第一篇：哈佛校長(zhǎng)給本科畢業(yè)生的畢業(yè)演講

哈佛校長(zhǎng)給本科畢業(yè)生的畢業(yè)演講

Baccalaureate address to Class of 2008 The Memorial Church Cambridge, Mass.June 3, 2008

As prepared for delivery

In the curious custom of this venerable institution, I find myself standing before you expected to impart words of lasting wisdom.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 Cotton into a true “Mather lather.” 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 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.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.I never knew we took it quite so literally.But let’s return to that notion of cold calls for a moment.Let’s imagine this were a baccalaureate service in the form of Q & A, and you were asking the questions.“What is the meaning of life, President Faust? What were these four years at Harvard for? President Faust, you must have learned something since you graduated from college exactly 40 years ago?”(Forty years.I’ll say it out loud since every detail of my life — and certainly the year of my Bryn Mawr degree — now seems to be publicly available.But please remember I was young for my class.)

In a way, you have been engaging me in this Q & A for the past year.On just these questions, although you have phrased them a bit more narrowly.And I have been trying to figure out how I might answer and, perhaps more intriguingly, why you were asking.Let me explain.It actually began when I met with the UC just after my appointment was announced in the winter of 2007.Then the questions continued when I had lunch at Kirkland House, dinner at Leverett, when I met with students in my office hours, even with some recent graduates I encountered abroad.The first thing you asked me about wasn’t the curriculum or advising or faculty contact or even student space.In fact, it wasn’t even alcohol policy.Instead, you repeatedly asked me: Why are so many of us going to Wall Street? Why are we going in such numbers from Harvard to finance, consulting, i-banking?

There are a number of ways to think about this question and how to answer it.There is the Willie Sutton approach.You may know that when he was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Professors Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz, whom many of you have encountered in your economics concentration, offer a not dissimilar answer based on their study of student career choices since the seventies.They find it notable that, given the very high pecuniary rewards in finance, many students nonetheless still choose to do something else.Indeed, 37 of you have signed on with Teach for America;one of you will dance tango 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 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 Crimson’s survey of last year’s class reported that 58 percent of men and 43 percent of women entering the workforce made this choice.This year, even in challenging economic times, the figure is 39 percent.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 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.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 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?

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 career choice rather than the abstract, unfathomable and almost embarrassing realm of metaphysics.The Meaning of Life — capital M, capital L — is a cliché — 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 harboring serious concern.But let’s for a moment abandon our Harvard savoir faire, our imperturbability, our pretense of invulnerability, and try to find the beginnings of some answers to your question.I think you are worried because you want your lives not just to be conventionally 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.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.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 sustainability, your reinvigoration of American politics through engagement in this year’s presidential contests.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?

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 that 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.Finance, Wall Street, “recruiting” have become the symbol of this dilemma, 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, as you decide whether to 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 yourself, 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 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 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 don’t want 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 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 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?

The answer is: you won’t know till you try.But if you don’t try to do what you love — whether it is painting or biology or finance;if you don’t pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it.Life is long.There is always time for Plan B.But don’t 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.Don’t park 20 blocks from your destination because you think you’ll never 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 prestigious consulting firm.“Why am I doing this?” she asked.“I hate flying, I hate hotels, I won’t 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 don’t.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 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 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 and 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.Don’t settle.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.I can’t wait to see how you all turn out.Do come back, from time to time, and let us know.

第二篇：2008年哈佛校長(zhǎng)給本科畢業(yè)生的畢業(yè)演講

2008年哈佛校長(zhǎng)給本科畢業(yè)生的畢業(yè)演講

Baccalaureate address to Class of 2008 The Memorial Church

Cambridge, Mass.June 3, 2008

As prepared for delivery

In the curious custom of this venerable institution, I find myself standing before you expected to impart words of lasting wisdom.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 Cotton into a true “Mather lather.” 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 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.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.I never knew we took it quite so literally.But let’s return to that notion of cold calls for a moment.Let’s imagine this were a baccalaureate service in the form of Q & A, and you were asking the questions.“What is the meaning of life, President Faust? What were these four years at Harvard for? President Faust, you must have learned something since you graduated from college exactly 40 years ago?”(Forty years.I’ll say it out loud since every detail of my life — and certainly the year of my Bryn Mawr degree — now seems to be publicly available.But please remember I was young for my class.)

In a way, you have been engaging me in this Q & A for the past year.On just these questions, although you have phrased them a bit more narrowly.And I have been trying to figure out how I might answer and, perhaps more intriguingly, why you were asking.Let me explain.It actually began when I met with the UC just after my appointment was announced in the winter of 2007.Then the questions continued when I had lunch at Kirkland House, dinner at Leverett, when I met with students in my office hours, even with some recent graduates I encountered abroad.The first thing you asked me about wasn’t the curriculum or advising or faculty contact or even student space.In fact, it wasn’t even alcohol policy.Instead, you repeatedly asked me: Why are so many of us going to Wall Street? Why are we going in such numbers from Harvard to finance, consulting, i-banking?

There are a number of ways to think about this question and how to answer it.There is the Willie Sutton approach.You may know that when he was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Professors Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz, whom many of you have encountered in your economics concentration, offer a not dissimilar answer based on their study of student career choices since the seventies.They find it notable that, given the very high pecuniary rewards in finance, many students nonetheless still choose to do something else.Indeed, 37 of you have signed on with Teach for America;one of you will dance tango 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 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 Crimson’s survey of last year’s class reported that 58 percent of men and 43 percent of women entering the workforce made this choice.This year, even in challenging economic times, the figure is 39 percent.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 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.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 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?

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 career choice rather than the abstract, unfathomable and almost embarrassing realm of metaphysics.The Meaning of Life — capital M, capital L — is a cliché — 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 harboring serious concern.But let’s for a moment abandon our Harvard savoir faire, our imperturbability, our pretense of invulnerability, and try to find the beginnings of some answers to your question.I think you are worried because you want your lives not just to be conventionally 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.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.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 sustainability, your reinvigoration of American politics through engagement in this year’s presidential contests.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? 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 that 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.Finance, Wall Street, “recruiting” have become the symbol of this dilemma, 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, as you decide whether to 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 yourself, 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 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 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 don’t want 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 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 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?

The answer is: you won’t know till you try.But if you don’t try to do what you love — whether it is painting or biology or finance;if you don’t pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it.Life is long.There is always time for Plan B.But don’t 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.Don’t park 20 blocks from your destination because you think you’ll never 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 prestigious consulting firm.“Why am I doing this?” she asked.“I hate flying, I hate hotels, I won’t 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 don’t.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 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 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 and 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.Don’t settle.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.I can’t wait to see how you all turn out.Do come back, from time to time, and let us know.

第三篇：哈佛女校長(zhǎng)給本科畢業(yè)生的畢業(yè)演講

今年哈佛女校長(zhǎng)給本科畢業(yè)生的畢業(yè)演講

哈佛2007年2月11日宣布并于7月份正式上任的校長(zhǎng)Drew G.FaustDrew G.Faust是哈佛歷史上第一位女性校長(zhǎng)，第一位非哈佛畢業(yè)生校長(zhǎng)，杰出的歷史學(xué)家，2001年從賓西法尼業(yè)大學(xué)到哈佛的Radcliffe學(xué)院任教，之前的哈佛上一任校長(zhǎng)曾因?yàn)楣_(kāi)發(fā)表“歧視女性”的言論被迫辭職.Baccalaureate address to Class of 2008 2008屆本科畢業(yè)典禮上的講話

The Memorial Church 紀(jì)念教堂

Cambridge, Mass.麻省劍橋市 June 3, 2008 2008年6月3日

As prepared for delivery 準(zhǔn)備稿

In the curious custom of this venerable institution, I find myself standing before you expected to impart words of lasting wisdom.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 Cotton into a true “Mather lather.” But here I am and there you are and it is the momentof and for Veritas.在這所久負(fù)盛名的大學(xué)的別具一格的儀式上，我站在了你們的面前，被期待著給予一些蘊(yùn) 含著恒久智慧的言論。站在這個(gè)講壇上，我穿得像個(gè)清教徒教長(zhǎng)——一個(gè)可能會(huì)嚇到我的 杰出前輩們的怪物，或許使他們中的一些人重新致力于鏟除巫婆的事業(yè)上。這個(gè)時(shí)刻也許 曾激勵(lì)了很多清教徒成為教長(zhǎng)。但現(xiàn)在，我在上面，你們?cè)谙旅妫藭r(shí)此刻，屬于真理，為了真理。

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 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.你們已經(jīng)在哈佛做了四年的大學(xué)生，而我當(dāng)哈佛校長(zhǎng)還不到一年。你們認(rèn)識(shí)了三個(gè)校長(zhǎng)，而我只認(rèn)識(shí)了你們這一屆大四的。算起來(lái)我哪有資格說(shuō)什么經(jīng)驗(yàn)之談？或許應(yīng)該由你們上 來(lái)展示一下智慧。要不我們換換位置？然后我就可以像哈佛法學(xué)院的學(xué)生那樣，在接下來(lái) 的一個(gè)小時(shí)內(nèi)不時(shí)地冷不防地提出問(wèn)題。

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.I never knew we took it quite so literally.學(xué)校和學(xué)生們似乎都在努力讓時(shí)間來(lái)到這一時(shí)刻，而且還差不多是步調(diào)一致的。我這兩天 才得知哈佛從5月22日開(kāi)始就不向你們提供伙食了。雖然有比喻說(shuō)“我們?cè)缤淼媒o你們斷奶”，但沒(méi)想到我們的后勤還真的早早就把“奶”給斷了。

But let’s return to that notion of cold calls for a moment.Let’s imagine th is were a baccalaureate service in the form of Q & A, and you were asking the questions.“What is the meaning of life, President Faust? What were these four years at Harvard for? President Faust, you must have learned something since you graduated from college exactly 40 years ago?”(Forty years.I’ll say it out loud since every detail of my life — and certainly the year of my Bryn Mawr degree — now seems to be publicly available.But please remember I was young for my class.)

現(xiàn)在還是讓我們回到我剛才提到的提問(wèn)題的事上吧。讓我們?cè)O(shè)想下這是個(gè)哈佛大學(xué)給本科 生的畢業(yè)服務(wù)，是以問(wèn)答的形式。你們將問(wèn)些問(wèn)題，比如：“福校長(zhǎng)啊，人生的價(jià)值是什 么呢？我們上這大學(xué)四年是為了什么呢？福校長(zhǎng)，你大學(xué)畢業(yè)到現(xiàn)在的40年里一定學(xué)到些 什么東西可以教給我們吧？”（40年啊，我就直說(shuō)了，因?yàn)槲胰松械拿慷渭?xì)節(jié)——當(dāng)然 包括我在布林茅爾女子學(xué)院的一年——現(xiàn)在似乎都成了公共資源。但請(qǐng)記住在哈佛我可是 “新生”）

In a way, you have been engaging me in this Q & A for the past year.On just these questions, although you have phrased them a bit more narrowly.And I have been trying to figure out how I might answer and, perhaps more intriguingly, why you were asking.在某種程度上，在過(guò)去的一年里你們一直都在讓我從事這種問(wèn)答。從僅僅這些問(wèn)題上，即 使你們措辭問(wèn)題都傾向于狹義，而我除了思考怎么做出回答外，更激發(fā)我去思考的，是你們?yōu)槭裁磫?wèn)這些問(wèn)題。

Let me explain.It actually began when I met with the UC just after my appointment was announced in the winter of 2007.Then the questions continued when I had lunch at Kirkland House, dinner at Leverett, when I met with students in my office hours, even with some recent graduates I encountered abroad.The first thing you asked me about wasn’t the curriculum or advising or faculty contact or even student space.In fact, it wasn’t even alcohol policy.Instead, you repeatedly asked me: Why are so many of us going to Wall Street? Why are we going in such numbers from Harvard to finance, consulting, i-banking?

聽(tīng)我解釋。提問(wèn)從2007年冬天我的任職被公布時(shí)與校方的會(huì)面就開(kāi)始了。然后提問(wèn)一直持 續(xù)，不論是我在Kirkland House（哈佛的12個(gè)本科生宿舍之一）吃午飯還是在Leverett H ouse（哈佛的12個(gè)本科生宿舍之一，本科高年級(jí)學(xué)生使用）吃晚飯，或是當(dāng)我在辦公時(shí)間與學(xué)生會(huì)見(jiàn)，甚至是我在與國(guó)外認(rèn)識(shí)的剛考來(lái)的研究生的談話中。你們問(wèn)的第一個(gè)問(wèn)題不是關(guān)于課業(yè)，不是讓我提建議，也不是為了和教員接觸，甚至是想向我提建議。事實(shí)上，更不是為了和我討論酒精政策。相反，你們不厭其煩問(wèn)的卻是：為什么我們之中這么多人 將去華爾街？為什么我們大量的學(xué)生都從哈佛走向了金融，理財(cái)咨詢，投行？

There are a number of ways to think about this question and how to answer it.There is the Willie Sutton approach.You may know that when he was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Professors Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz, whom many of you have encountered in your economics concentration, offer a not dissimilar answer based on their study of student career choices since the seventies.They find it notable that, given the very high pecuniary rewards in finance, many students nonetheless still choose to do something else.Indeed, 37 of you have signed on with Teach for America;one of you will dance tango 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 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 Crimson’s survey of last year’s class reported that 58 percent of men and 43 percent of women entering the workforce made this choice.This year, even in challenging economic times, the figure is 39 percent.對(duì)于這個(gè)問(wèn)題有多種思考和回答方式。有一種解釋就是如Willie Sutton所說(shuō)的，一切向“ 錢”看。（Willie Sutton是個(gè)搶銀行犯，被逮住后當(dāng)被問(wèn)到為什么去搶銀行時(shí)，他說(shuō)：“ Because that is where the money is!”）你們中很多人見(jiàn)過(guò)的普通經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)教授Claudia Goldin 和Larry Katz，基于對(duì)上世紀(jì)70年代以來(lái)的學(xué)生的職業(yè)選擇的研究，作出了差不 多的回答。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)了值得注意的一點(diǎn)：即使從事金融業(yè)可以得到很高的金錢回報(bào)，很多 學(xué)生仍然選擇做其它的事情。實(shí)事上，你們中間有37人簽到了“教育美國(guó)人”（Teach fo r America，美國(guó)的一個(gè)組織，其作用類似于中國(guó)的“希望工程”）；1人將去跳探戈舞蹈 并在阿根廷從事舞蹈療法；1人將致力于肯尼亞的農(nóng)業(yè)發(fā)展；另有1人獲得了數(shù)學(xué)的榮譽(yù)學(xué) 位，卻轉(zhuǎn)而去研究詩(shī)歌；1人將去美國(guó)空軍接受飛行員訓(xùn)練；還有1人將加入到與乳癌抗戰(zhàn) 當(dāng)中。你們中的很多人將去法學(xué)院，醫(yī)學(xué)院或研究生院。但是，和Goldin 和Katz教授有據(jù)證明的一樣，你們中相當(dāng)一部分人將選擇金融和理財(cái)咨詢。Crimson對(duì)于上屆學(xué)生的調(diào)查顯示，在就業(yè)的學(xué)生中，58%的男生和43%的女生做出了這個(gè)選擇。今年，即使在經(jīng)濟(jì)受挑戰(zhàn)的一年，這個(gè)數(shù)據(jù)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 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.也許是為了高薪——難以抵抗的招聘誘惑，也許是為了留在紐約然后和朋友們一起工作生 活和享受人生，也許是為了做自己感興趣的工作——對(duì)于這些選擇可以有各種各樣的理由。對(duì)你們中的一些人，無(wú)論如何那也只是個(gè)一兩年的契約。其他的一部分人相信他們只有 在過(guò)得“富有”了以后才有可能過(guò)得“富有”價(jià)值。不過(guò)，你們依然會(huì)問(wèn)我，為什么要走這條路？

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 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?

我發(fā)現(xiàn)我自己有時(shí)候?qū)τ诨卮鹉銈兊膯?wèn)題并沒(méi)有多大興趣，比較而言更感興趣的卻是捉摸 你們?yōu)槭裁刺崮切﹩?wèn)題。如果果真如Goldin和Katz教授所說(shuō)；如果去搞金融確實(shí)是一個(gè)“ 理性”的選擇，為什么你們會(huì)不停地向我提出這類問(wèn)題？為什么看似理性的選擇卻讓你們當(dāng)中相當(dāng)一部分人認(rèn)為是令人費(fèi)解的，偽理性的，或出于某種需求和強(qiáng)迫所作出的并不自由的選擇？為什么這個(gè)問(wèn)題似乎困擾著你們當(dāng)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 career choice rather than the abstract, unfathomable and almost embarrassing realm of metaphysics.The Meaning of Life — capital M, capital L — is a cliché — 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 harboring serious concern.我想，你們問(wèn)我的是：關(guān)于人生價(jià)值的問(wèn)題。雖然你們問(wèn)得比較隱晦——即是些可以觀察 和衡量的大四學(xué)生職業(yè)選擇的問(wèn)題，而不是那抽象的，晦澀的，甚至?xí)钊穗y堪的形而上 學(xué)范疇的問(wèn)題。人生價(jià)值，要人生？還是要價(jià)值？作為Monty Python那部片子（指的是六人行里《人生的價(jià)值》那一集）的諷刺意味的片名是不難理解的，作為《辛普森一家》（美國(guó)特別受歡迎的動(dòng)畫(huà)連續(xù)劇）的其中一集的主題也是不難理解的，可是當(dāng)關(guān)系到“生存 問(wèn)題”的時(shí)候，就是不那么好辦了。

But let’s for a moment abandon our Harvard savoir faire, our imperturbability, our pretense of invulnerability, and try to find the beginnings of some answers to your question.那讓我們還是暫時(shí)摘下那戴著的哈佛面具，收起那缺乏熱情的冷漠，卸下我們看似刀槍不 入的偽裝，讓我們嘗試去探尋你們問(wèn)的一些問(wèn)題的答案。（我覺(jué)得校長(zhǎng)能說(shuō)出這句話真太 棒了！我想她當(dāng)時(shí)面對(duì)的聽(tīng)眾的表情和我們?cè)诼?tīng)課時(shí)的表情差不多。）

I think you are worried because you want your lives not just to be conventionally successful, but to be meaningful, and you are not sure how those two goalsfit 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.我覺(jué)得，你們之所以擔(dān)憂，是因?yàn)槟銈儾幌雰H僅是獲得傳統(tǒng)意義上的成功，而且要活得有 價(jià)值。可是你們不清楚“魚(yú)”與“熊掌”怎樣才能“兼得”。你們不清楚是否，一家擁有著名品牌的企業(yè)提供的數(shù)目可觀的并且預(yù)期著你未來(lái)財(cái)富的起薪，可以讓你們的靈魂得到滿足。

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 will 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 sustainability, your reinvigoration of American politics through engagement in this year’s presidential contests.然而，你們?yōu)槭裁磽?dān)憂呢？這部分地是我們的責(zé)任。當(dāng)你們一踏進(jìn)這個(gè)學(xué)校，我們就告訴 你們：你們將成為領(lǐng)導(dǎo)未來(lái)的中堅(jiān)人物，你們將成為美國(guó)人民依賴的最頂尖、最杰出的精英，你們將改變整個(gè)世界。我們“望子成龍”的期望使你們背上了負(fù)擔(dān)。而你們?yōu)榱藢?shí)現(xiàn)這些期望也已經(jīng)做得很好：在對(duì)課外活動(dòng)的從事中，你們展示出對(duì)于服務(wù)性工作的奉獻(xiàn)精神從對(duì)可持續(xù)發(fā)展的熱情擁護(hù)，你們表達(dá)出對(duì)這個(gè)星球的關(guān)懷；通過(guò)對(duì)今年總統(tǒng)競(jìng)選的參與，你們做出了希望使美國(guó)重新恢復(fù)活力的實(shí)際行動(dòng)。

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?

但你們中的很多人現(xiàn)在會(huì)問(wèn)，“怎樣才能把做這些有價(jià)值的事情和一個(gè)職業(yè)選擇結(jié)合起來(lái)呢？”“是否必須在一份有報(bào)酬卻沒(méi)價(jià)值的工作和一份有價(jià)值卻沒(méi)報(bào)酬的工作間做出抉擇呢？”“如果是一個(gè)單選題，您會(huì)選哪一個(gè)？”“有沒(méi)有折中的辦法？” 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 that 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.你們?cè)趩?wèn)我，也是問(wèn)你們自己?jiǎn)栴}，即關(guān)于價(jià)值觀的根本性的問(wèn)題。你們?cè)谠噲D調(diào)解兩個(gè)商品潛在的相互競(jìng)爭(zhēng)，承認(rèn)也許不可能兼得兩者。你們?cè)诮?jīng)歷一次人生的轉(zhuǎn)折，而這個(gè)轉(zhuǎn)折需要你們自己做出一些決定。選擇一條道路——一份工作、一項(xiàng)事業(yè)或一個(gè)研究生課題——不單單是在選擇東西。每個(gè)決定都意味著“得”與“失”——過(guò)去與未來(lái)的種種可能。你們問(wèn)我的問(wèn)題其實(shí)有幾分是關(guān)于“失”，即你放棄的那條道路讓你失去了什么。

Finance, Wall Street, “recruiting” have become the symbol of this dilemma, representing a set of issues that is much broader 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 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 yourself, 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.金融、華爾街，“招聘”一詞已經(jīng)成了這種博弈的符號(hào)，代表著比僅僅選擇一條職業(yè)道路更廣更深的一系列問(wèn)題。這些問(wèn)題早晚將面臨著你們每個(gè)人——如果你是從醫(yī)學(xué)院畢業(yè)，你將選擇一個(gè)具體從醫(yī)方向——做私人醫(yī)生還是專攻皮膚病，如果你學(xué)的是法律，你將決定是用你的法律知識(shí)為一個(gè)公司法人賣命還是成為公眾的正義化身，或是在 “教育美國(guó)人”兩年后你決定是否繼續(xù)從教。你們之所以擔(dān)憂，是因?yàn)槟銈兿霌碛谐錆M價(jià)值的同時(shí)又是成功的人生；你們知道，你們被教育要有大的作為，不僅僅是為了個(gè)人，為了自己生活地舒適，而是要讓周圍的世界因此而改變。因此你們才不得不思考怎樣才能讓其成為可能。

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 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 don’t want to wait.我認(rèn)為你們之所以擔(dān)憂有第二個(gè)原因——和第一個(gè)有關(guān)系但不是完全一樣。你們希望過(guò)得幸福。你們蜂擁著去修“積極心理學(xué)”這門課——課程代號(hào)“心1504”——和“幸福的科學(xué)”這門課，不就是為了聽(tīng)點(diǎn)人生“小貼士”？可是，我們?cè)鯓硬拍塬@得幸福？在這兒，我可以提供一個(gè)啟發(fā)性的答案：變老。調(diào)查數(shù)據(jù)顯示年長(zhǎng)的人——也就是我這把年紀(jì)的人——覺(jué)得自己比年輕人更幸福。不過(guò)，很可能你們沒(méi)有人愿意去等著去看這個(gè)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 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 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?

在聊天時(shí)我聽(tīng)過(guò)你們談到你們目前所面臨的選擇，我聽(tīng)到你們一字一句地說(shuō)出你們對(duì)于成功與幸福的關(guān)系的憂慮——也許，更精確地講，怎樣去定義成功才能使它具有或包含真正的幸福，而不僅僅是金錢和榮譽(yù)。你們害怕，報(bào)酬最豐厚的選擇，也許不是最有價(jià)值的和最令人滿意的選擇。但是你們也擔(dān)心，如果作為一個(gè)藝術(shù)家或是一個(gè)演員，一個(gè)人民公仆或是一個(gè)中學(xué)老師，該如何才能生存下去？然而，你們可曾想過(guò)，如果你的夢(mèng)想是新聞業(yè)，怎樣才能想出一條通往夢(mèng)想的道路呢？難道你會(huì)在讀了不知多少年研，寫(xiě)了不知多少畢業(yè)論文終于畢業(yè)后，找一個(gè)英語(yǔ)教授的工作？

The answer is: you won’t know till you try.But if you don’t try to do what you love — whether it is painting or biology or finance;if you don’t pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it.Life is long.There is always time for Plan B.But don’t begin with it.答案是：你不試試就永遠(yuǎn)都不會(huì)知道。但如果你不試著去做自己熱愛(ài)的事情，不管是玩泥巴還是生物還是金融，如果連你自己都不去追求你認(rèn)為最有價(jià)值的事，你終將后悔。人生路漫漫，你總有時(shí)間去給自己留“后路”，但可別一開(kāi)始就走“后路”。

I think of this as my parking space theory of career choice, and I have been sharing it with students for decades.Don’t park 20 blocks from your destination because you think you’ll never find a space.Go where you want to be and then circle back to where you have to be.我把這叫做我的關(guān)于職業(yè)選擇的“泊車”理論，幾十年來(lái)我一直都在向?qū)W生們“兜售”我的這個(gè)理論。不要因?yàn)榕碌搅四康牡卣也坏酵＼囄欢衍囃Ｔ诰嚯x目的地20個(gè)路口的地方。直接到達(dá)你想去的地方，哪怕再繞回來(lái)停，你暫時(shí)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 hate flying, I hate hotels, I won’t 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 don’t.你也許喜歡做投行，或是做金融抑或做理財(cái)咨詢。都可能是適合你的。那也許真的就是適合你的。或許你也會(huì)像我在Kirkland House見(jiàn)到的那個(gè)大四學(xué)生一樣，她剛從美國(guó)西海岸一家著名理財(cái)咨詢公司的面試回來(lái)。“我為什么要做這個(gè)？”她說(shuō)，“我討厭坐飛機(jī)，我討厭住賓館，我是不會(huì)喜歡這份工作的。”找到你熱愛(ài)的工作。如果你把你一天中醒著的一大半時(shí)間用來(lái)做你不喜歡的事情，你是很難感到幸福的。

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 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 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 and 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.Don’t settle.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.但是我在這兒說(shuō)的最重要的是：你們?cè)趩?wèn)那些問(wèn)題——不僅是問(wèn)我，而是在問(wèn)你們自己。你們正在選擇人生的道路，同時(shí)也在對(duì)自己的選擇提出質(zhì)疑。你們知道自己想過(guò)什么樣的生活，也知道你們將行的道路不一定會(huì)把你們帶到想去的地方。這樣其實(shí)很好。某種程度上，我倒希望這是我們的錯(cuò)。我們一直在標(biāo)榜人生，像鏡子一樣照出未來(lái)你們的模樣，思考你們?cè)趺纯梢赃^(guò)得幸福，探索你們?cè)鯓硬拍苋プ鲂?duì)社會(huì)有價(jià)值的事：這些也許是文科教育可以給你們“裝備”的最有價(jià)值的東西。文科教育要求你們要活得“明白”。它使你探索和定義你做的每件事情背后的價(jià)值。它讓你成為一個(gè)經(jīng)常分析和反省自己的人。而這樣的人完全能夠掌控自己的人生或未來(lái)。從這個(gè)道理上講，文科——照它的字面意思——才使你們自由。（英語(yǔ)里文科是Liberal Art，照字面解釋是自由的藝術(shù)）學(xué)文科可以讓你有機(jī)會(huì)去進(jìn)行理論的實(shí)踐，去發(fā)現(xiàn)你所做的選擇的價(jià)值。想過(guò)上有價(jià)值的，幸福的生活，最可靠的途徑就是為了你的目標(biāo)去奮斗。不要安于現(xiàn)狀得過(guò)且過(guò)。隨時(shí)準(zhǔn)備著改變?nèi)松牡缆贰Ｓ涀∥覀儗?duì)你們的我覺(jué)得是“過(guò)于崇高”的期待，可能你們自己也承認(rèn)那些期待是有點(diǎn)“太高了”。不過(guò)如果想做些對(duì)于你們自己或是這個(gè)世界有點(diǎn)價(jià)值的事情，記住它們，它們將會(huì)像北斗一樣指引著你們。你們?nèi)松膬r(jià)值將由你們?nèi)?shí)現(xiàn)！

I can’t 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們都最終會(huì)如何。畢業(yè)以后和學(xué)校常聯(lián)系，常回“家”看看，讓我們了解你們的情況。

第四篇：哈佛校長(zhǎng)給2008屆本科畢業(yè)生的畢業(yè)演講

哈佛校長(zhǎng)給2008屆本科畢業(yè)生的畢業(yè)演講

You are at a moment of transition that requires making choices,’ President Faust told the members of the Class of 2008.Staff photo Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News Office 按照這所古老大學(xué)的奇怪的傳統(tǒng)，我應(yīng)該是站在這兒，告訴你們那些永恒的智慧。我就站在這個(gè)講壇上，穿得像個(gè)清教徒牧師一樣——這個(gè)打扮也許已經(jīng)嚇到了我那些高貴的先人們，讓他們以為是巫婆現(xiàn)身（校長(zhǎng)是女的，譯者注）。這會(huì)讓英克利斯（Increase）和考特恩（Cotton）父子倆（他們反對(duì)清教，譯者注）忍不住想審判我的。但是，我還是要站在這兒，跟你們聊聊。

你們已經(jīng)上了四年的大學(xué)了，我當(dāng)校長(zhǎng)還不到一年；你們認(rèn)識(shí)三任校長(zhǎng)，我只認(rèn)識(shí)大四一個(gè)班的學(xué)生。那么，經(jīng)驗(yàn)是什么？也許你們應(yīng)該搞清楚。也許我們可以互換一下角色，我可能就會(huì)以哈佛法學(xué)院慣有的風(fēng)格，在接下來(lái)的一個(gè)小時(shí)里自說(shuō)自話。

從這一點(diǎn)上說(shuō)，我們似乎都做到了——不管程度多少。但我最近才知道，從5月22日開(kāi)始你們就沒(méi)有晚飯吃了。雖然我們會(huì)把你們比作已經(jīng)從哈佛斷奶的孩子們，但我從沒(méi)想到會(huì)這么徹底。

再讓我們來(lái)說(shuō)說(shuō)那個(gè)“自說(shuō)自話”吧。讓我們把這個(gè)演講看作是一個(gè)答疑式的畢業(yè)生服務(wù)，你們來(lái)提問(wèn)題。“浮士德校長(zhǎng)，生活的意義是什么？我們?yōu)槭裁匆诠鹱x四年？校長(zhǎng)，四十年前你從學(xué)校畢業(yè)的時(shí)候，肯定學(xué)到不少東西吧？”（四十年了。我可以大聲地說(shuō)出我當(dāng)時(shí)生活的每個(gè)細(xì)節(jié)，和我獲得布林莫爾學(xué)位的年份—— 現(xiàn)在大家都知道這個(gè)。但請(qǐng)注意，我在班里還算歲數(shù)小的。）

其實(shí)，這個(gè)答疑環(huán)節(jié)你們?cè)缇蛷奈疫@兒預(yù)定了。你們問(wèn)的問(wèn)題也大概就是這類的。我也一直在想該怎么回答，還在想：你們?yōu)槭裁礊檫@么問(wèn)。

聽(tīng)我的回答。2007年冬天，助理就告訴我要有這么一個(gè)演講。當(dāng)我在Kirkland聽(tīng)中午飯的時(shí)候，在Leverett吃晚飯的時(shí)候，當(dāng)我在我上班時(shí)和同學(xué)們見(jiàn)面的時(shí)候，甚至當(dāng)我在國(guó)外碰見(jiàn)我們剛畢業(yè)的學(xué)生的時(shí)候，同學(xué)們都會(huì)問(wèn)我一些問(wèn)題。你們問(wèn)我的第一個(gè)問(wèn)題，不是問(wèn)課程計(jì)劃，不是提建議，也不是問(wèn)老師的聯(lián)系方式或者學(xué)生的空間問(wèn)題。實(shí)際上，也不是酒精限制政策。你們不停地問(wèn)我的問(wèn)題是：“為什么我們的學(xué)生很多都去了華爾街？為什么我們哈佛的學(xué)生中，有那么多人到金融、咨詢和電子銀行領(lǐng)域去？”

這個(gè)問(wèn)題可以從好幾個(gè)方面來(lái)回答，我要用的是威利薩頓（一個(gè)美國(guó)銀行大盜，譯者注）的回答。你們可能知道，當(dāng)他被問(wèn)到為什么要搶銀行時(shí)，他說(shuō)“因?yàn)槟莾河绣X”。我想，你們?cè)谏辖?jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)課的時(shí)候，都見(jiàn)過(guò)克勞迪亞·戈丁和拉里·凱茲兩位教授，他們根據(jù)七十年代以來(lái)他們所教學(xué)生的職業(yè)選擇，提出了不同的看法。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，雖然金融行業(yè)在金錢方面有很高回報(bào)，但還是有學(xué)生選擇了其它的工作。實(shí)際上，你們中有37個(gè)人選擇做教師，有一個(gè)會(huì)跳探戈的人要去阿根廷的舞蹈診療所上班，另一個(gè)拿了數(shù)學(xué)榮譽(yù)學(xué)位的人要去學(xué)詩(shī)歌，有一個(gè)要在美國(guó)空軍受訓(xùn)作一名飛行員，還有一個(gè)要去作一名治療乳房癌癥的醫(yī)生。你們中有很多人會(huì)去學(xué)法學(xué)、學(xué)醫(yī)學(xué)、讀研究生。但是，根據(jù)戈丁和凱茲的記錄，更多的人去了金融和咨詢行業(yè)。Crimson對(duì)去年的畢業(yè)生作了調(diào)查，參加工作的人中，58%的男生和43％的女生去了這兩個(gè)行業(yè)。雖然今年的經(jīng)濟(jì)不景氣，這個(gè)數(shù)字還是到了39%。

高薪、不可抗拒的招聘的沖擊、到紐約和你的朋友一起工作的保證、承諾工作很有趣——這樣的選擇可以有很多種理由。對(duì)于你們中的一些人，也許只會(huì)在其中做一到兩年。其他人也都相信這是他們可以做到最好的一份工作。但，還是有人會(huì)問(wèn)：為什么要這樣選擇。

其實(shí)，比起回答你們的問(wèn)題來(lái)，我更喜歡思考你們?yōu)槭裁磿?huì)問(wèn)。戈丁和凱茲教授的研究是不是正確的；到金融行業(yè)是不是就是“理性的選擇”；你們?yōu)槭裁磿?huì)不停地問(wèn)我這個(gè)問(wèn)題？為什么這個(gè)看似理性的選擇，卻會(huì)讓你們?cè)S多人無(wú)法理解、覺(jué)得不盡理性，甚至有的會(huì)覺(jué)得是被迫作出的必要的選擇？為什么這個(gè)問(wèn)題會(huì)困擾這么多人呢？

我認(rèn)為，你們問(wèn)我生活的意義的時(shí)候，是帶著指向性的——你們把它看成是高級(jí)職業(yè)選擇中可見(jiàn)、可量度的現(xiàn)象，而不是一種抽象而深不可測(cè)的、形而上學(xué)的尷尬境地。所謂“生活的意義”已經(jīng)被說(shuō)濫了——它就像是蒙提·派森（Monty Python）電影里可笑的標(biāo)題，或者說(shuō)是《辛普森一家》里的那些雞零狗碎的話題一樣，已經(jīng)沒(méi)有任何嚴(yán)肅的涵義了。

讓我們暫時(shí)扔掉哈佛人精明的處世能力、沉著和不可戰(zhàn)勝的虛偽，試著來(lái)尋找一下你們問(wèn)題的答案吧。

我想，你們之所以會(huì)焦慮，是因?yàn)槟銈儾幌胫皇亲龅揭话阋饬x上的成功，而且還想過(guò)得有意義。但你們又不知道這兩個(gè)目標(biāo)如何才能同時(shí)達(dá)到，你們不知道在一個(gè)大名鼎鼎的公司中有一份豐厚的起薪，并且前途很有保障，是不是就可以讓你們自己滿足。

你們?yōu)槭裁匆箲]？說(shuō)起來(lái)，我們學(xué)校這方面也有錯(cuò)。從你們進(jìn)來(lái)的時(shí)候，我們就告訴你們，到這里，你們會(huì)成為對(duì)未來(lái)負(fù)責(zé)的精英，你們是最棒的、最聰明的，我們都要依靠你們，因?yàn)槟銈儠?huì)改變這個(gè)世界。這些話，讓你們個(gè)個(gè)都胸懷大志。你們會(huì)去做各種不平常的事情：在課外活動(dòng)中，你們處處體現(xiàn)著服務(wù)的熱情；你們大力倡導(dǎo)可持續(xù)發(fā)展，因?yàn)槟銈冴P(guān)注地球的未來(lái)；在今年的總統(tǒng)競(jìng)選中，你們也表現(xiàn)出了對(duì)美國(guó)政治改革的熱衷。

但現(xiàn)在，你們中的許多人迷惘了，不知道這些在做職業(yè)選擇時(shí)都有什么用。如果在有償?shù)墓ぷ骱陀幸饬x的工作之間做個(gè)選擇，你們會(huì)怎么辦？這二者可以兼顧嗎？ 你們都在不停地問(wèn)我一些最基本的問(wèn)題：關(guān)于價(jià)值、試圖調(diào)和那些潛在競(jìng)爭(zhēng)的東西、對(duì)魚(yú)與熊掌不可兼得的認(rèn)識(shí)，等等。現(xiàn)在的你們，到了要作出選擇的轉(zhuǎn)換階段。作出一個(gè)選擇——或工作、或讀研——都意味著失去了選擇其他選項(xiàng)的機(jī)會(huì)。每次決定都會(huì)有舍有得——放棄一個(gè)可能的同時(shí)，你也贏得了其他可能。對(duì)于我來(lái)說(shuō)，你們的問(wèn)題差不多就等于是站在十字路口時(shí)的迷茫。

金融業(yè)、華爾街、“招聘”就是這個(gè)困境的標(biāo)志，它帶來(lái)了比職業(yè)選擇更廣更深的一系列問(wèn)題。不管你是從醫(yī)學(xué)院畢業(yè)當(dāng)了全科醫(yī)生或者皮膚科醫(yī)生，從法學(xué)院畢業(yè)進(jìn)了一家公司或者作了一名公設(shè)辯護(hù)律師，還是結(jié)束了兩年的Teach for America項(xiàng)目，在想要不要繼續(xù)教書(shū)，這些問(wèn)題總會(huì)在某種程度上困擾你們。你們之所以焦慮，是因?yàn)槟銈兗认牖畹糜幸饬x，又想活得成功；你們知道你們所受的教育，讓你們不只是為自己的舒適和滿足而活，而且還要為你們周圍的人而活。現(xiàn)在，到了你們想辦法實(shí)現(xiàn)這個(gè)目標(biāo)的時(shí)候了。

我想，還有一個(gè)原因使你們焦慮——這個(gè)原因和第一個(gè)原因相關(guān)，但又有所不同。你們想過(guò)得幸福。你們一擁而上地去選修“成功哲學(xué)”和“幸福的科學(xué)”，想從中找到秘訣。但我們?cè)趺礃硬拍苄腋Ｄ兀课铱梢蕴峁┮粋€(gè)不錯(cuò)的答案：長(zhǎng)大。調(diào)查數(shù)據(jù)說(shuō)明，越老的人——比如我這個(gè)歲數(shù)的人——比年輕的人感到更幸福。但可能你們都不愿意等。

當(dāng)我聽(tīng)著你們說(shuō)你們面前有如何的選擇時(shí)，可以聽(tīng)出來(lái)，你們?cè)跒楦悴幻靼壮晒托腋５年P(guān)系而煩惱——或者更確切地說(shuō)，什么樣的成功，不僅能帶來(lái)金錢和名望，還能讓人真正地幸福。你們擔(dān)心工資最高的工作，不一定是最有意義、最令人滿足的工作。但你們想過(guò)沒(méi)，藝術(shù)家、演員、公務(wù)員或者高中老師都是怎么過(guò)的？你們有沒(méi)有思考一下，在媒體圈里該怎么生存？你們是否曾試想過(guò)，在經(jīng)過(guò)不知道多少年的研究生學(xué)習(xí)、寫(xiě)了不知道多少篇論文之后，你們能否找到一個(gè)英語(yǔ)教授的工作？

所以，答案就是：只有試過(guò)了才知道。但是不管是畫(huà)畫(huà)、生物還是金融，如果你都不試著去做你喜歡做的事，如果你不去追求你認(rèn)為最有意義的東西，總有一天你會(huì)后悔的。生活的路還很長(zhǎng)，總有機(jī)會(huì)嘗試別的選擇，但不要一開(kāi)始就想著這個(gè)。

我把這個(gè)叫作職業(yè)選擇中的停車位理論，幾十年來(lái)我一直在和同學(xué)們說(shuō)這些。不要因?yàn)槟阌X(jué)得會(huì)沒(méi)有停車位，就把車停在離目的地20個(gè)街區(qū)遠(yuǎn)的地方。先到你想去的地方，然后再到你應(yīng)該去的地方。

你可能喜歡投資銀行、喜歡金融、喜歡咨詢，它們可能是最適合你的。也許你和我在Kirkland碰到的一個(gè)大四學(xué)生一樣，她剛從西海岸一家很有名的咨詢公司面試回來(lái)，她問(wèn)：“我為什么要做這行？我討厭坐飛機(jī)，我不喜歡住酒店，我不會(huì)喜歡這個(gè)工作的。”那就找個(gè)你喜歡的工作吧。要是你醒著的時(shí)間里，都在做你不喜歡的事情，你也不會(huì)感到幸福的。

但是，最最最最重要的是，你們要問(wèn)出這個(gè)問(wèn)題——問(wèn)我或者問(wèn)你們自己。你們選擇了一條路，也就選擇了一份挑戰(zhàn)。你知道自己想要什么樣的生活，只是不知道該怎樣到達(dá)那兒。這是好事。我覺(jué)得，從某種程度上說(shuō)，這也是我們的錯(cuò)。關(guān)注你的生活，思考怎樣才能把它過(guò)好、怎樣才能把事情做對(duì)：這些也許是博雅教育給你最寶貴的東西。通識(shí)教育讓你自覺(jué)地生活，讓你在你所作的一切中尋找、定義價(jià)值。它也讓你成為一個(gè)自我的分析家和批評(píng)家，讓你從最高水平上掌握你生活的展示方式。從這個(gè)意義上講，博雅教育讓你自由。它們賦予你行動(dòng)、發(fā)現(xiàn)價(jià)值和作出選擇的能力。不要靜止不動(dòng)，要隨時(shí)準(zhǔn)備接受改變。牢記那些我們告訴你們的遠(yuǎn)大理想，就算你覺(jué)得它們永遠(yuǎn)不可能實(shí)現(xiàn)，也要記住：它們可以指引你們，讓你們到達(dá)那個(gè)對(duì)自己和世界都有意義的彼岸。你們的未來(lái)在自己手中。

我都迫不及待地想知道你們會(huì)做出什么樣的成就了。無(wú)論如何，常回家看看，和我們分享你的幸福生活。

In the curious custom of this venerable institution, I find myself standing before you expected to impart words of lasting wisdom.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 Cotton into a true “Mather lather.” 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 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.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.I never knew we took it quite so literally.But let’s return to that notion of cold calls for a moment.Let’s imagine this were a baccalaureate service in the form of Q & A, and you were asking the questions.“What is the meaning of life, President Faust? What were these four years at Harvard for? President Faust, you must have learned something since you graduated from college exactly 40 years ago?”(Forty years.I’ll say it out loud since every detail of my life — and certainly the year of my Bryn Mawr degree — now seems to be publicly available.But please remember I was young for my class.)

In a way, you have been engaging me in this Q & A for the past year.On just these questions, although you have phrased them a bit more narrowly.And I have been trying to figure out how I might answer and, perhaps more intriguingly, why you were asking.Let me explain.It actually began when I met with the UC just after my appointment was announced in the winter of 2007.Then the questions continued when I had lunch at Kirkland House, dinner at Leverett, when I met with students in my office hours, even with some recent graduates I encountered abroad.The first thing you asked me about wasn’t the curriculum or advising or faculty contact or even student space.In fact, it wasn’t even alcohol policy.Instead, you repeatedly asked me: Why are so many of us going to Wall Street? Why are we going in such numbers from Harvard to finance, consulting, i-banking?

There are a number of ways to think about this question and how to answer it.There is the Willie Sutton approach.You may know that when he was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Professors Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz, whom many of you have encountered in your economics concentration, offer a not dissimilar answer based on their study of student career choices since the seventies.They find it notable that, given the very high pecuniary rewards in finance, many students nonetheless still choose to do something else.Indeed, 37 of you have signed on with Teach for America;one of you will dance tango 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 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 Crimson’s survey of last year’s class reported that 58 percent of men and 43 percent of women entering the workforce made this choice.This year, even in challenging economic times, the figure is 39 percent.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 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.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 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?

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 career choice rather than the abstract, unfathomable and almost embarrassing realm of metaphysics.The Meaning of Life — capital M, capital L — is a cliché — 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 harboring serious concern.But let’s for a moment abandon our Harvard savoir faire, our imperturbability, our pretense of invulnerability, and try to find the beginnings of some answers to your question.I think you are worried because you want your lives not just to be conventionally 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.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.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 sustainability, your reinvigoration of American politics through engagement in this year’s presidential contests.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?

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 that 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.Finance, Wall Street, “recruiting” have become the symbol of this dilemma, 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, as you decide whether to 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 yourself, 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 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 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 don’t want 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 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 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?

The answer is: you won’t know till you try.But if you don’t try to do what you love — whether it is painting or biology or finance;if you don’t pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it.Life is long.There is always time for Plan B.But don’t 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.Don’t park 20 blocks from your destination because you think you’ll never 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 prestigious consulting firm.“Why am I doing this?” she asked.“I hate flying, I hate hotels, I won’t 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 don’t.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 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 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 and 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.Don’t settle.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.I can’t wait to see how you all turn out.Do come back, from time to time, and let us know.http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/faust/080603_bacc.html

第五篇：哈佛校長(zhǎng)給2008屆本科畢業(yè)生的演講

哈佛校長(zhǎng)給2008屆本科畢業(yè)生的演講

24EN編者按:哈佛校長(zhǎng)在給2008屆本科畢業(yè)生的畢業(yè)演講中提到，不管是畫(huà)畫(huà)、生物還是金融，如果你都不試著去做你喜歡做的事，如果你不去追求你認(rèn)為最有意義的東西，總有一天你會(huì)后悔的。

24EN Editor's Note：The president of Harvard mentioned that " if you don’t try to do what you love — whether it is painting or biology or finance;If you don’t pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it.” In the Baccalaureate address to Class of 2008.In the curious custom of this venerable institution, I find myself standing before you expected to impart words of lasting wisdom.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 Cotton into a true “Mather lather.” 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 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.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.I never knew we took it quite so literally.But let’s return to that notion of cold calls for a moment.Let’s imagine this were a baccalaureate service in the form of Q & A, and you were asking the questions.“What is the meaning of life, President Faust? What were these four years at Harvard for? President Faust, you must have learned something since you graduated from college exactly 40 years ago?”(Forty years.I’ll say it out loud since every detail of my life — and certainly the year of my Bryn Mawr degree — now seems to be publicly available.But please remember I was young for my class.)In a way, you have been engaging me in this Q & A for the past year.On just these questions, although you have phrased them a bit more narrowly.And I have been trying to figure out how I might answer and, perhaps more intriguingly, why you were asking.Let me explain.It actually began when I met with the UC just after my appointment was announced in the winter of 2007.Then the questions continued when I had lunch at Kirkland House, dinner at Leverett, when I met with students in my office hours, even with some recent graduates I encountered abroad.The first thing you asked me about wasn’t the curriculum or advising or faculty contact or even student space.In fact, it wasn’t even alcohol policy.Instead, you repeatedly asked me: Why are so many of us going to Wall Street? Why are we going in such numbers from Harvard to finance, consulting, i-banking? There are a number of ways to think about this question and how to answer it.There is the Willie Sutton approach.You may know that when he was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, “Because that’s where the money is.” Professors Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz, whom many of you have encountered in your economics concentration, offer a not dissimilar answer based on their study of student career choices since the seventies.They find it notable that, given the very high pecuniary rewards in finance, many students nonetheless still choose to do something else.Indeed, 37 of you have signed on with Teach for America;one of you will dance tango 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 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 Crimson’s survey of last year’s class reported that 58 percent of men and 43 percent of women entering the workforce made this choice.This year, even in challenging economic times, the figure is 39 percent.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 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.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 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? 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 career choice rather than the abstract, unfathomable and almost embarrassing realm of metaphysics.The Meaning of Life — capital M, capital L — is a cliché — 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 harboring serious concern.But let’s for a moment abandon our Harvard savoir faire, our imperturbability, our pretense of invulnerability, and try to find the beginnings of some answers to your question.I think you are worried because you want your lives not just to be conventionally 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！

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.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 sustainability, your reinvigoration of American politics through engagement in this year’s presidential contests.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?

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 that 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.Finance, Wall Street, “recruiting” have become the symbol of this dilemma, 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, as you decide whether to 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 yourself, 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 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 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 don’t want 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 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 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?

The answer is: you won’t know till you try.But if you don’t try to do what you love — whether it is painting or biology or finance;if you don’t pursue what you think will be most meaningful, you will regret it.Life is long.There is always time for Plan B.But don’t 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.Don’t park 20 blocks from your destination because you think you’ll never 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 prestigious consulting firm.“Why am I doing this?” she asked.“I hate flying, I hate hotels, I won’t 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 don’t.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 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 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 and 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.Don’t settle.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.I can’t wait to see how you all turn out.Do come back, from time to time, and let us know.參考譯文

哈佛校長(zhǎng)給2008屆本科畢業(yè)生的畢業(yè)演講

按照這所古老大學(xué)的奇怪的傳統(tǒng)，我應(yīng)該是站在這兒，告訴你們那些永恒的智慧。我就站在這個(gè)講壇上，穿得像個(gè)清教徒牧師一樣——這個(gè)打扮也許已經(jīng)嚇到了我那些高貴的先人們，讓他們以為是巫婆現(xiàn)身（校長(zhǎng)是女的，譯者注）。這會(huì)讓英克利斯（Increase）和考特恩（Cotton）父子倆（他們反對(duì)清教，譯者注）忍不住想審判我的。但是，我還是要站在這兒，跟你們聊聊。

你們已經(jīng)上了四年的大學(xué)了，我當(dāng)校長(zhǎng)還不到一年；你們認(rèn)識(shí)三任校長(zhǎng)，我只認(rèn)識(shí)大四一個(gè)班的學(xué)生。那么，經(jīng)驗(yàn)是什么？也許你們應(yīng)該搞清楚。也許我們可以互換一下角色，我可能就會(huì)以哈佛法學(xué)院慣有的風(fēng)格，在接下來(lái)的一個(gè)小時(shí)里自說(shuō)自話。

從這一點(diǎn)上說(shuō)，我們似乎都做到了——不管程度多少。但我最近才知道，從5月22日開(kāi)始你們就沒(méi)有晚飯吃了。雖然我們會(huì)把你們比作已經(jīng)從哈佛斷奶的孩子們，但我從沒(méi)想到會(huì)這么徹底。

再讓我們來(lái)說(shuō)說(shuō)那個(gè)“自說(shuō)自話”吧。讓我們把這個(gè)演講看作是一個(gè)答疑式的畢業(yè)生服務(wù)，你們來(lái)提問(wèn)題。“浮士德校長(zhǎng)，生活的意義是什么？我們?yōu)槭裁匆诠鹱x四年？校長(zhǎng)，四十年前你從學(xué)校畢業(yè)的時(shí)候，肯定學(xué)到不少東西吧？”（四十年了。我可以大聲地說(shuō)出我當(dāng)時(shí)生活的每個(gè)細(xì)節(jié)，和我獲得布林莫爾學(xué)位的年份——現(xiàn)在大家都知道這個(gè)。但請(qǐng)注意，我在班里還算歲數(shù)小的。）

其實(shí)，這個(gè)答疑環(huán)節(jié)你們?cè)缇蛷奈疫@兒預(yù)定了。你們問(wèn)的問(wèn)題也大概就是這類的。我也一直在想該怎么回答，還在想：你們?yōu)槭裁礊檫@么問(wèn)。

聽(tīng)我的回答。2007年冬天，助理就告訴我要有這么一個(gè)演講。當(dāng)我在Kirkland聽(tīng)中午飯的時(shí)候，在Leverett吃晚飯的時(shí)候，當(dāng)我在我上班時(shí)和同學(xué)們見(jiàn)面的時(shí)候，甚至當(dāng)我在國(guó)外碰見(jiàn)我們剛畢業(yè)的學(xué)生的時(shí)候，同學(xué)們都會(huì)問(wèn)我一些問(wèn)題。你們問(wèn)我的第一個(gè)問(wèn)題，不是問(wèn)課程計(jì)劃，不是提建議，也不是問(wèn)老師的聯(lián)系方式或者學(xué)生的空間問(wèn)題。實(shí)際上，也不是酒精限制政策。你們不停地問(wèn)我的問(wèn)題是：“為什么我們的學(xué)生很多都去了華爾街？為什么我們哈佛的學(xué)生中，有那么多人到金融、咨詢和電子銀行領(lǐng)域去？”

這個(gè)問(wèn)題可以從好幾個(gè)方面來(lái)回答，我要用的是威利薩頓（一個(gè)美國(guó)銀行大盜，譯者注）的回答。你們可能知道，當(dāng)他被問(wèn)到為什么要搶銀行時(shí)，他說(shuō)“因?yàn)槟莾河绣X”。我想，你們?cè)谏辖?jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)課的時(shí)候，都見(jiàn)過(guò)克勞迪亞〃戈丁和拉里〃凱茲兩位教授，他們根據(jù)七十年代以來(lái)他們所教學(xué)生的職業(yè)選擇，提出了不同的看法。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，雖然金融行業(yè)在金錢方面有很高回報(bào)，但還是有學(xué)生選擇了其它的工作。實(shí)際上，你們中有37個(gè)人選擇做教師，有一個(gè)會(huì)跳探戈的人要去阿根廷的舞蹈診療所上班，另一個(gè)拿了數(shù)學(xué)榮譽(yù)學(xué)位的人要去學(xué)詩(shī)歌，有一個(gè)要在美國(guó)空軍受訓(xùn)作一名飛行員，還有一個(gè)要去作一名治療乳房癌癥的醫(yī)生。你們中有很多人會(huì)去學(xué)法學(xué)、學(xué)醫(yī)學(xué)、讀研究生。但是，根據(jù)戈丁和凱茲的記錄，更多的人去了金融和咨詢行業(yè)。Crimson對(duì)去年的畢業(yè)生作了調(diào)查，參加工作的人中，58%的男生和43％的女生去了這兩個(gè)行業(yè)。雖然今年的經(jīng)濟(jì)不景氣，這個(gè)數(shù)字還是到了39%。

高薪、不可抗拒的招聘的沖擊、到紐約和你的朋友一起工作的保證、承諾工作很有趣——這樣的選擇可以有很多種理由。對(duì)于你們中的一些人，也許只會(huì)在其中做一到兩年。其他人也都相信這是他們可以做到最好的一份工作。但，還是有人會(huì)問(wèn)：為什么要這樣選擇。

其實(shí)，比起回答你們的問(wèn)題來(lái)，我更喜歡思考你們?yōu)槭裁磿?huì)問(wèn)。戈丁和凱茲教授的研究是不是正確的；到金融行業(yè)是不是就是“理性的選擇”；你們?yōu)槭裁磿?huì)不停地問(wèn)我這個(gè)問(wèn)題？為什么這個(gè)看似理性的選擇，卻會(huì)讓你們?cè)S多人無(wú)法理解、覺(jué)得不盡理性，甚至有的會(huì)覺(jué)得是被迫作出的必要的選擇？為什么這個(gè)問(wèn)題會(huì)困擾這么多人呢？

我認(rèn)為，你們問(wèn)我生活的意義的時(shí)候，是帶著指向性的——你們把它看成是高級(jí)職業(yè)選擇中可見(jiàn)、可量度的現(xiàn)象，而不是一種抽象而深不可測(cè)的、形而上學(xué)的尷尬境地。所謂“生活的意義”已經(jīng)被說(shuō)濫了——它就像是蒙提〃派森（MontyPython）電影里可笑的標(biāo)題，或者說(shuō)是《辛普森一家》里的那些雞零狗碎的話題一樣，已經(jīng)沒(méi)有任何嚴(yán)肅的涵義了。

讓我們暫時(shí)扔掉哈佛人精明的處世能力、沉著和不可戰(zhàn)勝的虛偽，試著來(lái)尋找一下你們問(wèn)題的答案吧。

我想，你們之所以會(huì)焦慮，是因?yàn)槟銈儾幌胫皇亲龅揭话阋饬x上的成功，而且還想過(guò)得有意義。但你們又不知道這兩個(gè)目標(biāo)如何才能同時(shí)達(dá)到，你們不知道在一個(gè)大名鼎鼎的公司中有一份豐厚的起薪，并且前途很有保障，是不是就可以讓你們自己滿足。

你們?yōu)槭裁匆箲]？說(shuō)起來(lái)，我們學(xué)校這方面也有錯(cuò)。從你們進(jìn)來(lái)的時(shí)候，我們就告訴你們，到這里，你們會(huì)成為對(duì)未來(lái)負(fù)責(zé)的精英，你們是最棒的、最聰明的，我們都要依靠你們，因?yàn)槟銈儠?huì)改變這個(gè)世界。這些話，讓你們個(gè)個(gè)都胸懷大志。你們會(huì)去做各種不平常的事情：在課外活動(dòng)中，你們處處體現(xiàn)著服務(wù)的熱情；你們大力倡導(dǎo)可持續(xù)發(fā)展，因?yàn)槟銈冴P(guān)注地球的未來(lái)；在今年的總統(tǒng)競(jìng)選中，你們也表現(xiàn)出了對(duì)美國(guó)政治改革的熱衷。

但現(xiàn)在，你們中的許多人迷惘了，不知道這些在做職業(yè)選擇時(shí)都有什么用。如果在有償?shù)墓ぷ骱陀幸饬x的工作之間做個(gè)選擇，你們會(huì)怎么辦？這二者可以兼顧嗎？

你們都在不停地問(wèn)我一些最基本的問(wèn)題：關(guān)于價(jià)值、試圖調(diào)和那些潛在競(jìng)爭(zhēng)的東西、對(duì)魚(yú)與熊掌不可兼得的認(rèn)識(shí)，等等。現(xiàn)在的你們，到了要作出選擇的轉(zhuǎn)換階段。作出一個(gè)選擇——或工作、或讀研——都意味著失去了選擇其他選項(xiàng)的機(jī)會(huì)。每次決定都會(huì)有舍有得——放棄一個(gè)可能的同時(shí)，你也贏得了其他可能。對(duì)于我來(lái)說(shuō)，你們的問(wèn)題差不多就等于是站在十字路口時(shí)的迷茫。

金融業(yè)、華爾街、“招聘”就是這個(gè)困境的標(biāo)志，它帶來(lái)了比職業(yè)選擇更廣更深的一系列問(wèn)題。不管你是從醫(yī)學(xué)院畢業(yè)當(dāng)了全科醫(yī)生或者皮膚科醫(yī)生，從法學(xué)院畢業(yè)進(jìn)了一家公司或者作了一名公設(shè)辯護(hù)律師，還是結(jié)束了兩年的TeachforAmerica項(xiàng)目，在想要不要繼續(xù)教書(shū)，這些問(wèn)題總會(huì)在某種程度上困擾你們。你們之所以焦慮，是因?yàn)槟銈兗认牖畹糜幸饬x，又想活得成功；你們知道你們所受的教育，讓你們不只是為自己的舒適和滿足而活，而且還要為你們周圍的人而活。現(xiàn)在，到了你們想辦法實(shí)現(xiàn)這個(gè)目標(biāo)的時(shí)候了。

我想，還有一個(gè)原因使你們焦慮——這個(gè)原因和第一個(gè)原因相關(guān)，但又有所不同。你們想過(guò)得幸福。你們一擁而上地去選修“成功哲學(xué)”和“幸福的科學(xué)”，想從中找到秘訣。但我們?cè)趺礃硬拍苄腋Ｄ兀课铱梢蕴峁┮粋€(gè)不錯(cuò)的答案：長(zhǎng)大。調(diào)查數(shù)據(jù)說(shuō)明，越老的人——比如我這個(gè)歲數(shù)的人——比年輕的人感到更幸福。但可能你們都不愿意等。

當(dāng)我聽(tīng)著你們說(shuō)你們面前有如何的選擇時(shí)，可以聽(tīng)出來(lái)，你們?cè)跒楦悴幻靼壮晒托腋５年P(guān)系而煩惱——或者更確切地說(shuō)，什么樣的成功，不僅能帶來(lái)金錢和名望，還能讓人真正地幸福。你們擔(dān)心工資最高的工作，不一定是最有意義、最令人滿足的工作。但你們想過(guò)沒(méi)，藝術(shù)家、演員、公務(wù)員或者高中老師都是怎么過(guò)的？你們有沒(méi)有思考一下，在媒體圈里該怎么生存？你們是否曾試想過(guò)，在經(jīng)過(guò)不知道多少年的研究生學(xué)習(xí)、寫(xiě)了不知道多少篇論文之后，你們能否找到一個(gè)英語(yǔ)教授的工作？

所以，答案就是：只有試過(guò)了才知道。但是不管是畫(huà)畫(huà)、生物還是金融，如果你都不試著去做你喜歡做的事，如果你不去追求你認(rèn)為最有意義的東西，總有一天你會(huì)后悔的。生活的路還很長(zhǎng)，總有機(jī)會(huì)嘗試別的選擇，但不要一開(kāi)始就想著這個(gè)。

我把這個(gè)叫作職業(yè)選擇中的停車位理論，幾十年來(lái)我一直在和同學(xué)們說(shuō)這些。不要因?yàn)槟阌X(jué)得會(huì)沒(méi)有停車位，就把車停在離目的地20個(gè)街區(qū)遠(yuǎn)的地方。先到你想去的地方，然后再到你應(yīng)該去的地方。

你可能喜歡投資銀行、喜歡金融、喜歡咨詢，它們可能是最適合你的。也許你和我在Kirkland碰到的一個(gè)大四學(xué)生一樣，她剛從西海岸一家很有名的咨詢公司面試回來(lái)，她問(wèn)：“我為什么要做這行？我討厭坐飛機(jī)，我不喜歡住酒店，我不會(huì)喜歡這個(gè)工作的。”那就找個(gè)你喜歡的工作吧。要是你醒著的時(shí)間里，都在做你不喜歡的事情，你也不會(huì)感到幸福的。

但是，最最最最重要的是，你們要問(wèn)出這個(gè)問(wèn)題——問(wèn)我或者問(wèn)你們自己。你們選擇了一條路，也就選擇了一份挑戰(zhàn)。你知道自己想要什么樣的生活，只是不知道該怎樣到達(dá)那兒。這是好事。我覺(jué)得，從某種程度上說(shuō)，這也是我們的錯(cuò)。關(guān)注你的生活，思考怎樣才能把它過(guò)好、怎樣才能把事情做對(duì)：這些也許是博雅教育給你最寶貴的東西。通識(shí)教育讓你自覺(jué)地生活，讓你在你所作的一切中尋找、定義價(jià)值。它也讓你成為一個(gè)自我的分析家和批評(píng)家，讓你從最高水平上掌握你生活的展示方式。從這個(gè)意義上講，博雅教育讓你自由。它們賦予你行動(dòng)、發(fā)現(xiàn)價(jià)值和作出選擇的能力。不要靜止不動(dòng)，要隨時(shí)準(zhǔn)備接受改變。牢記那些我們告訴你們的遠(yuǎn)大理想，就算你覺(jué)得它們永遠(yuǎn)不可能實(shí)現(xiàn)，也要記住：它們可以指引你們，讓你們到達(dá)那個(gè)對(duì)自己和世界都有意義的彼岸。你們的未來(lái)在自己手中。

我都迫不及待地想知道你們會(huì)做出什么樣的成就了。無(wú)論如何，常回家看看，和我們分享你的幸福生活。

摘自《經(jīng)典文章網(wǎng)》