Opening remarks delivered by Mr. Peter M. Chan, ISA Executive Director, during the Iloilo Scholastic Academy 1st High School and 4th Elementary Commencement Exercises and Recognition Day on 16 March 2008 at the CAP Auditorium.
毕业典礼主讲人*，新华学院主席张德志先生，新华董事，老师，家长，同学，女士先生们：
下午好！今天的首届中学毕业典礼，标志着新华学院又迈开了历史性的一步。三月十六日是我校履行她神圣职责的过程中的一个重要里程碑。今天的毕业典礼是四年来大家共同努力奋斗的结晶。
新华学院在过去四年所走过的历程、她为我们社区的教育事业所做出的力所能及的贡献是值得每位董事、老师、学习者和家长骄傲的。在过去的四年里，我们奠定了新华向更高的目标冲刺的坚实基础，明确了今后发展的方向。我相信在现有的基础上，在大家的共同努力下，我们的目的一定要达到，我們的目的一定能夠达到。
祝新华学院为我国的教育事业做出更大的贡献。
祝新华学院明天会更加灿烂、更加辉煌。
Commencement Speaker*, ISA President, Mr. Vicente Tiu, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Mr. Venido Peña , Officers and member of the Board of Trustees of Iloilo Scholastic Academy, ISA facilitators, Parents, ISAers, Ladies and Gentlemen:
Good Afternoon.
Graduation ceremony has always been appropriately called as ‘Commencement Exercises’. Because we believe every ending germinates a new beginning. Many people want to live in the past, because in the past everything had been settled, people are no longer haunted by uncertainty; uncertainly is often dreadful, and future has never been wanting of uncertainty.
But no matter how uncertain is the future, it is the only place where we can explore more opportunities and find more meaning in life. The past is done, no amount of wealth can change the past. Some corrupt powerful persons might succeed in concealing their past ugly deeds, but they can never bring back the past and change what had been done.
In its truest sense, the past does not belong to you and me as individuals, it belongs to the collective human race, the past belongs to history.
Dear ISAers, you might have earned quite a few medals, but you know the excitement won’t last, because you are fully aware that after a short-lived euphoria, you need to attend to something truly belongs to you, the future.
Dear ISAers, more particularly the candidates for graduation, I believe, Life Is Fair. Commencement exercises once again reminds you, and perhaps all of us here including your parents, that each one, and no one else, is making his own future. It is not your past that determines your future, it is you.
As what Theodore Roosevelt once said: “Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell them, ‘Certainly I can!’ Then get busy and find out how to do it.” That’s it. He did not say, ‘Wait, I check first what I have accumulated from the past and let me think if I can do it.’
My dear ISAers, always keep in mind even the well-known ISA philosophy ‘I am, I can’ is not in past tense. Thank you.
* Mrs. Teresita Ang See is the commencement speaker. 毕业典礼主讲人是洪玉华女士。
