you all are leaving your alma mater now. i have no gift to present you all except a piece of advice.
what i would like to advise is that "don’t give up your study." most of the courses you have taken are partly for your certificate. you had no choice but to take them. from now on, you may study on your own. i would advise you to work hard at some special field when you are still young and vigorous. your youth will be gone that will never come back to you again. when you are old, and when your energy are getting poorer, you will not be able to as you wish to. even though you have to study in order to make a living, studies will never live up to you. making a living without studying, you will be shifted out in three or five years. at this time when you hope to make it up, you will say it is too late. perhaps you will say, "after graduation and going into the society, we will meet with an urgent problem, that is, to make a living. for this we have no time to study. even though we hope to study, we have no library nor labs, how can we study further?"
i would like to say that all those who wait to have a library will not study further even though they have one and all these who wait to have a lab will not do experiments even though they have one. when you have a firm resolution and determination to solve a problem, you will naturally economize on food and clothing.
as for time, i should say it’s not a problem. you may know that every day he could do only an hour work, not much more than that because darwin was ill for all his life. you must have read his achievements. every day you spend an hour in reading 10 useful pages, then you will read more than 3650 pages every year. in 30 years you will have read 110,000 pages.
my fellow students, reading 110,000 pages will make you a scholar. but it will take you an hour to read three kinds of small-sized newspapers and it will take you an hour and a half to play four rounds of mahjian pieces. reading small-sized newspapers or playing mahjian pieces, or working hard to be a scholar? it’s up to you all.
henrik ibsen said, "it is your greatest duty to make yourself out."
studying is then as tool as casting. giving up studying will destroy yourself.
i have to say goodbye to you all. your alma mater will open her eyes to see what you will be in 10 years. goodbye!
