1、1哈佛女校长在毕业典礼上的讲话：职业选择与幸福寻找(2008-08-28 21:07:14)标签：留学美国 杂谈 分类：留学美国 时刻准备改变人生你不试试就永远都不会知道。但如果你不试着去做自己热爱的事情，不管是玩泥巴还是生物还是金融，如果连你自己都不去追求你认为最有价值的事，你终将后悔。人生路漫漫，你总有时间去给自己留“后路” ，但可别一开始就走“后路” 。不要因为怕到了目的地找不到停车位而把车停在距离目的地 20 个路口的地方。直接到达你想去的地方，哪怕再绕回来停，你暂时停的地方只是你被迫停的地方。如果你把你一天中醒着的一大半时间用来做你不喜欢的事情，你是很难感到幸福的。哈佛毕业生，骄子中
2、的骄子，毕业后依然面临职业选择问题。以什么标准去进行职业选择，并实现对社会的价值，以及自己幸福的人生？刚刚上任一年，哈佛大学历史上的首位女校长 Drew G. Faust 在 2008 年本科生毕业典礼上，给出了她的答案，而这答案，对于我们即将迈入社会的中国学生而言，依然有所启迪。当然，中国留学生们，仔细读读，也有可能受益终身。Drew G. Faust：哈佛大学现任校长， 2007 年 7 月份正式上任，她是哈佛历史上第一位女性校长，第一位非哈佛毕业生校长，杰出的历史学家，2001 年从宾西法尼业大学到哈佛的 Radcliffe 学院任教。之前的哈佛上一任校长曾因为公开发表“歧视女性”的言论
3、被迫辞职。以下是 Drew G. Faust 在 2008 年本科毕业生做的演讲的讲稿。Baccalaureate address to Class of 20082008 届本科毕业典礼上的讲话The Memorial Church纪念教堂Cambridge, Mass.麻省剑桥市As prepared for delivery准备稿In the curious custom of this venerable institution, I find myself standing before you expected to impart words of lasting wisdom.
4、Here I am in a pulpit, dressed like a Puritan minister an apparition that would have horrified many of my distinguished forebears and perhaps rededicated some of them to the extirpation of witches. This moment would have propelled Increase and 2Cotton into a true “Mather lather.” But here I am and t
5、here you are and it is the moment of and for Veritas.在这所久负盛名的大学的别具一格的仪式上，我站在了你们的面前，被期待着给予一些蕴含着恒久智慧的言论。站在这个讲坛上，我穿得像个清教徒教长一个可能会吓到我的杰出前辈们的怪物，或许使他们中的一些人重新致力于铲除巫婆的事业上。这个时刻也许曾激励了很多清教徒成为教长。但现在，我在上面，你们在下面，此时此刻，属于真理，为了真理。You have been undergraduates for four years. I have been president for not quite one. Yo
6、u have known three presidents; I one senior class. Where then lies the voice of experience? Maybe you should be offering the wisdom. Perhaps our roles could be reversed and I could, in Harvard Law School style, do cold calls for the next hour or so.你们已经在哈佛做了四年的大学生，而我当哈佛校长还不到一年。你们认识了三个校长，而我只认识了你们这一届大
7、四的。算起来我哪有资格说什么经验之谈？或许应该由你们上来展示一下智慧。要不我们换换位置？然后我就可以像哈佛法学院的学生那样，在接下来的一个小时内不时地冷不防地提出问题。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 you with dinner since May 22. I know we need to wean you from Harvard in a figurative sense.
8、 I never knew we took it quite so literally.学校和学生们似乎都在努力让时间来到这一时刻，而且还差不多是步调一致的。我这两天才得知哈佛从 5 月 22 日开始就不向你们提供伙食了。虽然有比喻说“我们早晚得给你们断奶” ，但没想到我们的后勤还真的早早就把“奶”给断了。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 t
9、ango and work in dance therapy 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 with the USAF; another will work to combat breast cancer. Numbers of you will go to law school, medical
10、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 choice. T
11、his year, even in challenging economic times, the figure is 39 percent.对于这个问题有多种思考和回答方式。有一种解释就是如 Willie Sutton 所说的，一切向“钱”看。 （Willie Sutton 是个抢银行犯，被逮住后当被问到为什么去抢银行时，他说：“Because that is where the money is!”）你们中很多人见过的普通经济学教授 Claudia Goldin 和 Larry Katz，基于对上世纪 70 年代以来的学生的职业选择的研究，做出了差不多的回答。他们发现了值得注意的一点：即使
12、从事金融业可以得到很高的金钱回报，很多学生仍然选择做其它的事情。实事上，你们中间有 37 人签到了“教育美国人” （Teach for America，美国的一个组织，其作用类似于中国的“希望工程 ”） ；1 人将去跳探戈舞蹈并在阿根廷从事舞蹈疗法；1 人将致力于肯尼亚的农业发展；另有 1 人获得了数学的荣誉学位，却转而去研究诗歌；1 人将去美国空军接受飞行员训练；还有 1 人将加入到与乳癌抗战当中。你们中的很多人将去法学院，医学院或研究生院。但是，和 Goldin 和 Katz 教授有据证明的一样，你们中相当一部分人将选择金融和理财咨询。Crimson 对于上届学生的调查显示，在就业的学生中
13、，58% 的男生和 43%的女生做出了这个选择。今年，即使在经济受挑战的一年，这个数据是 39%。High salaries, the all but irresistible recruiting juggernaut, the reassurance for many of you that you will be in New York working and living and enjoying life alongside your friends, the promise of interesting work there are lots of ways to explain
14、these choices. For some of you, it is a commitment 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.也许是为了高薪难以抵抗的招聘诱惑，也许是为了留在纽约然后和朋友们一起工作生活和享受人生，也许是为了做自己感兴趣的工作对于这些选择可以有各种各样的理由。对你们中的一些人，无论如何那也只是个一两
15、年的契约。其他的一部分人相信4他们只有在过得“富有”了以后才有可能过得“富有”价值。不过，你们依然会问我，为什么要走这条路？I find myself in some ways less interested in answering your question than in figuring out why you are posing it. If Professors Goldin and Katz have it right; if finance is indeed the “rational choice,” why do you keep raising this issue
16、with me? Why does this seemingly rational choice strike a number of you as not understandable, as 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?我发现我自己有时候对于回答你们的问题并没有多大兴趣，比较而言更感兴趣的却是捉摸你们为什么提那些问题。如果果真如 Goldi
17、n 和 Katz 教授所说；如果去搞金融确实是一个“理性”的选择，为什么你们会不停地向我提出这类问题？为什么看似理性的选择却让你们当中相当一部分人认为是令人费解的，伪理性的，或出于某种需求和强迫所作出的并不自由的选择？为什么这个问题似乎困扰着你们当中的很多一部分人？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 senior caree
18、r choice rather than the abstract, unfathomable and almost embarrassing realm of metaphysics. The Meaning of Life capital M, capital L is a clich easier to deal with as the ironic title of a Monty Python movie or the subject of a Simpsons episode than as a matter about which one would dare admit to
19、harboring serious concern.我想，你们问我的是：关于人生价值的问题。虽然你们问得比较隐晦即是些可以观察和衡量的大四学生职业选择的问题，而不是那抽象的，晦涩的，甚至会令人难堪的形而上学范畴的问题。人生价值，要人生？还是要价值？作为 Monty Python 那部片子（指的是六人行里人生的价值那一集）的讽刺意味的片名是不难理解的，作为辛普森一家 （美国特别受欢迎的动画连续剧）的其中一集的主题也是不难理解的，可是当关系到“生存问题”的时候，就是不那么好办了。But lets for a moment abandon our Harvard savoir faire, our
20、imperturbability, our pretense of invulnerability, and try to find the beginnings of some answers to your question.那让我们还是暂时摘下那戴着的哈佛面具，收起那缺乏热情的冷漠，卸下我们看似刀枪不入的伪装，让我们尝试去探寻你们问的一些问题的答案。 （我觉得校长能说出这句话真太棒了！我想她当时面对的听众的表情和我们在听课时的表情差不多。 ）I think you are worried because you want your lives not just to be convent
21、ionally 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 brand name organization together with the promise of future wealth will feed your soul.我觉得，你们之所以担忧，是因为你们不想仅仅是获得传统意义上的成功，而且要活得有价值。可是你们不清楚“鱼”
22、与“熊掌”怎样才能“兼得” 。你们不清楚是否，一家拥有著名品牌的企业提供的数目可观的并且预期着你未来财富的起薪，可以让你们的灵魂得到满足。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 wi
23、ll change the world. We have burdened you with no small expectations. And you have already done remarkable things to fulfill them: your dedication to service demonstrated in your extracurricular engagements, your concern about the future of the planet expressed in your vigorous championing of sustai
24、nability, your reinvigoration of American politics through engagement in this years presidential contests.5然而，你们为什么担忧呢？这部分地是我们的责任。当你们一踏进这个学校，我们就告诉你们：你们将成为领导未来的中坚人物，你们将成为美国人民依赖的最顶尖、最杰出的精英，你们将改变整个世界。我们“望子成龙”的期望使你们背上了负担。而你们为了实现这些期望也已经做得很好：在对课外活动的从事中，你们展示出对于服务性工作的奉献精神；从对可持续发展的热情拥护，你们表达出对这个星球的关怀；通过对今年总统竞
25、选的参与，你们做出了希望使美国政治重新恢复活力的实际行动。But many of you are now wondering how these commitments fit with a career choice. Is it necessary to decide between remunerative work and meaningful work? If it were to be either/or, which would you choose? Is there a way to have both?但你们中的很多人现在会问， “怎样才能把做这些有价值的事情和一个职业选择
26、结合起来呢？” “是否必须在一份有报酬却没价值的工作和一份有价值却没报酬的工作间做出抉择呢？” “如果是一个单选题，您会选哪一个？” “有没有折中的办法？”You are asking me and yourselves fundamental questions about values, about trying to reconcile potentially competing goods, about recognizing that it may not be possible to have it all. You are at a moment of transition th
27、at requires making choices. And selecting one option a job, a career, a graduate program means not selecting others. Every decision means loss as well as gain possibilities foregone as well as possibilities embraced. Your question to me is partly about that about loss of roads not taken.你们在问我，也是问你们自
28、己问题，即关于价值观的根本性的问题。你们在试图调解两个商品潜在的相互竞争，承认也许不可能兼得两者。你们在经历一次人生的转折，而这个转折需要你们自己做出一些决定。选择一条道路一份工作、一项事业或一个研究生课题不单单是在选择东西。每个决定都意味着“得”与“失”过去与未来的种种可能。你们问我的问题其实有几分是关于“失” ，即你放弃的那条道路让你失去了什么。Finance, Wall Street, “recruiting” have become the symbol of this dilemma, representing a set of issues that is much broader
29、 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, as you decide whether to use your law degree to work for a corporate firm or as a public defen
30、der, 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 yourself, for your own comfort and satisfaction, but for the world around y
31、ou. And now you have to figure out the way to make that possible.金融、华尔街， “招聘”一词已经成了这种博弈的符号，代表着比仅仅选择一条职业道路更广更深的一系列问题。这些问题早晚将面临着你们每个人如果你是从医学院毕业，你将选择一个具体从医方向做私人医生还是专攻皮肤病，如果你学的是法律，你将决定是用你的法律知识为一个公司法人卖命还是成为公众的正义化身，或是在 “教育美国人”两年后你决定是否继续从教。你们之所以担忧，是因为你们想拥有充满价值的同时又是成功的人生；你们知道，你们被教育要有大的作为，不仅仅是为了个人，为了自己生活地舒适，
32、而是要让周围的世界因此而改变。因此你们才不得不思考怎样才能让其成为可能。I think there is a second reason you are worried related to but not entirely distinct from the first. You want to be happy. You have flocked to courses like “Positive Psychology” Psych 1504 and “The Science of Happiness” in search of tips. But how do we find happi
33、ness? I can 6offer 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 to wait.我认为你们之所以担忧有第二个原因和第一个有关系但不是完全一样。你们希望过得幸福。你们蜂拥着去修“积极心理学”这门课课程代号“心 1504”和“幸福的科学”这门课，不就是为了听点人生“小贴士”？可是，我们怎样
34、才能获得幸福？在这儿，我可以提供一个启发性的答案：变老。调查数据显示年长的人也就是我这把年纪的人觉得自己比年轻人更幸福。不过，很可能你们没有人愿意去等着去看这个答案。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
35、 and encompasses real happiness, not just money and prestige. The most remunerative 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
36、 a path by which to make your way in journalism? Would you ever find a job as an English professor after you finished who knows how many years of graduate school and dissertation writing?在聊天时我听过你们谈到你们目前所面临的选择，我听到你们一字一句地说出你们对于成功与幸福的关系的忧虑也许，更精确地讲，怎样去定义成功才能使它具有或包含真正的幸福，而不仅仅是金钱和荣誉。你们害怕，报酬最丰厚的选择，也许不是最有价值
37、的和最令人满意的选择。但是你们也担心，如果作为一个艺术家或是一个演员，一个人民公仆或是一个中学老师，该如何才能生存下去？然而，你们可曾想过，如果你的梦想是新闻业，怎样才能想出一条通往梦想的道路呢？难道你会在读了不知多少年研，写了不知多少毕业论文终于毕业后，找一个英语教授的工作？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 thin
38、k will be most meaningful, you will regret it. Life is long. There is always time for Plan B. But dont begin with it.答案是：你不试试就永远都不会知道。但如果你不试着去做自己热爱的事情，不管是玩泥巴还是生物还是金融，如果连你自己都不去追求你认为最有价值的事，你终将后悔。人生路漫漫，你总有时间去给自己留“后路” ，但可别一开始就走“后路” 。I think of this as my parking space theory of career choice, and I have
39、 been sharing it with students for decades. Dont park 20 blocks from your destination because you think youll never find a space. Go where you want to be and then circle back to where you have to be.我把这叫做我的关于职业选择的“泊车”理论，几十年来我一直都在向学生们“兜售”我的这个理论。不要因为怕到了目的地找不到停车位而把车停在距离目的地 20 个路口的地方。直接到达你想去的地方，哪怕再绕回来停，
40、你暂时停的地方只是你被迫停的地方。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 prestigious consulting firm. “Why am I doing this?” she asked. “I ha
41、te 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.你也许喜欢做投行，或是做金融抑或做理财咨询。都可能是适合你的。那也许真的就是适合你的。或许你也会像我在 Kirkland House 见到的那个大四学生一样，她刚从美7国西海岸一家著名理财咨询公司的面试回来。 “我为什么要做这个？”她说， “我讨厌坐飞机，我讨厌住宾馆，我是
42、不会喜欢这份工作的。 ”找到你热爱的工作。如果你把你一天中醒着的一大半时间用来做你不喜欢的事情，你是很难感到幸福的。But what is ultimately most important here is that you are asking 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
43、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 some 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
44、 liberal arts education has equipped you to do. A liberal education demands that you live self-consciously. It prepares you to seek and define the meaning inherent in all you do. It has made you an analyst and critic of yourself, a person in this way supremely equipped to take charge of your life an
45、d how it unfolds. It is in this sense that the liberal arts are liberal as in liberare to free. They empower you with the possibility of exercising agency, of discovering meaning, of making choices. The surest way to have a meaningful, happy life is to commit yourself to striving for it. Dont settle
46、. Be prepared to change routes. Remember the impossible expectations we have of you, and even as you recognize they are impossible, remember how important they are as a lodestar guiding you toward something that matters to you and to the world. The meaning of your life is for you to make.但是我在这儿说的最重要
47、的是：你们在问那些问题不仅是问我，而是在问你们自己。你们正在选择人生的道路，同时也在对自己的选择提出质疑。你们知道自己想过什么样的生活，也知道你们将行的道路不一定会把你们带到想去的地方。这样其实很好。某种程度上，我倒希望这是我们的错。我们一直在标榜人生，像镜子一样照出未来你们的模样，思考你们怎么可以过得幸福，探索你们怎样才能去做些对社会有价值的事：这些也许是文科教育可以给你们“装备”的最有价值的东西。文科教育要求你们要活得“明白” 。它使你探索和定义你做的每件事情背后的价值。它让你成为一个经常分析和反省自己的人。而这样的人完全能够掌控自己的人生或未来。从这个道理上讲，文科照它的字面意思才使你们
48、自由。 （英语里文科是 Liberal Art，照字面解释是自由的艺术）学文科可以让你有机会去进行理论的实践，去发现你所做的选择的价值。想过上有价值的，幸福的生活，最可靠的途径就是为了你的目标去奋斗。不要安于现状得过且过。随时准备着改变人生的道路。记住我们对你们的我觉得是“过于崇高”的期待，可能你们自己也承认那些期待是有点“太高了” 。不过如果想做些对于你们自己或是这个世界有点价值的事情，记住它们，它们将会像北斗一样指引着你们。你们人生的价值将由你们去实现！I cant wait to see how you all turn out. Do come back, from time to time, and let us know.我都等不及想看看你们都最终会如何。毕业以后和学校常联系，常回“家”看看，让我们了解你们的情况。
