哈佛校长给2008届本科毕业生的致词

第一篇：哈佛校长给2008届本科毕业生的致词

哈佛校长给2008届本科毕业生的致词

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哈佛校长给2008届本科毕业生的致词 马萨诸塞州的剑桥纪念教堂 2008年6月3日

在这个庄严的时刻有一个奇怪的习惯，我发现我自己站在你们前面并且被希望告知你们一些永恒智慧的言语。我站在这个讲坛上，像一个主教一样致词，这就像一个幻影，它可能使我的那些杰出前辈感到恐惧，也可能让我追随他们来消除这种迷惑。这个时刻很可能使Increase和Cotton变成一个真正的“马瑟泡沫”。但是站在这儿的我和站在那儿的你们在此刻都是为了追求真理。你们已经在这儿读了四年书。我也一直是你们那位没辞职的校长。你们已经知道了三个校长，一个毕业班，哪儿有对经验的声音的谎言？可能你们应该提供智慧。或许我们应该调换一下角色，而且可能我会在下一个小时以哈佛法学院的风格给你们来一个意外的恶作剧式电话。我们似乎已经做到了这一点——或多或少做到了一些。尽管最近我了解到自从5月22号以后我们就没再给你们提供晚餐。我知道我们需要以这种方式送别哈佛的你们。但我不知道我们做的如此的缓慢。

现在让我们回到冷电话的概念中一会儿。让我们设想这是Q & A形式的毕业生服务社，你们正在问一些问题。“福斯特校长，生命的意义是什么？在哈佛的四年意味着什么？福斯特校长，从你四十年前毕业到现在，你一定学到了一些东西”（40年，我将大声的说出来，因为我生活中的每一个细节——自从我获得Bryn Mawr学位以来—现在看来似乎都是公开的，但请记住，我在我们班上是年轻的）。从去年以来，我就一直在从事Q & A这种工作。尽管在这些问题上，你们的问题有些狭隘。我一直在试图想出我能如何回答，或许更有趣的是指出你们为什么这样问。让我来解释一下，这实际上发生于我在07年冬天被任命为校长后遇到UC时。然后当我在苏格兰教会吃午饭时以及在Levrett用晚餐时，当我在办公室遇到学生时，甚至是在国外遇到一些最近的毕业生时，这些疑问仍继续着。他们问我的第一件事不是课程，不是建议，不是教员的合同，也不是学生的空间。事实上，甚至不是饮酒的政策。而是反复问我：为什么我们中的很多人都跑到华尔街去了？为什么哈佛有如此多的人从事金融，咨询和银行。这儿有很多方式思考和解答这个问题。有一个威利.萨顿方式。你可能知道当他被问到为什么偷银行时，他回答的是“因为那儿有钱。” Claudia Goldin 和Larry Katz教授，这两位是你们在经济学研究时可能会遇到的，他们根据70年代以来学生职业生 涯选择的研究而得出了相近的结论。他们发现尽管从事金融行业有较高的回报，但是很多学生仍然选择做其他事情。事实上，你们中的37个人可能当老师；一个人可能在阿根廷跳探戈为舞蹈治疗服务；一个人可能去肯尼亚的农业发展部；另一个在拿了数学荣誉学位后可能去研究诗歌；还有一个可能去USAF作为航天员接受培训；还有一个为解决乳腺癌而战斗。你们中的一些人将去法学院，医学院和研究生院。但是和Claudia Goldin 和Larry Katz教授研究一致的是，你们中有相当一部分人要选择金融和咨询。去年Crimson报道的这一数据是男生58%，女生43%。今年，尽管经济形势严峻，但是仍高达39%高的薪水，对你们中的很多人来说是个无法拒绝的诱惑，这将确保你们中的大多数在纽约能工作、生存以及和你的朋友享受生活，以及有趣工作的许诺——有很多方式来解释这种选择。对你们中的一些人来说，这仅仅是一年或两年的义务。而他人则认为他们一做就能做得很好。然而，你们却问我为什么你们要选择这条路。我发现自己感兴趣的不是回答你们这些问题，而是指出你们为什么要考虑这些。如果Claudia Goldin 和Larry Katz教授的研究是正确的，如果金融确实是一个理性的选择，为什么你们仍要向我提出这个问题？为什么这个理性的选择被你们认为不可理解，被认为是完全非理性的，被认为是被迫或必须的选择而不是自愿的选择？为什么这个问题困扰了你们中的很多人？我想你可能问我生命的意义，尽管你已经解构了你的问题——伴随着看得见的可衡量的高级职业选择前景而不是抽象的、难衡量的、尴尬的形而上学领域。生命的意义——字母S和M——一个陈词滥调很容易作为一个Monty Python电影或辛普森事件而不是作为一个关于敢承认怀有严肃关注的事件来处理。

但是现在让我们抛弃哈佛的基因，抛弃我们的冷静，抛弃我们的坚强，让我们试着去寻找这些问题答案的序曲。我认为你担心是因为你希望你的生活不是传统意义上的成功，而是充满了意义，而你不确定这两者是否能一起实现。你不确定在一个有威望的大公司拿着一份丰厚的薪水，并且有着光明的前景的状况能不能滋养你的灵魂。你为什么这样担心？部分是因为我们的错误。从此刻起我们已经告诉你，你来到这儿，你就将是一个负责将来的领袖，你是最好的也是最有前途的，是我们将来最能依靠的，你将改变世界。我们赋予你的不是小的期望。你已经做了显著的事情来实现这些期望：在课外活动中展示了你对服务的献身精神；在你持久的、精力充沛夺冠时表达的你对地球将来的关注，在参与今年的总统选举时你对美国政治的鼓舞。但是你们中的很多人正想知道这些公益活动适合职业选择吗？是否有必要在有利的工作和有意义的工作之间做出选择？如果是二选一，你该选哪一个？ 是否有办法二者都选。你在问我和你自己一些基本型问题，它是关于价值，关于试图融合潜在的竞争性物品、关于认识到你不可能有这些。你在此时此刻需要做出选择。而且只有一个选择——一个工作，一个职业，一个研究生项目—不能多选。每一个决定都意味着在得到的同时也要失去——在拥抱的同时也有放弃。对我来说，你的问题就是关于什么东西也不带的路上损失了什么。金融，华尔街，“征募”已经变成了进退两难的象征，代表了一些更宽泛、更深入的问题而不仅仅是职业道路。这些问题将以不同的方式出现，使你（毕业于医学院选择了特别的专业）面对家庭的实践或皮肤病学，当你决定是否选择用你的法律专业为你的公司工作或作为公共保护者，当你决定是否在你拥有TFA两年后呆下来教书时。你担心是因为你想既拥有有意义的生活，又拥有成功的生活；你知道你被教育来做出 不同决定不仅仅是为你自己，为你自己的舒适和满足，也为了你周围的世界。现在你必须指出做出这个可能性的方式。我认为你担心的第二个原因是你想快乐。你们已经涌进了积极心理学的课程中—心战1504—和快乐的科学。但是我们如何能发现快乐呢？我能提供一个令人鼓舞的答案：变老。调查的资料显示——我的年龄——报道显示他们比年轻人更快乐。但是或许你根本不想等待。当我听到你在我面前谈论选择时，我听到你勾画了你关于成功和快乐关系的担忧——或许，更精确的说，如何定义成功以致它能产生和拥有真实的快乐，不仅仅是为了钱和尊严。你担心，报酬最高的选择可能不是最有意义的和最满意的。但是你不知道作为艺术家、演员、公益服务者或高校教师是否能存活？在你完成了多年的研究生学习和博士论文写作后，你是否发现作为一个英语教师的工作。答案是：你不尝试的话你是永远不知道的。但是你不去尝试你所爱——无论是绘画、生物还是金融；如果你不去追求你认为最有意义的事情，你将遗憾。生命是很长的。由时间实行B计划，但是不要从B计划开始。我认为这个是作为职业选择的停车位理论，我已经在几十年中和学生分享了这个理论。不要把车停在离你目的地还有20条街区那么遥远的地方，因为你认为你将不会发现空间。去你想去的地方，然后返回你不得不到的地方。你很可能喜欢投资银行、金融或咨询。这对你来说很可能是正确的。或者，你可能像我在苏格兰教堂吃午饭时遇到的刚从西海岸的一家有名的咨询公司面试回来的大四学生。“我为什么要做这个？”她问。“我讨厌飞行，我讨厌宾馆，我不喜欢这个工作”寻找一个你爱的工作。如果你花费超过你醒着时一半的时间去做你不喜欢的事情，你是很难快乐的。但是最后最重要的事情是你们问的这个问题——不是为我，而是为了你们。

你正选择道路，与此同时你也在挑战你的选择。你知道你想要的生活，但是不确定你选择的路是否能把你带到那儿。这就是最好的消息。我希望从某种程度上来说，它也是我们的错误。关注你自己的生活，思索一下，考虑你如何能过好它，扪心自问一下如何能做好它。或许文科教育赋予你 能做一些有价值的事情。文科教育要求你活在自我意识中。它使你求索和定义你所做事情的内在含义。它使你能进行自我剖析和批评，一个人如果能以这种方式生存 他就能做到收放自如。文学科目是自由的。他们赋予了你实践、发现意义和做出选择的可能性。拥有一个有意义的、快乐的生活的最有效方式就是努力去争取它。不要犹豫，准备好改变路线吧。记住那些我们要求你的不切实际的期望，甚至认识到他们是不可能的，记住当他们作为北极星引导你朝你自己的世界前进时是多么的重要。你生活的意义是你自己创造的。我迫不及待的想看到你们将如何绽放。到时候一定要回来告诉我们，让我们知道你活得是多么的精彩！

第二篇：哈佛校长给本科毕业生的毕业演讲

哈佛校长给本科毕业生的毕业演讲

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：2008年哈佛校长给本科毕业生的毕业演讲

2008年哈佛校长给本科毕业生的毕业演讲

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.

第四篇：哈佛校长给2008届本科毕业生的演讲

哈佛校长给2008届本科毕业生的演讲

24EN编者按:哈佛校长在给2008届本科毕业生的毕业演讲中提到，不管是画画、生物还是金融，如果你都不试着去做你喜欢做的事，如果你不去追求你认为最有意义的东西，总有一天你会后悔的。

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.参考译文

哈佛校长给2008届本科毕业生的毕业演讲

按照这所古老大学的奇怪的传统，我应该是站在这儿，告诉你们那些永恒的智慧。我就站在这个讲坛上，穿得像个清教徒牧师一样——这个打扮也许已经吓到了我那些高贵的先人们，让他们以为是巫婆现身（校长是女的，译者注）。这会让英克利斯（Increase）和考特恩（Cotton）父子俩（他们反对清教，译者注）忍不住想审判我的。但是，我还是要站在这儿，跟你们聊聊。

你们已经上了四年的大学了，我当校长还不到一年；你们认识三任校长，我只认识大四一个班的学生。那么，经验是什么？也许你们应该搞清楚。也许我们可以互换一下角色，我可能就会以哈佛法学院惯有的风格，在接下来的一个小时里自说自话。

从这一点上说，我们似乎都做到了——不管程度多少。但我最近才知道，从5月22日开始你们就没有晚饭吃了。虽然我们会把你们比作已经从哈佛断奶的孩子们，但我从没想到会这么彻底。

再让我们来说说那个“自说自话”吧。让我们把这个演讲看作是一个答疑式的毕业生服务，你们来提问题。“浮士德校长，生活的意义是什么？我们为什么要在哈佛读四年？校长，四十年前你从学校毕业的时候，肯定学到不少东西吧？”（四十年了。我可以大声地说出我当时生活的每个细节，和我获得布林莫尔学位的年份——现在大家都知道这个。但请注意，我在班里还算岁数小的。）

其实，这个答疑环节你们早就从我这儿预定了。你们问的问题也大概就是这类的。我也一直在想该怎么回答，还在想：你们为什么为这么问。

听我的回答。2007年冬天，助理就告诉我要有这么一个演讲。当我在Kirkland听中午饭的时候，在Leverett吃晚饭的时候，当我在我上班时和同学们见面的时候，甚至当我在国外碰见我们刚毕业的学生的时候，同学们都会问我一些问题。你们问我的第一个问题，不是问课程计划，不是提建议，也不是问老师的联系方式或者学生的空间问题。实际上，也不是酒精限制政策。你们不停地问我的问题是：“为什么我们的学生很多都去了华尔街？为什么我们哈佛的学生中，有那么多人到金融、咨询和电子银行领域去？”

这个问题可以从好几个方面来回答，我要用的是威利萨顿（一个美国银行大盗，译者注）的回答。你们可能知道，当他被问到为什么要抢银行时，他说“因为那儿有钱”。我想，你们在上经济学课的时候，都见过克劳迪亚〃戈丁和拉里〃凯兹两位教授，他们根据七十年代以来他们所教学生的职业选择，提出了不同的看法。他们发现，虽然金融行业在金钱方面有很高回报，但还是有学生选择了其它的工作。实际上，你们中有37个人选择做教师，有一个会跳探戈的人要去阿根廷的舞蹈诊疗所上班，另一个拿了数学荣誉学位的人要去学诗歌，有一个要在美国空军受训作一名飞行员，还有一个要去作一名治疗乳房癌症的医生。你们中有很多人会去学法学、学医学、读研究生。但是，根据戈丁和凯兹的记录，更多的人去了金融和咨询行业。Crimson对去年的毕业生作了调查，参加工作的人中，58%的男生和43％的女生去了这两个行业。虽然今年的经济不景气，这个数字还是到了39%。

高薪、不可抗拒的招聘的冲击、到纽约和你的朋友一起工作的保证、承诺工作很有趣——这样的选择可以有很多种理由。对于你们中的一些人，也许只会在其中做一到两年。其他人也都相信这是他们可以做到最好的一份工作。但，还是有人会问：为什么要这样选择。

其实，比起回答你们的问题来，我更喜欢思考你们为什么会问。戈丁和凯兹教授的研究是不是正确的；到金融行业是不是就是“理性的选择”；你们为什么会不停地问我这个问题？为什么这个看似理性的选择，却会让你们许多人无法理解、觉得不尽理性，甚至有的会觉得是被迫作出的必要的选择？为什么这个问题会困扰这么多人呢？

我认为，你们问我生活的意义的时候，是带着指向性的——你们把它看成是高级职业选择中可见、可量度的现象，而不是一种抽象而深不可测的、形而上学的尴尬境地。所谓“生活的意义”已经被说滥了——它就像是蒙提〃派森（MontyPython）电影里可笑的标题，或者说是《辛普森一家》里的那些鸡零狗碎的话题一样，已经没有任何严肃的涵义了。

让我们暂时扔掉哈佛人精明的处世能力、沉着和不可战胜的虚伪，试着来寻找一下你们问题的答案吧。

我想，你们之所以会焦虑，是因为你们不想只是做到一般意义上的成功，而且还想过得有意义。但你们又不知道这两个目标如何才能同时达到，你们不知道在一个大名鼎鼎的公司中有一份丰厚的起薪，并且前途很有保障，是不是就可以让你们自己满足。

你们为什么要焦虑？说起来，我们学校这方面也有错。从你们进来的时候，我们就告诉你们，到这里，你们会成为对未来负责的精英，你们是最棒的、最聪明的，我们都要依靠你们，因为你们会改变这个世界。这些话，让你们个个都胸怀大志。你们会去做各种不平常的事情：在课外活动中，你们处处体现着服务的热情；你们大力倡导可持续发展，因为你们关注地球的未来；在今年的总统竞选中，你们也表现出了对美国政治改革的热衷。

但现在，你们中的许多人迷惘了，不知道这些在做职业选择时都有什么用。如果在有偿的工作和有意义的工作之间做个选择，你们会怎么办？这二者可以兼顾吗？

你们都在不停地问我一些最基本的问题：关于价值、试图调和那些潜在竞争的东西、对鱼与熊掌不可兼得的认识，等等。现在的你们，到了要作出选择的转换阶段。作出一个选择——或工作、或读研——都意味着失去了选择其他选项的机会。每次决定都会有舍有得——放弃一个可能的同时，你也赢得了其他可能。对于我来说，你们的问题差不多就等于是站在十字路口时的迷茫。

金融业、华尔街、“招聘”就是这个困境的标志，它带来了比职业选择更广更深的一系列问题。不管你是从医学院毕业当了全科医生或者皮肤科医生，从法学院毕业进了一家公司或者作了一名公设辩护律师，还是结束了两年的TeachforAmerica项目，在想要不要继续教书，这些问题总会在某种程度上困扰你们。你们之所以焦虑，是因为你们既想活得有意义，又想活得成功；你们知道你们所受的教育，让你们不只是为自己的舒适和满足而活，而且还要为你们周围的人而活。现在，到了你们想办法实现这个目标的时候了。

我想，还有一个原因使你们焦虑——这个原因和第一个原因相关，但又有所不同。你们想过得幸福。你们一拥而上地去选修“成功哲学”和“幸福的科学”，想从中找到秘诀。但我们怎么样才能幸福呢？我可以提供一个不错的答案：长大。调查数据说明，越老的人——比如我这个岁数的人——比年轻的人感到更幸福。但可能你们都不愿意等。

当我听着你们说你们面前有如何的选择时，可以听出来，你们在为搞不明白成功和幸福的关系而烦恼——或者更确切地说，什么样的成功，不仅能带来金钱和名望，还能让人真正地幸福。你们担心工资最高的工作，不一定是最有意义、最令人满足的工作。但你们想过没，艺术家、演员、公务员或者高中老师都是怎么过的？你们有没有思考一下，在媒体圈里该怎么生存？你们是否曾试想过，在经过不知道多少年的研究生学习、写了不知道多少篇论文之后，你们能否找到一个英语教授的工作？

所以，答案就是：只有试过了才知道。但是不管是画画、生物还是金融，如果你都不试着去做你喜欢做的事，如果你不去追求你认为最有意义的东西，总有一天你会后悔的。生活的路还很长，总有机会尝试别的选择，但不要一开始就想着这个。

我把这个叫作职业选择中的停车位理论，几十年来我一直在和同学们说这些。不要因为你觉得会没有停车位，就把车停在离目的地20个街区远的地方。先到你想去的地方，然后再到你应该去的地方。

你可能喜欢投资银行、喜欢金融、喜欢咨询，它们可能是最适合你的。也许你和我在Kirkland碰到的一个大四学生一样，她刚从西海岸一家很有名的咨询公司面试回来，她问：“我为什么要做这行？我讨厌坐飞机，我不喜欢住酒店，我不会喜欢这个工作的。”那就找个你喜欢的工作吧。要是你醒着的时间里，都在做你不喜欢的事情，你也不会感到幸福的。

但是，最最最最重要的是，你们要问出这个问题——问我或者问你们自己。你们选择了一条路，也就选择了一份挑战。你知道自己想要什么样的生活，只是不知道该怎样到达那儿。这是好事。我觉得，从某种程度上说，这也是我们的错。关注你的生活，思考怎样才能把它过好、怎样才能把事情做对：这些也许是博雅教育给你最宝贵的东西。通识教育让你自觉地生活，让你在你所作的一切中寻找、定义价值。它也让你成为一个自我的分析家和批评家，让你从最高水平上掌握你生活的展示方式。从这个意义上讲，博雅教育让你自由。它们赋予你行动、发现价值和作出选择的能力。不要静止不动，要随时准备接受改变。牢记那些我们告诉你们的远大理想，就算你觉得它们永远不可能实现，也要记住：它们可以指引你们，让你们到达那个对自己和世界都有意义的彼岸。你们的未来在自己手中。

我都迫不及待地想知道你们会做出什么样的成就了。无论如何，常回家看看，和我们分享你的幸福生活。

摘自《经典文章网》

第五篇：校长寄语届本科毕业生

校长寄语届本科毕业生

在日复一日的学习、工作或生活中，要用到寄语的地方还是很多的，寄语是人们所传的话语，有时也指自己的期望或是祝福的话语。那么要怎样才能写得出好的寄语呢？以下是小编精心整理的校长寄语届本科毕业生，仅供参考，大家一起来看看吧。

亲爱的同学们、各位老师、各位学生家长、各位校友、各位来宾：

大家好！

今天，对中国·对外经济贸易大学全体xxxx级全日制本科毕业生同学们来说，又是一个终生难忘、永恒纪念的日子——你们经过四年的勤奋学习，终于即将从贸大毕业了。毕业了，这句沉甸甸的话，对每一位毕业生来说，意味着人生的收获和喜悦，意味个人奋斗和汗水的价值实现，意味着人生未来的新的发展之路的开始，我向全体毕业生致以最热烈的祝贺和最衷心的祝福！同时，借此机会对这些年来关心、指导、帮助过你们的父母、师长、同学和亲人，致以崇高的敬意和衷心的感谢！

今年，我校xxxx届毕业本科生xxxx人。截止6月20日，本科毕业生就业落实率为97.66%，国内外继续深造人数创历史新高，取得了骄人成绩。本科生读研和出国人数达到917人，占本科生毕业生总人数的45.57%。其中信息学院的本科生和梦辰考取美国麻省理工学院斯隆商学院的金融硕士专业，是我校历史上首位被该专业录取的应届毕业生。

法学院的本科生张琦以总分第一的好成绩被北京大学法学院国际法专业录取。132名毕业生到西部省市工作，9名毕业生选择到北京市密云县、怀柔区、大兴区担任大学生村官，服务北京基层。我校超八成毕业生实现高质量就业，主要集中在外贸相关的机关单位和大型国有企业、金融系统和外资企业。

这是我校人才培养质量的重要标志，也是贸大学子竞争力的体现，贸大毕业生，你们是最棒的！

淡淡南风起，又闻栀子香，一年一度毕业季，充满了对四年大学生活兴奋的回忆，充满了对贸大校园离别的伤感，充满了对未来生活的憧憬和期望，充满了依依惜别的师生情和同学情。同学们，你们是学校发展的见证者，更是推动学校改革和发展的参与者。你们与学校一同走过的这四年，正是学校各项事业快速发展、欣欣向荣、蒸蒸日上的时期。

你们见证了母校的巨大进步，学科建设的飞速发展，科学研究的巨大成就，两部共建工作的推进，研究生院的成立，国际化办学特色的凸显，人才培养质量的提升，还有学校的硬件条件不断改善和进步，一切的一切，都在你们的见证下，学校在变化，在进步，在发展。

你们每个人也在学校的巨变下，成长和成才。还记得国庆60年的游行队伍参与吗，还记得六十年校庆时的兴奋和激动吗？还记得国际文化节吗？还记得惠园点灯吗？还想起军训的汗水和收获吗？还记得当志愿者的辛苦和自豪吗？还记得暑期社会实践吗？还记得n个第一次的人生经历？在贸大的校园里，你们展示了丰富的大学生活，你们当初怀着对大学生活的美好憧憬和对文化知识的渴求，无怨无悔的选择了对外经贸大学，度过了你们人生生涯中，非常重要的值得永远记忆的一段时光。

在这里，你们经历了成功与失败，学会了思考和责任，培育了气质和精神。在这里，你们勤奋学习，努力攀登，挑战自我，追求卓越；在这里，你们在思想的碰撞和交流中，丰富了知识，拓宽了视野，增长了才干。当然，也有人在这里挂过科，翘过课，犯过错；贸大学生的浪漫也很有名的，在淘宝网上，今年贸大毕业学生列为全国高校毕业生送鲜花最多的高校，我想，这就是你们丰富多彩的大学生活一部分，也铸就了你们每一个人的人生经历。

同学们，毕业不是结束，而意味着新的开始。你们即将奔赴祖国各地，有的还要远涉重洋。此刻，充盈在我心间的，既有浓浓的师生之谊、依依惜别之情，也有培育祖国英才的骄傲与自豪。无论走到哪里，也无论从事何种职业，你们都是贸大最优秀的一批学生。因为从你们明亮的眼睛中，我读出你们的美丽和睿智，你们以一流的毕业成绩跨入社会就是一个有力的证明。

但是，在你们即将走上社会的时候，对于90后的大学生，我想送你们几句话，就是希望你们永远都能“从容淡定，一身正气；挺起脊梁，勇于担当”，作为校长和师长，这是我对你们的毕业赠言，也是对你们踏入社会的期望。

我想这样的临别赠言是出于今年年初的一个事件。在苏丹发生的劫持人质的事件中，就有一位我校刚刚毕业的大学生，我校阿拉伯语专业的孙世伟同学。他在被劫持期间，面对绑架者的枪口和复杂的环境，面对随时都可能发生的死亡威胁，他从容淡定，敢于担当，坦然，机智、巧妙处理，化险为夷，使全部被绑架者，安全回到了祖国。

在网络上一夜走红，被誉为我们的“淡定哥”。作为贸大人，我倍感欣慰，我们能以培养这样的优秀的学生，而感到骄傲和自豪。孙世伟同学只是我校培养学生中的普通一员，我希望今天的毕业生都能有像他一样品质和能力，在复杂艰苦的条件下，能感于但当，有一种强烈的社会责任，勇于成为社会的脊梁。

同学们，社会是一个复杂的系统，当你们踏上社会时，就要面对工作的压力和人际关系的挑战，我们不要期望一切，都一番风顺，万事如意，因为生活中波折，随时都会发生，危难，可能在以任何意想不到的'方式发生。危难当头、紧要关口，需要有人挺身而出，勇于担当。个人的潜能往往在勇于担当的复杂社会环境中，得到充分发挥。遇事推诿、裹足不前，在逃避担当的同时，往往也错过了成就事业的机会。

担当与成功如影相随，担当指引人生路径，担当照亮人生前程。追求有所建树，必须坚持有所担当，这是实现人生价值的重要法则。那么，这一责任到底包含哪些内容呢？首先要求你们常怀为国为民之心，这是做人的基本的国格和气节。今天的时代在某种程度上是一个彰显个性、关注生命、追求生活质量的年代，是一个思想多样、文化多元、价值多样的时代。在这样时代发展与变迁中，并不意味着个人与社会关系被解构，不意味自我利益与国家利益的价值排序被颠倒，也不意味着社会的主导价值取向发生了改变。

修身立德，为国为民，依然是难能可贵的精神品质。因为修身、齐家、治国向来是辨证统一的。所以，国家的前途、祖国的命运、人民的幸福安康就与你们脑中的意识、心中的知识、肩上的责任、手中的工作息息相关。担当，是社会、单位、家庭责任的体现。我们每个人都需要关爱生命、关爱家人、关爱社会弱势群体，在担当中表现出强烈的社会责任感，实现人生的价值。

古人说得好，大事、难事看担当，顺境、逆境看襟怀。担当检验理想，考验胸怀，有怎样的理想有怎样的胸怀，就有怎样的担当。没有伟大的理想与胸怀，就担当不了伟业大事。“心底无私天地宽”，这是敢于担当的底气所在。

凡勇于担当者，其境界必定是为公、为民、为事业无私奉献。如果一事当前，先替自己打算，就不可能勇于担当。只有无私奉献，才会对人民群众满怀真情，才会在急难险重任务前挺身而出、在矛盾纠纷前迎难而上，才会不断开拓进取、创造辉煌。

我还希望大家不断修炼自己的淡定品质。淡定是一种气质。淡定要有海纳百川、有容乃大的胸怀，要有壁立千仞、无欲则刚的度量，要有沉着冷静、泰然自若的应变能力。

淡定是一种态度：遇事沉稳中又积极果断，老练里却又稳重有佳，胜不骄，败不馁。

淡定是一种力量：气定神宁，如水滴石穿，坚持不懈。

从容淡定，勇于担当；是人的精、气、神。是事业心、责任感和德行修养的试金石，更是衡量自身能力强弱、素质高低的标准尺。我想，在大家毕业送行之时，以“淡定从容，敢于担当”八个字为大家送行，给大家加油！

全体毕业的同学们，你们生活在改革开放、民族复兴的伟大进程中的新一代，你们具有了活跃的创新思维、开阔的国际化视野，怀有志存高远的创业激情、建伟功立大业的雄心，努力去实现自己的人生理想和抱负吧。

你们在对外经贸大学，学到了本领，现在是奉献社会的时候了，这不仅是为了实现自己的人生价值，更重要的是为了造福于社会。我们必须知道：人在社会，不能关顾自己，还有天下更多的人，需要我们去关爱，去奉献，爱才是社会进步的永恒的动力。千里之行，始于足下。母校衷心地希望你们在新的岗位上，多出成绩，为祖国和人民，为母校和你的家人，做出自己最大的贡献！

打点行装，整理情绪，离别之心，落满校园。今天，我们在这里互道别离，今天，也留下了对母校的永恒记忆。温馨怡人的惠园，舍不得你们，你们努力拼搏和刻苦奋斗的每一滴汗水，都已经融入贸大土地，母校不会忘记。

亲爱的毕业生同学们，你们就要离开美丽的惠园了，游历五洲，建树八方。山水隔不断思念，时空抹不掉记忆。在未来漫漫人生征途中，你们不会孤独，不论你们身在何处，贸大的荣誉和骄傲，贸大的关怀与期望，将永远伴随着你们。

不论你们对母校怀有曾经的不满意，但它永远都是我们共同热爱的母校，母校是我们每一位毕业生终身的骄傲和无形资产。今日，我们以贸大为荣，相信明天，贸大一定将以您们为荣！无论您们走到哪里，母校，永远以关注的目光，注视着您们的成长，关心着你们的成才。希望您们不论在何时、何地，您们都能常回母校看看。

最后，我衷心地期望每一位毕业生都永远地记住：贸大，是你们永远的精神家园！UIBE，永远在你们的心中！

祝全体毕业生同学鹏程万里，前程似锦！

谢谢大家！