地被关进流行明星监狱。这一切都围绕着这样的想法：错误等于失败，最终，失去任何幸福或有价值的生活的机会。”

表示“不明言的；含蓄的；掩饰的”，英文解释为“Veiled words or ways of behaving are not direct or expressed clearly.”如：a veiled reference/threat/warning 含蓄的指称/威胁/警告，a thinly veiled threat 几乎不加掩饰的威胁。

表示“带刺的话”，英文解释为“a remark that is funny but unkind”举个🌰：

I tried to ignore their barbs about my new jacket.

我努力不去理会他们针对我的新夹克说的那些连讽带刺的话。

表示“犯错误，疏忽”，英文解释为“to make a mistake”举个🌰：

These figures don't make sense - have we slipped up somewhere?

这些数据不对——我们哪里出错了吗？

She then noted, “This has not been my experience. My experience has been that my mistakes led to the best things in my life.”

她随后指出，“这不是我的经验。我的经验是，我的错误带来了我生命中最好的东西。”

Swift said she experienced label executives informing her there was no place for a 13-year-old on their roster, had journalists write “in-depth, oftentimes critical, pieces about who they perceive me to be” and saw her love life treated like a “spectator sport.”

斯威夫特说，她经历过唱片公司高管告诉她，在他们的名册上没有一个13岁孩子的位置，记者们写了“关于他们认为我是谁的深度的、经常是批评性的文章”，并看到她的爱情生活被当作一项“吸引观众的体育比赛。”

表示“公司；品牌商品；公司名称；公司标志”，英文解释为“a company that produces goods for sale, the goods themselves, or the company's name or symbol”举个🌰：

Her favourite designer label (= maker of expensive clothes) is Armani.

她最喜欢的服装品牌是阿玛尼。

📍此前，戳爷Troye Sivan被传已分手数月？文中就提到，Representatives for Sivan's label EMI declined to comment on rumours of a split. 戳爷的唱片公司EMI代表拒绝对分手传闻发表评论。此处的label指的则是“唱片公司”，英文解释为“a company that produces and sells records, CDs, etc.”。

表示“花名册; 名单；候选名单；值勤表，勤务簿”，英文解释为“A roster is a list, especially of the people who work for a particular organization or are available to do a particular job. It can also be a list of the athletes who are available for a particular team；A list of people's names, often with the jobs they have been given to do”

1）表示“感知，察觉，注意到，意识到”，英文解释为“to see something or someone, or to notice something that is obvious”举个🌰：

He perceived a tiny figure in the distance.

他注意到远处有个很小的身影。

2）表示“认为；看待；视为”，英文解释为“to come to an opinion about something, or have a belief about something”举个🌰：

How do the French perceive the British?

法国人是如何看待英国人的？

📍《经济学人》（The Economist）一篇讲述比特币的文章中提到：Scarcity is a trait of many things that are perceived to have value. 稀缺性正是许多被视为有价值的事物共有的特征。

表示“观赏性体育运动，人们爱看的体育运动”，英文解释为“a sport that people go to watch”举个🌰：

Football is certainly the biggest spectator sport in Britain.

足球无疑是英国最吸引观众的体育运动。

“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 likability,” she said. “Getting canceled on the internet and nearly losing my career gave me an excellent knowledge of all the types of wine.”

“在年轻的时候一次又一次地被公开羞辱是非常痛苦的，但它迫使我不在意那些每分钟都在变化的社会相关性和受欢迎程度的荒谬想法，”她说。“在互联网上被抵制，几乎毁掉了我的职业生涯，这让我对所有类型的葡萄酒有了很好的了解。”

humiliate /hjuːˈmɪl.i.eɪt/ 表示“羞辱，使丢脸”，英文解释为“to make someone feel ashamed or lose respect for himself or herself”举个🌰：

How could you humiliate me by questioning my judgment in front of everyone like that?

你怎么能那样当众质疑我的判断，让我丢脸？

Swift reminded students that she knows “the pressure of living your life through the lens of perfectionism” but told them to expect the inevitable slip-ups whether it be misspeaking, trusting the wrong people, self-sabotaging or mistakes that will “cause you to lose things.” She noted, “A lot of the time, when we lose things, we gain things, too. Now you leave the structure and framework of school and chart your own path.”

斯威夫特提醒学生，她知道“通过完美主义视角的生活的压力”，但告诉他们要期待不可避免的失误，无论是说错话、信任错误的人、自我破坏还是会“导致你失去东西”的错误。她指出，“很多时候，当我们失去东西时，我们也会得到东西。现在你离开了学校的组织和体系，规划你自己的道路。”

sabotage /ˈsæbəˌtɑːʒ/ 可以作名词也可以作动词，名词表示“故意妨碍；捣乱；刻意阻碍”（the act of deliberately spoiling sth in order to prevent it from being successful）；

作动词：

1）表示“（为阻止敌人或对手成功而）毁坏，破坏（设备、武器或建筑物）”，英文解释为“to damage or destroy equipment, weapons, or buildings in order to prevent the success of an enemy or competitor”举个🌰：

They had tried to sabotage the oil pipeline.

他们曾试图破坏输油管道。

2）表示“阴谋破坏，蓄意破坏（计划或行动）”，英文解释为“to intentionally prevent the success of a plan or action”举个🌰：

This was a deliberate attempt to sabotage the ceasefire.

这是一次蓄意破坏停火的行为。

🎬电影《特工绍特》（Salt）中的台词提到：You are here to sabotage our nuclear ambitions. Yes? 你想来破坏我们的核计划 对吧？

The singer-songwriter later offered one final reflective thought: “We are led by our gut instincts, our intuition, 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 on the internet. … Hard things will happen to us. We will recover. We will learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it. As long as we are fortunate enough to be breathing, we will breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out. And I’m a doctor now, so I know how breathing works.”

这位创作型歌手后来提出了最后一个反思：“我们被我们的本能，我们的直觉，我们的欲望和恐惧，我们的伤痕和我们的梦想所引导。你有时会把它搞砸。我也会。当我搞砸时，你很可能会在互联网上看到。...困难的事情会发生在我们身上。我们能恢复过来。我们会吸取教训。我们将因此而变得更加坚韧。只要我们有幸还在呼吸，我们就会吸气、呼吸、深呼吸、呼气。而我现在是一名博士（医生）了，所以我知道呼吸的原理了。”

1）表示“沉思的；深思的”，英文解释为“thinking carefully and quietly”举个🌰：

After hearing the news they sat in a quiet, reflective silence.

听到这个消息后，他们都一声不吭地坐着，陷入了沉思。

2）表示“能反光的”，英文解释为“a reflective surface reflects light”举个🌰：

Stick reflective tape on your school bag.

给你的书包贴上反光带。

表示“本能，直觉”，英文解释为“the way people or animals naturally react or behave, without having to think or learn about it”举个🌰：

All his instincts told him to stay near the car and wait for help.

他的直觉告诉他要呆在车旁、等待救援。

表示“直觉；直觉力”，英文解释为“(knowledge from) an ability to understand or know something immediately based on your feelings rather than facts”

表示“有弹性的；能复原的；有复原力的；适应性强的”，英文解释为“able to quickly return to a previous good condition”举个🌰：

She's a resilient girl - she won't be unhappy for long.

她是个适应力很强的女孩儿——她不会长时间沉浸于悲伤之中的。

The speech finished with nod to a lyric from her song, “22”: “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.”

演讲结束时呼应了她的歌曲《22》中的一句歌词：“我希望你们知道，能与你们分享这一天我是多么自豪。我们在一起做这件事。因此，就像我们是......22届一样，让我们继续跳舞吧。”

lyric /ˈlɪrɪk/ 表示“歌词”，英文解释为“the words of a song, especially a pop song”。

附演讲全文：

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’d like to say a huge thank you to NYU’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Bill Berkeley 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. I feel so proud to share this day with my fellow honorees Susan Hockfield and Felix Matos Rodriguez, who humble me with the ways they improve our world with their work. As for me, I’m…90 percent 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. 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.’ And maybe they didn’t do it perfectly. No one ever can. Maybe they aren’t with us anymore, and in that case I hope you’ll remember them today. If they are here 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 my dad, and my brother, Austin, for the sacrifices they made every day so that 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.

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 the 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.

I never got to have the normal college experience, per se. I went to public high school until tenth grade and finished my education doing homeschool work on the floors of airport terminals. Then I went out on the road on a 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’d hang on the wall of my freshmen dorm. 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 or 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. 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, you should be very proud of what you’ve done with it. Today you leave New York University and then you go out into the world searching for 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 and tell you the things that helped me in my life so far. 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. 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.

The first of which is: Life can be heavy, especially if you try to carry it all at once. Part of growing up and moving into new chapters of your life is about catch and release. What I mean by that is, knowing what things to keep, and what things to release. You can’t carry all things, all grudges, all updates on your ex, all enviable promotions your school bully got at the hedge fund his uncle started. Decide what is yours to hold and let the rest go. 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.

Secondly: Learn to live alongside cringe. No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively. Cringe is unavoidable over a lifetime. Even the term ‘cringe’ might someday be deemed ‘cringe.’

I promise you, you’re probably doing or wearing something right now that you will look back on later and find revolting and hilarious. You can’t avoid it, so don’t try to. For example, I had a phase where, for the entirety of 2012, I dressed like a 1950s housewife. But you know what? I was having fun. Trends and phases are fun. Looking back and laughing is fun.

And while we’re talking about things that make us squirm but really shouldn’t, I’d like to say that I’m a big advocate for not hiding your enthusiasm for things. 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 hard are fundamentally more chic than people who do. And I wouldn’t know because I have 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: Never be ashamed of trying. Effortlessness is a myth. The people who wanted it the least were the ones I wanted to date and be friends with in high school. The people who want it most are the people I now hire to work for my company.

I started writing songs when I was twelve and since then, it’s been the compass guiding my life, and in turn, my life 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 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 and throwing out the old idea because you just thought of a newer, better one. 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. 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: It’s totally up to you. I also 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. 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, the media, interviewers, executives. This advice often presented itself as thinly veiled warnings. See, I was a teenager in the public eye 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.’ That meant a different thing to everyone person said it me. 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.

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 would message with other teenagers like me who loved country music, but just didn’t have anyone singing from their perspective. Having journalists write in-depth, oftentimes critical, pieces about who they perceive 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 likability. Getting canceled on the internet and nearly losing my career gave me an excellent knowledge of all the types of wine.

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. And so this may be hard for you to hear: In your life, you will inevitably misspeak, trust the wrong people, under-react, 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 gonna lie, these mistakes will cause you to lose things.

I’m trying to tell you that losing things doesn’t just mean losing. A lot of the time, when we lose things, we gain things too.

Now you leave the structure and framework of school and chart your own path. Every choice you make leads to the next choice which leads to the next, and I know it’s hard to know sometimes which path to take. There will be times in life when you need to stand up for yourself. Times when the right thing is to back down and apologize. Times when the right thing is to fight, times when the right thing is to turn and run. Times to hold on with all you have and times to let go with grace. Sometimes the right thing to do is to throw out the old schools of thought in the name of progress and reform. Sometimes the right thing to do is to listen to the wisdom of those who have come before us. How will you know what the right choice is in these crucial moments? You won’t.

How do I give advice to this many people about their life choices? I won’t.

Scary news is: You’re on your own now.

Cool news is: You’re on your own now.

I leave you with this: We are led by our gut instincts, our intuition, 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 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.

As long as we are fortunate enough to be breathing, we will breathe in, breathe through, breathe deep, breathe out. And I’m a doctor now, so I know how breathing works.

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.

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