you don’t feel safe, or have friends who are pressuring you to do things you know aren’t
right.
But at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you
come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no
excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for
talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse
for not trying.
Where you are right now doesn’t have to determine where you’ll end up. No one’s
written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make
your own future.
That’s what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.
Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn’t speak English when
she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of
her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship
to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to
being Dr. Jazmin Perez.
I’m thinking about Andoni Schultz, from Los Altos, California, who’s fought brain
cancer since he was three. He’s endured all sorts of treatments and surgeries, one of
which affected his memory, so it took him much longer – hundreds of extra hours – to do
his schoolwork. But he never fell behind, and he’s headed to college this fall.
And then there’s Shantell Steve, from my hometown of Chicago, Illinois. Even when
bouncing from foster home to foster home in the toughest neighborhoods, she managed to
get a job at a local health center; start a program to keep young people out of gangs; and
she’s on track to graduate high school with honors and go on to college.
Jazmin, Andoni and Shantell aren’t any different from any of you. They faced challenges
in their lives just like you do. But they refused to give up. They chose to take
responsibility for their education and set goals for themselves. And I expect all of you to
do the same.
That’s why today, I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education –
and to do everything you can to meet them. Your goal can be something as simple as
doing all your homework, paying attention in class, or spending time each day reading a
book. Maybe you’ll decide to get involved in an extracurricular activity, or volunteer in
your community. Maybe you’ll decide to stand up for kids who are being teased or
bullied because of who they are or how they look, because you believe, like I do, that all
kids deserve a safe environment to study and learn. Maybe you’ll decide to take better
care of yourself so you can be more ready to learn. And along those lines, I hope you’ll
all wash your hands a lot, and stay home from school when you don’t feel well, so we can
keep people from getting the flu this fall and winter.
Whatever you resolve to do, I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.
I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful
without any hard work -- that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or
being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.
But the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You
won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely
relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything
the first time you try.