Greetings! Friends, family, faculty and staff. Welcome to Boston University on such a beautiful Friday night.
My name is Yujing Cai, and I am a graduate from the Master of Mathematical Finance program. I come from Nanjing, China, one of the oldest cities in the world. Right now, my family is sitting somewhere over there. They travelled, literally across half of the world to see their baby girl graduate and talk in a language they don’t understand. Therefore, I am tremendously honored to share my perspective of 6 years at the Questrom School of Business.
我的名字叫蔡语靖，我毕业于数学金融硕士专业。我来自中国南京，世界上最古老的城市之一。现在，我的家人正坐在那里，他们跨越了半个地球来到这里，来看他们的宝贝女儿毕业，然后用他们听不懂的语言演讲。因此，我非常荣幸能在此分享我在Questrom商学院六年的感悟。
One of the things I always enjoyed doing while waiting for classes was looking at the different country flags in our atrium.Sometimes my friends and I even have silly competitions going on to see who knew more flags, and it often amazed me how many different cultures and nationalities are represented in our community.
在等待上课时，我最喜欢做的事情之一就是看着我们商学院的大厅挂着不同的国旗，有时我还会和朋友们傻傻地比赛，看谁认得出更多的国旗。而我时常惊讶，我们的学生群体里竟然有这么多不同文化和民族的代表。
In a community, so diverse, mutual understanding doesn’t come easily, so I tried hard to be adaptive from the beginning. Soon, I found myself adjusting to the bigger food portion, and railways in the middle of the road. I even tried fortunes cookies for the first time in my life!
在这样一个多元化的群体里，相互理解并不容易，所以我从一开始就努力地让自己适应。很快，我发现自己适应了这里更大的食量，和马路正中间的铁路，我甚至人生中第一次品尝了幸运饼干。
Soon, I felt so content with this progress and I gradually built a cozy nest with people of my culture, my age, and who thought and acted exactly like I did. Why bother talking to anyone else? The coursework and job-hunting were already so tiring, and meeting people outside my circle just seemed so scary and unnecessary.
很快，我满足于自己的进步，于是逐渐建立了一个充满了与我的文化背景、年龄相仿的人的舒适的窝。她们的所思所想都与我相似，我又何必再与其他人交流呢？学校的学业和找工作的过程已经让人疲惫不堪，跨出我自己的圈子去和其他人交往，看起来是那么的没必要，甚至可怕。
Then one day something changed. It was a normal school day, and I was in the atrium looking at the flags as always. I saw that the flag of China was surrounded nicely by the flags of Canada, Chile, Colombia, and DR Congo, and suddenly it struck me that I didn’t know anyone of those nationalities. What a waste it was for me to ignore the diversity of experience and opinions that the Questrom community had to offer! I was determined to change, but it wasn’t easy:
有一天这一切突然改变了。那是一个正常的上课日，我一如既往的在大厅里看着不同的国旗，我看到中国的国旗被加拿大、哥伦比亚和刚果民主共和国的国旗很好的包围着。突然间我意识到我并不认识任何这些国籍的人，我意识到忽略了Questrom这样多元化群体，提供给我的多样的经验和观点是多大的浪费！所以我决心要改变！但这并不容易，
I experienced the awkwardness of having to explain a joke that no one understood, the nervousness of asking questions about other cultures that seemed so obvious and silly, and the anger of defending my beliefs only to get suspicion and aloofness in return.Fortunately, these discomforts weresoon taken over by things like the amusement of teaching my classmates to pronounce my last name, Cai, using a part of their tongue that they didn't know existed, the excitement of promoting our Math Finance culture awareness events in the Questrom Graduate Council, the satisfactionof knowing all the secret authentic restaurants around Boston and the astonishment of seeing the world and myself in a way that I could never have imaged before.
我经历了不得不解释一个没有人理解的笑话的尴尬，对于别的文化提出问题，但担心问题过于明显和愚蠢的紧张感，以及捍卫我自己的信念却只得到怀疑和厌恶时的愤怒。但幸运的是，这些不舒适的感受很快就被别的事情替代了。比如，当我教会我的同学们发音我的姓氏“蔡”，他们使用到了自己以前都没注意到的小部分舌头的时候的快乐。还有，当我向Questrom研究学生会宣传我们金融数学项目的文化活动时的兴奋，以及，当我知道波士顿周围所有最正宗最地道的餐馆时的满足，还有当我以自己从未想象过的视角去看这个世界，和自己的世界时的惊奇。
During the past 2 years of graduate school and 4 years of undergraduate before that, I have been so proud to see that our school grew fromSchool of Management to Questrom School of Business, and that our community is growing stronger and more vibrant each year, and this couldn’t have happened without the effort of everyone here to share, to inspire, and to embrace each other.
在过去两年的研究生院和再之前四年的本科生活中，我很自豪地看到，我们的学院从管理学院成长为Questrom商学院，而我们的学生群体每一年都越来越强大，愈发具有活力。而这样的进步，如果没有这里的每个人，努力地去分享去激励，去接纳彼此，是不可能发生的。
Let’s now think about the future. 20 years from now, what kind of challenges are we going to face, as family members, as business owners, as human beings? Nobody knows.To cope with that amount of uncertainty, we will need a diverse set of skills and knowledge, andmost important of all, an open mind to learn. That’s why we have been so lucky to be part of the Questrom community that cultivated such freedom of an open mind.
现在我们来思考未来，20年后我们将会面临什么样的挑战？作为家庭成员，作为企业总裁，作为人类，没有人知道，所以为了应对如此大的不确定性，我们需要储备多样化的技能和知识，而更重要的是，要有一颗开放的大脑去学习。这就是为什么我们这么幸运能成为Questrom群体的一部分，因为它发展了开放思想的自由。
So, congratulations, class of 2017! Forwhen you walk outside that door today, you are already equipped with one of the most critical skills to succeed in the future, the ability to embrace diversity. Thank you so much!
所以，恭喜在场的2017届毕业生，因为当你们今天走出那扇门时，你已经全副武装具备了未来成功的关健竞争技能，即拥抱文化多样性的能力！非常感谢！
