正文
图源：哥大
演讲原文及翻译：
Thank you! Dean Morrison.
谢谢你，莫里森院长。
Every good ceremony places its best speeches at the beginning and the end which is why I'm speaking in the middle of our class day.
每一场精彩的典礼都会把最好的演讲安排在开头和结尾，这就是为什么我在我们年级庆典的中间发言。
And to be honest, that’s fair. When I look at this crowd, I see students pioneering clean energy. Ridding plastic from our oceans. We have a real-life Stark lab featured recently in a Veritasium video.
说实话，这也挺合理的。当我看着在场的各位时，我看到的是正在探索清洁能源的学生，正在从海洋中清除塑料的学生。我们还有一个现实版的斯塔克实验室（注：即漫威电影中钢铁侠的实验室），最近还登上了 Veritasium 的视频（注：知名科学类 YouTube 频道）。
Students using machine learning to explore the quantum world. And working with NASA to launch a freaking satellite to space.
我们当中有人使用机器学习探索量子世界，有人正在与 NASA 合作，把一颗卫星发射到太空。
Despite all of these amazing people who could be up here today. They chose the dork with the Among Us keychain—that you’ve probably never seen outside of class.
尽管有这么多优秀的人都可以站在这个讲台上，他们最后选了那个挂着《Among Us》钥匙扣（注：一款太空狼人杀类游戏）的人，也就是我——你们可能在课外从没见过我。
For those of you who've had me as a T.A. though, watching me yap up here probably isn’t strange. You know I love lecturing and could very well spend the next 45 minutes glazing Euclidean distance matrices.
不过对那些我当过助教的人来说，看到我在台上唠叨大概也不算陌生。你们知道我喜欢讲课，我甚至可以在接下来的45分钟里讲欧几里得距离矩阵。
But the best part about teaching here at Columbia is seeing how we all interact so differently with the same material. And I think this is representative of Columbia as a whole.
但在哥伦比亚教书最棒的一点是，看见大家用完全不同的方式去理解同一份内容，我觉得这正是整个哥大的写照。
Now, don't fact-check me but not only does our class represent all 50 states, we represent almost half the countries.
虽然别急着去查证，但我们的这一届不仅代表了美国所有50个州，还代表了全球几乎一半的国家。
We come from the biggest cities to the smallest towns and a fifth of us are the first in our families to even attend—let alone graduate—university.
我们来自最大的大都市，也来自最小的乡镇。有五分之一的人，是家中第一个上大学、甚至第一个完成学业的人。
Yet together as one class. We struggled through introductory physics, bared through the insane heat waves in our dorms, pulled all-nighters to finish our Art of Engineering projects and spent hours in Butler how to add just one more page to our Music Hum essays.
而我们，作为一个集体，一起熬过了物理入门课，一起在宿舍里忍受疯狂的热浪，为了“工程艺术”项目通宵达旦，也曾在巴特勒图书馆里思考该怎么在“音乐人文”论文里多写一页。
So I want to share a bit about my background and how it shaped my perspective here. Now I know we're all excited to graduate and finally be free of classes. But unfortunately, I'm going to put you through one last lecture.
所以我想分享一些关于我的背景，以及它是如何塑造我在哥大所持的视角。我知道我们都很兴奋即将毕业，终于可以摆脱课程了。但不幸的是，我还是要再给大家上一堂“课”。
My research is all about how materials look on the nano scale. So current microscopes aren't powerful enough to see the individual atom, so we have to be a little more creative and we shine lasers on them.
我的研究是关于材料在纳米尺度下的样貌。现有的显微镜还不足以看到单个原子，所以我们必须更有创造性——我们会用激光照射它们。
So it's kind of like when you shine a laser on a mirror and the direction the laser bounces tells you the angle the mirror is oriented.
这有点像你用激光照镜子，激光反射的方向会告诉你镜子的朝向。
But no real-world mirror is perfectly smooth so if you turn off the lights and use a strong enough laser, you can see not only a bright dot where the reflected light lands but also small fluctuations in light.
但真实世界中的镜子并不完全光滑。如果你关上灯，用足够强的激光，你不仅能看到反射光落下的位置出现一个亮点，还能看到一些光线的细微波动。
These minute ripples tell us what atoms compose our mirror and where the defects are.
这些微小的波纹告诉我们镜子是由哪些原子构成的，哪里存在缺陷。
