【正文】 ough, they have lost that bet, and I believe they will this time as well.(Applause.)But ultimately, Class of 2012, that will depend on ’t wait for the person next to you to be the first to speak up for what’s maybe, just maybe, they’re waiting on brings me to my second piece of advice: Never underestimate the power of your very fact that you are graduating, let alone that more women now graduate from college than men, is only possible because earlier generations of womenyour mothers, your grandmothers, your auntsshattered the myth that you couldn’t or shouldn’t be where you are.(Applause.)I think of a friend of mine who’s the daughter of she was in high school, her guidance counselor told her, you know what, you’re just not college should think about being a , she was stubborn, so she went to college got her master’ ran for local office, ran for state office, she ran for Congress, she lo and behold, Hilda Solis did end up being a secretary(laughter)she is America’s Secretary of Labor.(Applause.)So think about what that means to a young Latina girl when she sees a Cabinet secretary that looks like her.(Applause.)Think about what it means to a young girl in Iowa when she sees a presidential candidate who looks like about what it means to a young girl walking in Harlem right down the street when she sees a who looks like not underestimate the power of your diploma opens up new possibilities, so reach back, convince a young girl to earn one, you earned your degree in areas where we need more womenlike puter science or engineering(applause)reach back and persuade another student to study it, you39。re going into fields where we need more women, like construction or puter engineeringreach back, hire someone a a role a girl can imagine herself, can picture herself as a puter programmer, or a batant mander, she won’t bee there are women who tell her, ignore our pop culture obsession over beauty and fashion(applause)and focus instead on studying and inventing and peting and leading, she’ll think those are the only things that girls are supposed to care , Michelle will say, nothing wrong with caring about it a little bit.(Laughter.)You can be stylish and powerful, too.(Applause.)That39。s Michelle’s advice.(Applause.)And never forget that the most important example a young girl will ever follow is that of a and Sasha are going to be outstanding women because Michelle and Marian Robinson are outstanding understand your power, and use it last piece of advicethis is simple, but perhaps most important: worthwhile is one of achievement has avoided failuresometimes catastrophic they keep at learn from don’t know, when I first arrived on this campus, it was with little money, fewer it was here that I tried to find my place in this knew I wanted to make a difference, but it was vague how in fact I’d go about it.(Laughter.)But I wanted to do my part to do my part to shape a better even as I worked after graduation in a few unfulfilling jobs here in New YorkI will not list them all(laughter)even as I went from motley apartment to motley apartment, I reached started to write letters to munity organizations all across the one day, a small group of churches on the South Side of Chicago answered, offering me work with people in neighborhoods hit hard by steel mills that were shutting down and munities where jobs were dying munity had been plagued by gang violence, so once I arrived, one of the first things we tried to do was to mobilize a meeting with munity leaders to deal with I’d worked for weeks on this invited the police。we made phone calls。we went to churches。we passed out night of the meeting we arranged rows and rows of chairs in anticipation of this we waited, and we finally, a group of older folks walked in to the hall and they sat this little old lady raised her hand and asked, “Is this where the bingo game is?”(Laughter.)It was a showed first big munity meetingnobody showed later, the volunteers I worked with told me, that39。s it。we’re 39。d been doing this for two years even before I had had nothing to show for I’ll be honest, I felt pretty discouraged as didn39。t know what I was thought about as we were talking, I looked outside and saw some young boys playing in a vacant lot across the they were just throwing rocks up at a boarded had nothing better to dolate at night, just throwing I said to the volunteers, “Before you quit, answer one will happen to those boys if you quit? Who will fight for them if we don’t? Who will give them a fair shot if we leave?And one by one, the volunteers decided not to went back to those neighborhoods and we kept at registered new voters, and we set up afterschool programs, and we fought for new jobs, and helped people live lives with some measure of we sustained ourselves with those small didn’t set the world on of those munities are still very are still a lot of gangs out I believe that it was those small victories that helped me win the bigger victories of my last three and a half years as I wish I could say that this perseverance came from some innate toughness in the truth is, it was got it from watching the people who raised specifically, I got it from watching the women who shaped my grew up as the son of a single mom who struggled to put herself through school and make ends had marriages that fell apart。even went on food stamps at one point to help us get she didn’t she earned her degree, and made sure that through scholarships and hard work, my sister and I earned used to wake me up when we were living overseaswake me up before dawn to study my English when I’d plain, she’d just look at me and say, “This is no piic for me either, buster.”(Laughter.)And my mom ended up dedicating herself to helping women around the world access the money they needed to start their own businessesshe was an early pioneer in that meant, though, that she was gone a lot, and she had