【正文】 e that39。你做那些事能給你帶來(lái)好處，讓你的父母感到驕傲，令你的老師感到高興，也讓朋友們羨慕。先進(jìn)入斯坦福，然后是約翰霍普金斯醫(yī)學(xué)院，再進(jìn)入舊金山大學(xué)做實(shí)習(xí)醫(yī)生等。十歲時(shí)就夢(mèng)想成為醫(yī)生，即使你根本不知道醫(yī)生意味著什么。不是它是什么，不在于它是否“大畫面”（big picture）而是它對(duì)你意味著什么。讓我通過告訴你們一個(gè)同伴的故事來(lái)解釋我的意思吧，即她沒有遭遇的情況。她說在考試中得了優(yōu)秀的有些學(xué)生會(huì)說“我得優(yōu)秀是因?yàn)樵囶}很簡(jiǎn)單。我指出，真正的自尊意味著最初根本就不在乎成績(jī)是否優(yōu)秀。我告訴她這不是創(chuàng)新，這只是成功（that39。不是走現(xiàn)成的道路而是創(chuàng)造一條屬于自己的道路。它意味著不隨波逐流（going with the flow），不是下一步要“進(jìn)入”什么名牌大學(xué)或研究生院。當(dāng)今走進(jìn)星巴克咖啡館，服務(wù)員可能讓你在牛奶咖啡（latte）、加糖咖啡（macchiato）、特制咖啡（espresso）等幾樣?xùn)|西之間做出選擇。幾年前我寫過一篇涉及同類問題的文章。“為美國(guó)而教”當(dāng)然是好東西，但引用這個(gè)項(xiàng)目來(lái)反駁我的觀點(diǎn)恰恰是不得要領(lǐng)，實(shí)際上正好證明了我想說的東西。sum233。該項(xiàng)目需要能力和勤奮，但不需要一丁點(diǎn)兒的道德想象力。不管別人說什么，有按自己的價(jià)值觀行動(dòng)的勇氣，不會(huì)因?yàn)閯e人不喜歡而試圖改變自己的想法?？梢坏┯腥嗽姜z，其他人都會(huì)跟著跑出去?！保ā癢hen the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from talk to me of nationality, language, shall try to fly by those nets.”）今天，我們面臨的是其他的網(wǎng)。許多學(xué)生在畢業(yè)前夕的未來(lái)探索中跟我說，他們感受到來(lái)自同伴那里的壓力（the pressure they felt from their peers），需要為創(chuàng)造性的生活或思想生活辯護(hù)（to justify a creative or intellectual life）。re crazy: crazy to forsake the sure thing, crazy to think it could work, crazy to imagine that you even have a right to ：“羊霸王”比更外界的壓力更厲害。如果你自我教育的話，更糟糕。那樣的話，就一點(diǎn)兒也不自私了。s not selfish at all.）你看到這些觀點(diǎn)是多么荒謬了嗎？這就是罩在你們身上的網(wǎng)，就是我說的需要勇氣的意思。讓我說得更明白一些。我請(qǐng)求你們做的，是根據(jù)正確的理由做出你的選擇。t play it safe.）去拒否（RESIST）我們社會(huì)給予了過高獎(jiǎng)賞的那些卑怯的價(jià)值觀的誘惑：舒服、方便、安全、可預(yù)測(cè)的、可控制的?？赡鞘悄愕腻e(cuò)誤，不是別人的。你們更愿意規(guī)避混亂、動(dòng)蕩和強(qiáng)烈的感情（avoid messy and turbulent and powerful feelings），但我想說，不要回避挑戰(zhàn)自我（the challenging parts of yourself），不要否認(rèn)欲望和好奇心（the desires and curiosities）、懷疑和不滿（the doubts and dissatisfactions）、快樂和陰郁（the joy and the darkness），它們可能改變你預(yù)設(shè)的人生軌跡。這意味著，你自身的深廣也將遠(yuǎn)超你現(xiàn)在的想象。m “do” I don39。re in should start by talking about how you did, in fact, get got here by getting very good at a certain set of parents pushed you to excel from the time you were very sent you to good schools, where the encouragement of your teachers and the example of your peers helped push you even natural aptitudes were nurtured so that, in addition to excelling in all your subjects, you developed a number of specific interests that you cultivated with particular did extracurricular activities, went to afterschool programs, took private spent summers doing advanced courses at a local college or attending skillspecific camps and worked hard, you paid attention, and you tried your very so you got very good at math, or piano, or lacrosse, or, indeed, several things at there39。re learning the piano, you should also be working on the is the nature of specialization, after all, to be , the problem with specialization is that it narrows your attention to the point where all you know about and all you want to know about, and, indeed, all you can know about, is your problem with specialization is that it makes you into a cuts you off, not only from everything else in the world, but also from everything else in of course, as college freshmen, your specialization is only just the journey toward the success that you all hope to achieve, you have pleted, by getting into Stanford, only the first of many more years of college, three or four or five years of law school or medical school or a , then residencies or postdocs or years as a junior short, an evernarrowing funnel of go from being a politicalscience major to being a lawyer to being a corporate attorney to being a corporate attorney focusing on taxation issues in the consumerproducts go from being a biochemistry major to being a doctor to being a cardiologist to being a cardiac surgeon who performs heartvalve , there39。s a smart guy, but all he talks about is money and livers.” And there39。s what smart kids go to medical school because it39?！癵etting into” is , then Johns Hopkins medical school, then a residency at the University of San Francisco, and so Michigan Law School, or Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey, or take it one step at a time, and the next step always seems to be maybe you did always want to be a cardiac dreamed about it from the time you were 10 years old, even though you had no idea what it really meant, and you stayed on course for the entire time you were in refused to be enticed from your path by that great experience you had in AP history, or that trip you took to Costa Rica the summer after your junior year in college, or that terrific feeling you got taking care of kids when you did your rotation in pediatrics during your fourth year in medical either way, either because you went with the flow or because you set your course very early, you wake up one day, maybe 20 years later, and you wonder what happened: how you got there, what it all what it means in the “big picture,” whatever that is, but what it means to you39。s called having a midlife crisis, and it happens to people all the is an alternative, however, and it may be one that hasn39。s nothing wrong with thinking that you got an A because you39。s just successful, and successful according to a very narrow definition of innovation means using your imagination, exercising the capacity to envision new I39。s about inventing your own following a path, but making your own kind of imagination I39。re offered a choice among a latte and a macchiato and an espresso and a few other things, but you can also make another can turn around and walk you walk into college, you are offered a choice among law and medicine and investment banking and consulting and a few other things, but again, you can also do something else, something that no one has thought of me give you another wrote an essay a couple of years ago that touched on some of these same said, among other things, that kids at places like Yale or Stanford tend to play it safe and go for the conventional one of the most mon criticisms I got went like this: What about Teach for America? Lots of kids from elite colleges go and do TFA after they graduate, so therefore I was , TFA—I heard that over and over Teach for America is undoubtedly a very good to cite TFA in response to my argument is precisely to miss the point, and to miss it in a way that actually confirms what I39。s hard to get into, it39。t have to make it up yourself, you don39。