1、今年哈佛校长给本科毕业生的毕业演讲 zz furong 发表于 2008 年 06 月 23 日 13:11 阅读(10) 评论(1) 分类： 个人日记 举报 Baccalaureate（文凭） address to Class of 2008The Memorial（纪念馆） ChurchCambridge, Mass.June 3, 2008As prepared for delivery In the curious custom of this venerable（可敬的） institution, I find myself standing before you expected
2、to impart（传递） words of lasting wisdom. Here I am in a pulpit(讲坛), dressed like a Puritan（清教） minister an apparition (幻影）that would have horrified many of my distinguished forebears（尊敬的前辈) and perhaps rededicated (再次）some of them to the extirpation (摘除)of witches（巫婆）. This moment would have propelled
3、（推进） Increase and Cotton into a true “Mather lather（马瑟泡沫 ）.” But here I am and there you are and it is the moment of and for Veritas. You have been undergraduates for four years. I have been president for not quite one. You have known three presidents; I one senior class. Where then lies the voice o
4、f experience? Maybe you should be offering the wisdom. Perhaps our roles could be reversed（扭转） and I could, in Harvard Law School style, do cold calls for the next hour or so. We all do seem to have made it to this point more or less in one piece. Though I recently learned that we have not provided
5、you with dinner since May 22. I know we need to wean （断奶）you from Harvard in a figurative （比喻）sense. I never knew we took it quite so literally（字面）. But lets return to that notion of cold calls for a moment. Lets imagine this were a baccalaureate service in the form of Q one of you will dance tango
6、and work in dance therapy（治疗） in Argentina; another will be engaged in agricultural development in Kenya; another, with an honors degree in math, will study poetry; another will train as a pilot（飞行员） with the USAF; another will work to combat （打击）breast cancer. Numbers of you will go to law school,
7、medical school, and graduate school. But, consistent with the pattern Goldin and Katz have documented, a considerable number of you are selecting finance and consulting. The Crimsons survey of last years class reported that 58 percent of men and 43 percent of women entering the workforce made this c
8、hoice. This year, even in challenging economic times, the figure is 39 percent. High salaries, the all but irresistible recruiting juggernaut（不可抗拒的招募冲击）, the reassurance（放心） for many of you that you will be in New York working and living and enjoying life alongside your friends, the promise of inter
9、esting work there are lots of ways to explain these choices. For some of you, it is a commitment （委托事项）for only a year or two in any case. Others believe they will best be able to do good by first doing well. Yet, you ask me why you are following this path. I find myself in some ways less interested
10、 in answering your question than in figuring out why you are posing（乔装） it. If Professors Goldin and Katz have it right; if finance is indeed the “rational（理性） choice,” why do you keep raising this issue with me? Why does this seemingly rational choice strike a number of you as not understandable, a
11、s not entirely rational, as in some sense less a free choice than a compulsion or necessity? Why does this seem to be troubling so many of you? You are asking me, I think, about the meaning of life, though you have posed your question in code in terms of the observable and measurable phenomenon of s
12、enior（高级） career choice rather than the abstract, unfathomable（深不可测） and almost embarrassing realm（境界） of metaphysics（形而上学）. The Meaning of Life capital M, capital L is a clich（陈词滥调） easier to deal with as the ironic（具有讽刺意义的） title of a Monty Python（巨蟒） movie or the subject of a Simpsons episode tha
13、n as a matter about which one would dare admit to harboring （窝藏）serious concern. But lets for a moment abandon our Harvard savoir faire（诀窍）, our imperturbability, our pretense（幌子） of invulnerability（抗毁性）, and try to find the beginnings of some answers to your question. I think you are worried becaus
14、e you want your lives not just to be conventionally（常规） successful, but to be meaningful, and you are not sure how those two goals fit together. You are not sure if a generous starting salary at a prestigious（威望） brand name organization together with the promise of future wealth will feed your soul.
15、 Why are you worried? Partly it is our fault. We have told you from the moment you arrived here that you will be the leaders responsible for the future, that you are the best and the brightest on whom we will all depend, that you will change the world. We have burdened you with no small expectations
16、. And you have already done remarkable things to fulfill them: your dedication（奉献） to service demonstrated（表明） in your extracurricular （课外）engagements, your concern about the future of the planet expressed in your vigorous championing（大力倡导） of sustainability（可持续性）, your reinvigoration（振兴） of America
17、n politics through engagement in this years presidential contests. But many of you are now wondering how these commitments（承诺） fit with a career choice. Is it necessary to decide between remunerative（报酬） work and meaningful work? If it were to be either/or, which would you choose? Is there a way to
18、have both? You are asking me and yourselves fundamental questions about values, about trying to reconcile（调和） potentially （潜在）competing goods, about recognizing that it may not be possible to have it all. You are at a moment of transition that requires making choices. And selecting one option a job,
19、 a career, a graduate program means not selecting others. Every decision means loss as well as gain possibilities foregone （定局）as well as possibilities embraced. Your question to me is partly about that about loss of roads not taken. Finance, Wall Street, “recruiting(招聘）” have become the symbol of t
20、his dilemma（两难), representing a set of issues that is much broader and deeper than just one career path. These are issues that in one way or another will at some point face you all as you graduate from medical school and choose a specialty family practice or dermatology（皮肤科）, as you decide whether t
21、o use your law degree to work for a corporate firm or as a public defender, as you decide whether to stay in teaching after your two years with TFA. You are worried because you want to have both a meaningful life and a successful one; you know you were educated to make a difference not just for your
22、self, for your own comfort and satisfaction, but for the world around you. And now you have to figure out the way to make that possible. I think there is a second reason you are worried related to but not entirely distinct （独特的）from the first. You want to be happy. You have flocked（蜂拥而至） to courses
23、like “Positive Psychology” Psych 1504 and “The Science of Happiness” in search of tips. But how do we find happiness? I can offer one encouraging answer: get older. Turns out that survey data show older people that is, my age report themselves happier than do younger ones. But perhaps you dont want
24、to wait. As I have listened to you talk about the choices ahead of you, I have heard you articulate your worries about the relationship of success and happiness perhaps, more accurately, how to define success so that it yields (产量）and encompasses(包括) real happiness, not just money and prestige（威望）.
25、The most remunerative（报酬） choice, you fear, may not be the most meaningful and the most satisfying. But you wonder how you would ever survive as an artist or an actor or a public servant or a high school teacher? How would you ever figure out a path by which to make your way in journalism? Would you
26、 ever find a job as an English professor after you finished who knows how many years of graduate school and dissertation （论文）writing? The answer is: you wont know till you try. But if you dont try to do what you love whether it is painting or biology or finance; if you dont pursue what you think wil
27、l be most meaningful, you will regret it. Life is long. There is always time for Plan B. But dont begin with it. I think of this as my parking space theory of career choice, and I have been sharing it with students for decades. Dont park 20 blocks from your destination because you think youll never
28、find a space. Go where you want to be and then circle back to where you have to be. You may love investment banking or finance or consulting. It might be just right for you. Or, you might be like the senior I met at lunch at Kirkland who had just returned from an interview on the West Coast with a p
29、restigious（威望） consulting firm. “Why am I doing this?” she asked. “I hate flying, I hate hotels, I wont like this job.” Find work you love. It is hard to be happy if you spend more than half your waking hours doing something you dont. But what is ultimately （最终）most important here is that you are as
30、king the question not just of me but of yourselves. You are choosing roads and at the same time challenging your own choices. You have a notion of what you want your life to be and you are not sure the road you are taking is going to get you there. This is the best news. And it is also, I hope, to s
31、ome degree, our fault. Noticing your life, reflecting upon it, considering how you can live it well, wondering how you can do good: These are perhaps the most valuable things that a liberal （自由主义）arts education has equipped you to do. A liberal education demands that you live self-consciously. It pr
32、epares you to seek and define the meaning inherent （固有）in all you do. It has made you an analyst（分析师） and critic of yourself, a person in this way supremely(超级) equipped to take charge of your life and how it unfolds. It is in this sense that the liberal arts are liberal as in liberare to free. They
33、 empower you with the possibility of exercising agency, of discovering meaning, of making choices. The surest（可靠的） way to have a meaningful, happy life is to commit yourself to striving（努力） for it. Dont settle. Be prepared to change routes. Remember the impossible expectations we have of you, and ev
34、en as you recognize they are impossible, remember how important they are as a lodestar（北极星） guiding you toward something that matters to you and to the world. The meaning of your life is for you to make. I cant wait to see how you all turn out. Do come back, from time to time, and let us know. 本文链接： http:/user复制
