[00:00:02] Trying to Pursue Your Beloved Career - 英语演讲
[00:00:08] Baccalaureate Address by Drew G. Faust
[00:00:11] at Harvard University
[00:00:12] Distinguished guests, graduates
[00:00:17] and your families,colleagues and friends,
[00:00:20] it’s a pleasure to be with you today.
[00:00:22] In the curious custom of this venerable institution,
[00:00:28] I find myself standing before
[00:00:31] you expected to impart words of lasting wisdom.
[00:00:35] Here I am in a pulpit,
[00:00:37] dressed like a Puritan minister -
[00:00:39] an apparition that would have horrified
[00:00:43] many of my distinguished forebears
[00:00:45] and perhaps rededicated some of them
[00:00:47] to the extirpation of witches.
[00:00:49] This moment would have propelled Increase
[00:00:53] and Cotton into a true “Mather lather.”
[00:00:56] But here I am and there you are
[00:01:00] and it is the moment of and for Veritas.
[00:01:04] You have been undergraduates for four years.
[00:01:09] I have been president for not quite one.
[00:01:12] You have known three presidents;
[00:01:15] I one senior class. Where then lies the voice of experience?
[00:01:21] Maybe you should be offering the wisdom.
[00:01:24] Perhaps our roles could be reversed and I could,
[00:01:28] in Harvard Law School style,
[00:01:30] do cold calls for the next hour or so.
[00:01:34] We all do seem to have made it to this point -
[00:01:38] more or less in one piece.
[00:01:41] Though I recently learned
[00:01:43] that we have not provided you
[00:01:45] with dinner since May 22.
[00:01:46] I know we need to wean you from Harvard
[00:01:49] in a figurative sense.
[00:01:51] I never knew we took it quite so literally.
[00:01:54] But let’s return to that notion of cold calls for a moment.
[00:02:00] Let’s imagine this were a baccalaureate service
[00:02:04] in the form of Q & A, and you were asking the questions.
[00:02:07] “What is the meaning of life, President Faust?
[00:02:11] What were these four years at Harvard for?
[00:02:14] President Faust, you must have learned something
[00:02:18] since you graduated from college exactly 40 years ago?”
[00:02:21] (Forty years. I’ll say it out loud
[00:02:25] since every detail of my life -
[00:02:27] and certainly the years of my Bryn Mawr degree -
[00:02:30] now seems to be publicly available.
[00:02:33] But please remember I was young for my class.)
[00:02:36] In a way, you have been engaging me
[00:02:40] in this Q & A for the past year.
[00:02:42] On just these questions, although you have phrased
[00:02:46] them a bit more narrowly.
[00:02:47] And I have been trying to figure out
[00:02:49] how I might answer and, perhaps more intriguingly,
[00:02:53] why you were asking.
[00:02:55] Let me explain. It actually began
[00:03:00] when I met with the UC just after my appointment
[00:03:04] was announced in the winter of 2007.
[00:03:06] Then the questions continued
[00:03:09] when I had lunch at Kirkland House,
[00:03:11] dinner at Leverett, when I met with students
[00:03:14] in my office hours, even with some recent graduates
[00:03:17] I encountered abroad. The first thing you asked me
[00:03:22] about wasn’t the curriculum or advising
[00:03:25] or faculty contact or even student space.
[00:03:28] In fact, it wasn’t even alcohol policy.
[00:03:32] Instead, you repeatedly asked me:
[00:03:36] Why are so many of us going to Wall Street?
[00:03:39] Why are we going in such numbers
[00:03:42] from Harvard to finance, consulting, banking?
[00:03:45] There are a number of ways to think about
[00:03:50] this question and how to answer it.
[00:03:52] There is the Willie Sutton approach.
[00:03:54] You may know that when he was asked
[00:03:57] why he robbed banks, he replied,
[00:03:59] “Because that’s where the money is.”
[00:04:01] Professors Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz,
[00:04:05] whom many of you have encountered in your economics concentration,
[00:04:08] offer a not dissimilar answer based
[00:04:12] on their study of student career choices since the seventies.
[00:04:16] They find it notable that,
[00:04:18] given the very high pecuniary rewards in finance,
[00:04:21] many students nonetheless still choose
[00:04:24] to do something else. Indeed, 37 of you have
[00:04:29] signed on with Teach for America;
[00:04:31] one of you will dance tango
[00:04:33] and work in dance therapy in Argentina;
[00:04:36] another will be engaged in agricultural development in Kenya;
[00:04:40] another, with an honors degree in math,
[00:04:43] will study poetry; another will train
[00:04:47] as a pilot with the USAF; another will work
[00:04:49] to combat breast cancer.
[00:04:49] Numbers of you will go to law school,
[00:04:55] medical school, and graduate school.
[00:04:57] But, consistent with
[00:04:59] the pattern Goldin and Katz have documented,
[00:05:02] a considerable number of you are selecting finance
[00:05:05] and consulting. The Crimson’s survey of last year’s class
[00:05:09] reported that 58 percent of men and 43 percent of women
[00:05:14] entering the workforce made this choice.
[00:05:17] This year, even in challenging economic times,
[00:05:21] the figure is 39 percent.
[00:05:23] High salaries, the all but irresistible recruiting juggernaut,
[00:05:29] the reassurance for many of you
[00:05:32] that you will be in New York working
[00:05:33] and living and enjoying life alongside your friends,
[00:05:37] the promise of interesting work -
[00:05:40] there are lots of ways to explain these choices.
[00:05:43] For some of you, it is a commitment
[00:05:46] for only a year or two in any case.
[00:05:48] Others believe they will best be able to
[00:05:52] do good by first doing well.
[00:05:54] Yet, you ask me why you are following this path.
[00:05:58] I find myself in some ways less interested
[00:06:04] in answering your question than in figuring out
[00:06:07] why you are posing it.
[00:06:08] If Professors Goldin and Katz have it right;
[00:06:12] if finance is indeed the “rational choice,”
[00:06:15] why do you keep raising this issue with me?
[00:06:18] Why does this seemingly rational choice
[00:06:21] strike a number of you as not understandable,
[00:06:24] as not entirely rational,
[00:06:27] as in some sense less a free choice
[00:06:30] than a compulsion or necessity?
[00:06:32] Why does this seem to be troubling so many of you?
[00:06:37] You are asking me, I think,
[00:06:40] about the meaning of life,
[00:06:42] though you have posed your question in code -
[00:06:45] in terms of the observable and measurable phenomenon
[00:06:49] of senior career choice rather than the abstract,
[00:06:52] unfathomable and almost embarrassing realm of metaphysics.
[00:06:57] The Meaning of Life - is a cliché -
[00:07:01] easier to deal with as the ironic title
[00:07:04] of a Monty Python movie or the subject
[00:07:06] of a Simpsons episode than as a matter
[00:07:09] about which one would dare admit to harboring serious concern.
[00:07:14] But let’s for a moment abandon our Harvard savoir faire,
[00:07:20] our imperturbability, our pretense of invulnerability,
[00:07:24] and try to find the beginnings of some answers to your question.
[00:07:31] I think you are worried
[00:07:34] because you want your lives not just
[00:07:35] to be conventionally successful, but to be meaningful,
[00:07:39] and you are not sure how those two goals fit together.
[00:07:42] You are not sure if a generous starting salary at
[00:07:46] a prestigious brand name organization together
[00:07:50] with the promise of future wealth will feed your soul.
[00:07:55] Why are you worried?
[00:07:57] Partly it is our fault.
[00:07:59] We have told you from the moment
[00:08:01] you arrived here that you will be the leaders
[00:08:04] responsible for the future,
[00:08:06] that you are the best and the brightest
[00:08:08] on whom we will all depend,
[00:08:10] that you will change the world.
[00:08:12] We have burdened you with no small expectations.
[00:08:16] And you have already done remarkable things
[00:08:19] to fulfill them: your dedication to service demonstrated
[00:08:23] in your extracurricular engagements,
[00:08:26] your concern about the future of the planet expressed
[00:08:30] in your vigorous championing of sustainability,
[00:08:32] your reinvigoration of American politics
[00:08:36] through engagement in this year’s presidential contests.
[00:08:40] But many of you are now wondering how these commitments
[00:08:46] fit with a career choice.
[00:08:47] Is it necessary to decide between remunerative work
[00:08:51] and meaningful work?
[00:08:53] If it were to be either/or,
[00:08:55] which would you choose?
[00:08:57] Is there a way to have both?
[00:08:59] You are asking me fundamental questions
[00:09:04] about values, about trying to reconcile potentially
[00:09:08] competing goods, about recognizing
[00:09:10] that it may not be possible to have it all.
[00:09:14] You are at a moment of transition
[00:09:16] that requires making choices.
[00:09:18] And selecting one option -
[00:09:21] a job, a career, a graduate program -
[00:09:24] means not selecting others.
[00:09:26] Every decision means loss as well as gain -
[00:09:30] possibilities foregone as well as possibilities embraced.
[00:09:34] Your question to me is partly about that -
[00:09:38] about loss of roads not taken.
[00:09:42] Finance, Wall Street,
[00:09:45] “recruiting” have become the symbol of this dilemma,
[00:09:48] representing a set of issues
[00:09:51] that is much broader and deeper
[00:09:52] than just one career path.
[00:09:54] These are issues that in one way
[00:09:58] or another will at some point face you all -
[00:10:00] as you graduate from medical school
[00:10:03] and choose a specialty-family practice or dermatology,
[00:10:07] as you decide whether to use your law degree
[00:10:10] to work for a corporate firm or as a public defender,
[00:10:14] as you decide whether to stay in teaching
[00:10:17] after your two years with TFA.
[00:10:19] You are worried because you want to
[00:10:22] have both a meaningful life and a successful one;
[00:10:25] you know you were educated to make a difference
[00:10:28] not just for yourself, for your own comfort and satisfaction,
[00:10:32] but for the world around you.
[00:10:35] And now you have to figure out the way
[00:10:38] to make that possible.
[00:10:40] I think there is a second reason
[00:10:44] you are worried - related to but not entirely
[00:10:47] distinct from the first. You want to be happy.
[00:10:50] You have flocked to courses like “Positive Psychology”
[00:10:55] and “The Science of Happiness” in search of tips.
[00:10:58] But how do we find happiness?
[00:11:00] I can offer one encouraging answer: get older.
[00:11:05] Turns out that survey data show older people -
[00:11:08] that is, my age - report themselves happier
[00:11:12] than do younger ones.
[00:11:13] But perhaps you don’t want to wait.
[00:11:17] As I have listened to you
[00:11:20] talk about the choices ahead of you,
[00:11:21] I have heard you articulate your worries
[00:11:24] about the relationship of success and happiness -
[00:11:27] perhaps, more accurately,
[00:11:29] how to define success so that it yields
[00:11:32] and encompasses real happiness,
[00:11:34] not just money and prestige.
[00:11:37] The most remunerative choice, you fear,
[00:11:41] may not be the most meaningful
[00:11:43] and the most satisfying.
[00:11:44] But you wonder how you would ever survive
[00:11:49] as an artist or an actor or a public servant
[00:11:52] or a high school teacher?
[00:11:53] How would you ever figure out a path
[00:11:56] by which to make your way in journalism?
[00:11:58] Would you ever find a job as an English professor
[00:12:02] after you finished who knows
[00:12:04] how many years of graduate school
[00:12:06] and dissertation writing?
[00:12:07] The answer is: you won’t know till you try.
[00:12:12] But if you don’t try to do what you love -
[00:12:15] whether it is painting or biology or finance;
[00:12:19] if you don’t pursue what you think
[00:12:22] will be most meaningful, you will regret it.
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