2012美国普林斯顿大学毕业典礼演讲.pdfVIP

2012 2012年美国普林斯顿大学毕业典礼 Thank you. PresidentTilghman.Trustees andFriends. Parents of theClass of 2012.Above all, Members of the Princeton Class of 2012. Give yourself a round of applause. The next time you look around a church and see everyone dressed in black itll be awkward to cheer. Enjoy the moment. 感谢Tilghman主席，各位校董和朋友们，2012年级的家长们，还有最关键的，普林斯 顿2012年级的同学们。请给自己一个掌声吧。下一次你在一所教堂里看到大家都穿成黑色 的时候，像这样欢呼就很尴尬了。享受这一刻吧。 Thirty years ago I sat where you sat. I must have listened to some older person share his life experience. But I dont remember a word of it. I cant even tell you who spoke. What I do remember, vividly, is graduation. Im told youre meant to be excited, perhaps even relieved, and maybe all of you are. I wasnt. I was totally outraged. Here I’d gone and given them four of the bestyears ofmy lifeandthisis howtheythankedmefor it.Bykickingmeout. 30年前，我坐在你所坐的地方。我一定也听过某位年长的人分享他的人生经历。但我 已经一点都不记得了。我连是谁发言都没印象了。而在我记忆中仍栩栩如生的，是毕业。他 们告诉我你应该很激动，或者感到轻松，也许你们现在就是这样。我却不同。我义愤填膺： 我来到这里给了他们我人生中最好的四年，而他们就是这样报答我的——把我踢走。 At that moment I was sure of only one thing: I was of no possible economic value to the outside world. Id majored in art history, for a start. Even then this was regarded as an act of insanity.I was almost certainly less preparedfor the marketplace than most of you.Yet somehow I have wound up rich and famous. Well, sort of. Im going to explain, briefly, how that happened. I want you to understand just how mysterious careers can be, before you go out and have one yourself. I graduated from Princeton without ever having published a word of anything, anywhere. I didnt write for the Prince, or for anyone else. But at Princeton, studying art history,I felt the first twinge of literary ambition. It happened while working on my senior thesis. My adviser was a truly gifted professor, an archaeologist named William Childs. The thesis tried to explain how the Italian sculptor Donatello used Greek and