2017毕业特辑 | 一个真实的现在可以开垦一万个美丽的未来

【点击微信右上角+号---添加朋友---公众号---搜索“为你读英语美文”---关注后查看原文，垫乐，参加互动，活动】 【第203期】一个真实的现在可以开垦一万个美丽的未来 | 2017毕业特辑 主播：Cynthia (2017届毕业生) 坐标：上海 2014年的毕业特辑，来自潇雨，把中南民大族大学的点滴谱成一支夏天的歌； 2015年的毕业特辑，来自Sally，在江西师大的镜湖边追忆往昔； 2016年的毕业特辑，来自严喆，在上海外国语大学的教室里录下毕业的心情； 2017年的毕业特辑，来自Cynthia，在复旦大学讲述今年的毕业故事。 复旦的入学通知书上写着这样一段话：“祝贺您跻身百年复旦的星空！日月光华中有你闪亮的眼睛，你计划的秋天已经褪去童话的色彩，一个真实的现在可以开垦一万个美丽的未来。” 即将毕业的今天，Cynhita想和大家分享Dropbox 创始人 Drew Houston 2013年在MIT（麻省理工学院）毕业典礼上的演讲，他给即将踏入社会的毕业生们提供了3点人生建议：追逐自己感兴趣的事，找到最合适的圈子，以及不要浪费人生的每一天。 以下为休斯顿演讲节选： There are a lot of reasons why this is a special day, but the reason I&`&m so excited for all of you is that today is the first day of your life where you no longer need to check boxes. 这是特殊的一天，而原因则有很多，我认为最令人激动的原因在于，这是人生中第一天你不必再为上课签到担心。 For your first couple decades, success in life has meant jumping through one hoop after another: get these test scores, get into this college. Take these classes, get this degree. Get into this prestigious institution so you can get into the next prestigious institution. All of that ends today. 在你们人生最初的几个十年中，成功意味着从一个围城跳入另一个围城：考试获得高分，进入这所大学，修完所有课程，获得这一学位，进入一家有名的研究所，随后进入另一家有名的研究所。今天，这一切都结束了。 The hard thing about planning your life is you have no idea where you&`&re going, but you want to get there as soon as possible. Maybe you&`&ll start a company, or cure cancer, or write the great American novel. Or who knows? Maybe things will go horribly wrong. I had no idea. 人生规划的难点在于，你不知道将走向何处，但会希望尽快实现自己的目标。或许你会建立一家公司，或治愈癌症，或撰写一部美国知名的小说。但谁知道呢？或许，情况会变得很糟糕。我无法判断。 Being up here in robes and speaking to all of you today wasn&`&t exactly part of my plan seven years ago. In fact, I&`&ve never really had a grand plan — and what I realize now is that it&`&s probably impossible to have one after graduation, if ever. 今天，穿着学位服站在这里并对大家演讲并不在我7年前的计划之中。实际上，我从没有过伟大的计划。我现在发现，在刚刚毕业时，几乎不可能提出这种伟大的计划。 I&`&ve thought a lot about what&`&s different about the life you&`&re beginning today. I&`&ve thought about what I would do if I had to start all over again. What got you here was basically being smart and working hard. But nobody tells you that after today, the recipe for success changes. So what I want to do is give you a little cheat sheet, the one I would have loved to have had on my graduation day. 我曾思考过，你们从今天开始将会有怎样不同的人生。我也曾思考过，如果重来一次，我会怎样去做。你们能走到今天是因为聪明的大脑和刻苦学习。但没有人会告诉你，过了今天之后，推动成功的元素将会改变。因此我想做的是，给你们一张“考试作弊的小抄”，这是我在毕业当天希望拥有的。 If you were to look at my cheat sheet, there wouldn&`&t be a lot on it. There would be a tennis ball, a circle, and the number 30,000. I know this doesn&`&t make any sense right now, but bear with me. 如果看看这张小抄，可以发现上面的内容不多：一个网球、一个圆圈，以及数字3万。我知道，目前这些内容没有任何意义，但请听我说完。 I started my first company in a Chili&`&s when I was 21. My cofounder, Andrew Crick, and I had never done this before. We were wondering if you needed to wear a suit to City Hall, or if you needed to make a company seal for stamping important documents. It turns out you can just go online and fill out a form and be done in about two minutes. It was a little anti-climactic, but we were in business. Over onion strings we decided that our company was going to make a new kind of online course for the SAT… 21岁时，我建立了自己的第一家公司，这是我和合伙人安德鲁·可利克(Andrew Crick)此前从未做过的。我们不知道走进市政大厅是否需要穿着正装，也不知道是否需要刻一枚印章为重要文件盖章。最终我们发现，只需上网填表就可以在两分钟内完成建立公司的步骤。这听起来有些扫兴，但我们开始了自己的生意。吃着洋葱圈，我们决定这家公司将针对SAT考试提供一种全新的网络课程。 A couple years later, things started going downhill. I felt like I had to paddle harder and harder to make progress, and at some point I just snapped and couldn&`&t deal with any more math questions about parallel lines or the train leaving Memphis at 3:45. I figured something was wrong with me. I felt guilty for being so unproductive. Starting a company had been my dream, and, well, maybe I didn&`&t have what it takes after all. 几年后，情况开始走下坡路。我感觉，我需要更加努力才能取得进步。一些时候，我觉得思路突然中断，无法解答更多关于平行线或火车开行的数学题。我发现自己出了问题，对这样的低效我感到自责。建立一家公司是我的梦想，但我可能还没有做好万全的准备。 So I took a little break. Of course, if you&`&re in course 6, sometimes "taking a break" means writing a poker bot. For those of you who don&`&t know what a poker bot is, what happens when you play poker online is first, you sit for hours and click buttons, and then you lose all your money. A poker bot means you can have your computer lose all your money for you. 因此我休息了一段时间。当然，如果你来自6系(麻省理工学院电气工程专业)，那么“休息一会”意味着编写一个扑克机器人程序。如果你们不懂什么是扑克机器人，可以这样理解：当你在网上打扑克时，你一坐几个小时，点击一些按钮，输掉所有钱，而扑克机器人意味着你可以用计算机帮你输掉这些钱。 But it was a fascinating challenge. I was possessed. I would think about it in the shower. I would think about it in the middle of the night. It was like a switch went on — suddenly I was a machine. 这是一项有趣的挑战。我全身心投入。我在洗澡时思考，在午夜也会思考。这就像打开了一个开关，突然之间我就成了一台机器。 I was going to say work on what you love, but that&`&s not really it. It&`&s so easy to convince yourself that you love what you&`&re doing — who wants to admit that they don&`&t? When I think about it, the happiest and most successful people I know don&`&t just love what they do, they&`&re obsessed with solving an important problem, something that matters to them. They remind me of a dog chasing a tennis ball: their eyes go a little crazy, the leash snaps and they go bounding off, plowing through whatever gets in the way. I have some other friends who also work hard and get paid well in their jobs, but they complain as if they were shackled to a desk. 原本我可以说，去做你喜欢的事，但实际情况并非如此。你可以很容易说服自己，你喜欢自己正在做的事。有谁会承认他们不喜欢呢？在思考这一问题时，我发现，我所认识的最愉快、最成功的人们不仅喜欢自己做的事，也善于解决一个重要问题，这对他们来说很重要。他们让我联想到小狗追逐网球的例子：它们的眼神有些疯狂，绳索一松就会立刻扑上去，抓住可以抓的一切东西。我的另一些朋友同样努力工作，获得了很高的薪水，但他们总是抱怨被束缚在办公桌上。 The problem is a lot of people don’t find their tennis ball right away. Don&`&t get me wrong — I love a good standardized test as much as the next guy, but being king of SAT prep wasn’t going to be mine. What scares me is that both the poker bot and Dropbox started out as distractions. That little voice in my head was telling me where to go, and the whole time I was telling it to shut up so I could get back to work. Sometimes that little voice knows best. 问题在于，许多人没有找到他们的网球。我不希望走错路。我喜欢良好的标准化考试，但成为SAT备考的领先者并不是我的目标。令我惊讶的是，扑克机器人和Dropbox开始分散我的注意力。我内心的一个声音告诉我要去哪里，而我则一直告诉它闭嘴，让我好好工作。然而有些时候，这个声音才最了解你。 It took me a while to get it, but the hardest-working people don&`&t work hard because they&`&re disciplined. They work hard because working on an exciting problem is fun. So after today, it&`&s not about pushing yourself; it&`&s about finding your tennis ball, the thing that pulls you. It might take a while, but until you find it, keep listening for that little voice. 我花了很长时间才知道这一点：最努力的人并不是由于纪律性才努力工作，而是因为他们正在解决有趣的问题。因此在今天之后，你们不用自己鞭策自己，而是要找到属于自己的网球，让事情去鞭策自己。这可能需要花一段时间，但在你找到网球之前，请倾听内心的声音。 They say that you&`&re the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. Think about that for a minute: who would be in your circle of 5? I have some good news: MIT is one of the best places in the world to start building that circle. If I hadn&`&t come here, I wouldn&`&t have met Adam, I wouldn&`&t have met my amazing cofounder, Arash, and there would be no Dropbox. 许多人都说，人们通常只与5个人在一起的时间最长。想一想，谁是你圈子中的这5个人？我得出了一些好消息：对建立圈子来说，麻省理工学院是全球最好的场所。如果我没有来到这里，我就不会认识史密斯，不会遇见出色的合作者，也不会有Dropbox。 One thing I&`&ve learned is surrounding yourself with inspiring people is now just as important as being talented or working hard. Can you imagine if Michael Jordan hadn’t been in the NBA, if his circle of 5 had been a bunch of guys in Italy? 我学到的一点是，周围人的出色与自己的才能和努力同样重要。如果迈克尔·乔丹(Michael Jordan)没有加入NBA，他周围的5个人都来自意大利，那么将会怎样？ And now your circle will grow to include your coworkers and everyone around you. Where you live matters: there’s only one MIT. And there&`&s only one Hollywood and only one Silicon Valley. This isn&`&t a coincidence: for whatever you&`&re doing, there&`&s usually only one place where the top people go. You should go there. Don’t settle for anywhere else. Meeting my heroes and learning from them gave me a huge adv