When I was young, my family lived in Indonesia for a few years, and my mother didn’t have the money to send me where all the American kids went to school. So she decided to teach me at 4:30 in the morning.
Get your homework done, and don’t spend every waking hour in front of the TV or with that Xbox. I’ve talked a lot about your government’s responsibility for turning around schools that aren’t working. None of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those adults; and put in the hard work it takes.
Every single one of you has something to offer and you have a responsibility to discover what that is. You could be a mayor or a Senator or a Supreme Court Justice, but you might not know that until you join student government or the debate team. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country.
You’ll need science and math to cure AIDS. If you don’t do that – you’re quitting on your country like my father quit on my family when I was two years old. I did some things I’m not proud of, and got in more trouble than I should have.
I got a lot of second chances.
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. I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education – and to do everything you can to meet them. Maybe you’ll decide to take better care of yourself so we can keep people from getting the flu. I want you to commit to it. I want you to really work at it.
Sometimes, you get the sense from TV 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, you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time.
Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. And even when you’re struggling, even when you’re discouraged, and you feel like other people have given up on you – don’t ever give up on yourself. Because when you give up on yourself, you give up on your country. The story of America is about people who loved their country too much to do anything less.
It’s the story of students who went on to wage a revolution. So today, I want to ask you, what’s your contribution going to be? You’ve got to do your part so I expect you to get serious this year. Don’t let us down – don’t let your country down. Make us all proud. God bless you, and God bless America.
