尊敬的Bok校长，Rudenstine前校长，即将上任的Faust校长，哈佛集团的各位成员，监管理事会的各位理事，各位老师，各位家长，各位同学：

I”ve been waiting more than 30 years to say this: "Dad, I always told you I”d come back and get my degree."

有一句话我等了三十年，现在终于可以说了："老爸，我总是跟你说，我会回来拿到我的学位的！"

I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I”ll be changing my job next year ... and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.

我要感谢哈佛大学在这个时候给我这个荣誉。明年，我就要换工作了（注：指从微软公司退休）......我终于可以在简历上写我有一个本科学位，这真是不错啊。

I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I”m just happy that the Crimson has called me "Harvard”s most successful dropout." I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class ... I did the best of everyone who failed.

我为今天在座的各位同学感到高兴，你们拿到学位可比我简单多了。哈佛的校报称我是"哈佛大学历史上最成功的辍学生"。我想这大概使我有资格代表我这一类学生发言......在所有的失败者里，我做得最好。

But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I”m a bad influence. That”s why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.

但是，我还要提醒大家，我使得Steve Ballmer（注：微软总经理）也从哈佛商学院退学了。因此，我是个有着恶劣影响力的人。这就是为什么我被邀请来在你们的毕业典礼上演讲。如果我在你们入学欢迎仪式上演讲，那么能够坚持到今天在这里毕业的人也许会少得多吧。

Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn”t even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn”t worry about getting up in the morning. That”s how I came to be the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.

对我来说，哈佛的求学经历是一段非凡的经历。校园生活很有趣，我常去旁听我没选修的课。哈佛的课外生活也很棒，我在Radcliffe过着逍遥自在的日子。每天我的寝室里总有很多人一直待到半夜，讨论着各种事情。因为每个人都知道我从不考虑第二天早起。这使得我变成了校园里那些不安分学生的头头，我们互相粘在一起，做出一种拒绝所有正常学生的姿态。

Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn”t guarantee success.

Radcliffe是个过日子的好地方。那里的女生比男生多，而且大多数男生都是理工科的。这种状况为我创造了最好的机会，如果你们明白我的意思。可惜的是，我正是在这里学到了人生中悲伤的一课：机会大，并不等于你就会成功。

One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world”s first personal computers. I offered to sell them software.

我在哈佛最难忘的回忆之一，发生在1975年1月。那时，我从宿舍楼里给位于Albuquerque的一家公司打了一个电话，那家公司已经在着手制造世界上第一台个人电脑。我提出想向他们出售软件。

I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: "We”re not quite ready, come see us in a month," which was a good thing, because we hadn”t written the software yet. From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft.

我很担心，他们会发觉我是一个住在宿舍的学生，从而挂断电话。但是他们却说："我们还没准备好，一个月后你再来找我们吧。"这是个好消息，因为那时软件还根本没有写出来呢。就是从那个时候起，我日以继夜地在这个小小的课外项目上工作，这导致了我学生生活的结束，以及通往微软公司的不平凡的旅程的开始。

What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege