双语新闻:笨孩子,与成功无缘

“Too dumb. You’ll never graduate from high school,” his elementary school teacher told 7-year-old Adam Zimmerman. Sure enough, he “failed” and was held back a grade.

Being left behind by friends made him feel like “trash”. But his teacher’s cutting comment changed his life. It transformed a kid with dyslexia into a person driven to succeed.

“Just because one person says something, don’t take their word, ” his mother told him. “Go out and prove them wrong. It’s not about the disability; it’s what you do about it.”

Zimmerman did graduate from high school, and at 5′7″ he excelled in two sports he was considered too small for: basketball and volleyball. He was MVP and All Conference in both.

That still wasn’t enough to earn him a big-time college scholarship. So he went to a Division Ⅱ school and worked on his game. And though a coach told him he’d never be a Division I basketball player, in his sophomore year he transferred to Marshall University in West Virginia, a Division I school. And he practiced and practiced. The following year he made the team as a walk-on player.

In May, the dumb kid who was too short graduate with a degree in sports management and marketing.

When he thinks back to that grade school teacher, he says, “I thank her for saying that. It’s unbelievable how a person’s words can stick in the back of your mind and push you to be more than what they say you can be.”

(From Reader’s Digest)

“你太笨了，连中学都很难毕业。”小学老师对7岁的Adam Zimmerman这么说。正如老师所说，亚当没有顺利毕业而留了一级。

学习上被朋友们远远甩在后面的亚当感觉自己像个废物。那位老师的尖刻论断改变了他的一生，使一个有诵读困难的孩子成长为一个成功的人。

妈妈告诉亚当：“不要太在意别人说什么。你只要去证明他们的话是错误的。你不是没有能力，而是需要付诸行动。”

亚当高中毕业了!在篮球和排球比赛中他取得了优异的成绩，这两种运动项目曾经是他的弱项。他成为最有价值的球员，又是体育联盟的成员。

可这些成就并未使他有资格获得一流大学的奖学金。亚当进入一所第二区学校继续深造。教练断言说亚当不可能成为第一区学校的篮球运动员，相反他大二时就转入了西弗吉尼亚的马歇尔大学——一所第一区学校。在大学里亚当坚持不懈地练习，接下来的一年，他成为那个队的临时队员。

5月份，这个“愚笨”的孩子在极短的时间内获得了运动管理和市场学的.学位。

当他回想起自己的小学老师时，他说：“感谢她那么说我。简直难以置信，别人的负面评价能够如此深刻地印在一个人的脑海中，并且比赞扬你的话起到更大的推动作用。”