哈佛女校长毕业典礼励志讲话：职业选择与幸福寻找

　　哈佛女校長畢業典禮勵志演講：職業選擇與幸福尋找　　

　　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.

　　在這所久負盛名的大學的别具一格的儀式上，我站在了你們的面前，被期待着給予一些蘊含着恒久智慧的言論。站在這個講壇上，我穿得像個清教徒教長——一個可能會吓到我的傑出前輩們的怪物，或許使他們中的一些人重新緻力于鏟除巫婆的事業上。這個時刻也許曾激勵了很多清教徒成爲教長。但現在，我在上面，你們在下面，此時此刻，屬于真理，爲了真理。

　　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.

　　你們已經在哈佛做了四年的大學生，而我當哈佛校長還不到一年。你們認識了三個校長，而我隻認識了你們這一屆大四的。算起來我哪有資格說什麽經驗之談？或許應該由你們上來展示一下智慧。要不我們換換位置？然後我就可以像哈佛法學院的學生那樣，在接下來的一個小時内不時地冷不防地提出問題。

　　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.

　　學校和學生們似乎都在努力讓時間來到這一時刻，而且還差不多是步調一緻的。我這兩天才得知哈佛從5月22日開始就不向你們提供夥食了。雖然有比喻說“我們早晚得給你們斷奶”，但沒想到我們的後勤還真的早早就把“奶”給斷了。

　　But let's return to that notion of cold calls for a moment. Let's imagine 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.）

　　現在還是讓我們回到我剛才提到的提問題的事上吧。讓我們設想下這是個哈佛大學給本科生的畢業服務，是以問答的形式。你們将問些問題，比如：“福校長啊，人生的價值是什麽呢？我們上這大學四年是爲了什麽呢？福校長，你大學畢業到現在的40年裏一定學到些什麽東西可以教給我們吧？”

　　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，在過去的一年裏你們一直都在讓我從事這種問答。從僅僅這些問題上，即使你們措辭問題都傾向于狹義，而我除了思考怎麽做出回答外，更激發我去思考的，是你們爲什麽問這些問題。

　　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?

　　聽我解釋。提問從2007年冬天我的任職被公布時與校方的會面就開始了。然後提問一直持續，不論是我在Kirkland House（哈佛的12個本科生宿舍之一）吃午飯還是在Leverett House（哈佛的12個本科生宿舍之一，本科高年級學生使用）吃晚飯，或是當我在辦公時間與學生會見，甚至是我在與國外認識的剛考來的研究生的談話中。你們問的第一個問題不是關于課業，不是讓我提建議，也不是爲了和教員接觸，甚至是想向我提建議。事實上，更不是爲了和我讨論酒精政策。相反，你們不厭其煩問的卻是：爲什麽我們之中這麽多人将去華爾街？爲什麽我們大量的學生都從哈佛走向了金融，理财咨詢，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.

　　對于這個問題有多種思考和回答方式。有一種解釋就是如Willie Sutton所說的，一切向“錢”看。（Willie Sutton是個搶銀行犯，被逮住後當被問到爲什麽去搶銀行時，他說：“Because that is where the money is!”）你們中很多人見過的普通經濟學教授Claudia Goldin 和Larry Katz，基于對上世紀70年代以來的學生的職業選擇的研究，作出了差不多的回答。他們發現了值得注意的一點：即使從事金融業可以得到很高的金錢回報，很多學生仍然選擇做其它的事情。實事上，你們中間有37人簽到了“教育美國人”（Teach for America，美國的一個組織，其作用類似于中國的“希望工程”）；1人将去跳探戈舞蹈并在阿根廷從事舞蹈療法；1人将緻力于肯尼亞的農業發展；另有1人獲得了數學的榮譽學位，卻轉而去研究詩歌；1人将去美國空軍接受飛行員訓練；還有1人将加入到與乳癌抗戰當中。你們中的很多人将去法學院，醫學院或研究生院。但是，和Goldin 和Katz教授有據證明的一樣，你們中相當一部分人将選擇金融和理财咨詢。Crimson對于上屆學生的調查顯示，在就業的學生中，58%的男生和43%的女生做出了這個選擇。今年，即使在經濟受挑戰的一年，這個數據是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.

　　也許是爲了高薪——難以抵抗的招聘誘惑，也許是爲了留在紐約然後和朋友們一起工作生活和享受人生，也許是爲了做自己感興趣的工作——對于這些選擇可以有各種各樣的理由。對你們中的一些人，無論如何那也隻是個一兩年的契約。其他的一部分人相信他們隻有在過得“富有”了以後才有可能過得“富有”價值。不過，你們依然會問我，爲什麽要走這條路？

　　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?

　　我發現我自己有時候對于回答你們的問題并沒有多大興趣，比較而言更感興趣的卻是捉摸你們爲什麽提那些問題。如果果真如Goldin和Katz教授所說；如果去搞金融确實是一個“理性”的選擇，爲什麽你們會不停地向我提出這類問題？爲什麽看似理性的選擇卻讓你們當中相當一部分人認爲是令人費解的，僞理性的，或出于某種需求和強迫所作出的并不自由的選擇？爲什麽這個問題似乎困擾着你們當中的很多一部分人？

　　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，你們問我的是：關于人生價值的問題。雖然你們問得比較隐晦——即是些可以觀察和衡量的大四學生職業選擇的問題，而不是那抽象的，晦澀的，甚至會令人難堪的形而上學範疇的問題。人生價值，