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1、普林斯顿的毕业发言有感 Thank you. President Tilghman. Trustees and Friends. Parents of the Class of 2021. Above all, Members of the Princeton Class of 2021. 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
2、Tilghman主席，各位校董和伴侣们，2021班级的家长们，还有最关键的，普林斯顿2021班级的同学们。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, vi
3、vidly, 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 Id gone and given them four of the best years of my life and this is how they thanked me for it. By kicking me out. 30年前，我坐在你所坐的地方。我肯定也听过某位年长的人共享他的人生经受。但我已经
4、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。他们告知我你应当很感动，或者感到轻松，或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 in
5、sanity. I was almost certainly less prepared for 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 grad
6、uated 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 profes
7、sor, an archaeologist named William Childs. The thesis tried to explain how the Italian sculptor Donatello used Greek and Roman sculpture which is actually totally beside the point, but Ive always wanted to tell someone. God knows what Professor Childs actually thought of it, but he helped me to bec
8、ome engrossed. More than engrossed: obsessed. When I handed it in I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life: to write senior theses. Or, to put it differently: to write books. 在那时我只确信一件事：我对外面的世界没有任何经济价值。我修的是艺术史，那是我的起点。即使在当时这也被视为疯子的行为。我为市场做的预备肯定差过几乎在座的每一个人。而现在我竟摇身一变成了富人和名人。对吧，算是吧。我将简短的描述我是如何
9、飞黄腾达的。我盼望你们在走出校门追寻自己的事业前能够明白，事业进展本身是多么神奇。我从普林斯顿毕业的时候从来没有在任何地方任何时间发表任何东西。我没有为the Prince刊物或任何人写过任何文章。然而在普林斯顿高校，作为艺术史系的同学，我第一次有了在文学界施展理想的冲动。这是在我写毕业论文的时候发生的。我的导师是个超有天分的教授，William Childs，一位考古学家。我毕业论文的题目是讨论意大利雕塑家Donatello如何借鉴了希腊和罗马雕塑其实这跟今日的题目半毛钱关系都没有，只是我始终喜爱让别人知道。神知道Childs教授是怎么看待这个题目的，但他却关心我全心投入。不只是全心投入，根
10、本就是痴迷。当我交上论文的那刻我知道了我这一生想要从事的事业：写高级论文，或者说，写书。 Then I went to my thesis defense. It was just a few yards from here, in McCormick Hall. I listened and waited for Professor Childs to say how well written my thesis was. He didnt. And so after about 45 minutes I finally said, So. What did you think of the
11、 writing Put it this way he said. Never try to make a living at it. And I didnt not really. I did what everyone does who has no idea what to do with themselves: I went to graduate school. I wrote at nights, without much effect, mainly because I hadnt the first clue what I should write about. One nig
12、ht I was invited to a dinner, where I sat next to the wife of a big shot at a giant Wall Street investment bank, called Salomon Brothers. She more or less forced her husband to give me a job. I knew next to nothing about Salomon Brothers. But Salomon Brothers happened to be where Wall Street was bei
13、ng reinventedinto the place we have all come to know and love. When I got there I was assigned, almost arbitrarily, to the very best job in which to observe the growing madness: they turned me into the house expert on derivatives. A year and a half later Salomon Brothers was handing me a check for h
14、undreds of thousands of dollars to give advice about derivatives to professional investors. 然后我去了论文答辩。地方离这不远，就在McCormick厅。我等待着盼望听到Childs教授告知我我的论文写得多么好。但他没有。于是等了45分钟后，我最终问，“那你怎么评价我的写作呢？”“这么说吧，”他说。 “千万不要靠这个谋生。”所以我放弃了其实不是。我做了全部人不知道该做什么时做的那件事：去读讨论生。我在晚上写作，没有造成什么影响，主要是由于我不知道该写哪些东西。一天晚上，我被邀请参与一个晚宴，我身旁的女士是
15、一个华尔街投资银行的大佬的太太，那家银行叫做所罗门兄弟公司。她基本上迫使她的丈夫给了我一份工作。我那时对所罗门兄弟公司根本一无所知。但所罗门兄弟公司恰好处在华尔街转型的前线转成那个如今我们都知道并爱的样子。当我到了那家公司，我被几乎随机的安排到了一份最好的工作，使我有机会观看这滋长中的疯狂：他们把我变成一个衍生产品的内部专家。一年半以后，所罗门兄弟开给我数十万美元的支票让我给专业投资者供应有关衍生产品的询问。 Now I had something to write about: Salomon Brothers. Wall Street had become so unhinged that
16、 it was paying recent Princeton graduates who knew nothing about money small fortunes to pretend to be experts about money. Id stumbled into my next senior thesis. I called up my father. I told him I was going to quit this job that now promised me millions of dollars to write a book for an advance of 40 grand. There was a long pause on the other end of the line. You might just want to think about that, he s
