时尚双语:李开复致女儿的一封信(3)

Do not fall into the trap of dogma. There is no singlesimpleanswer to any question. Remr during your high school debateclass,I always asked you to take on the side that you don’t believein? Idid that for a reason -- things rarely “black and white”, andthereare always many ways to look at a problem. You will become abetterproblem solver if you recognized that. This is called“criticalthinking”, and it is the most important thinking skill youneed foryour life. This also means you need to become tolerantandsupportive of others. I will always remr when I went to myPh.D.advisor and proposed a new thesis topic. He said “I don’tagreewith you, but I’ll support you.” After the years, I havelearnedthis isn’t just flexibility, it is encouragement ofcriticalthinking, and an empowering style of leadership, and it hasbecomea part of me. I hope it will become a part of you too.

在大学里你要追随自己的激情和兴趣，选你感兴趣的课程，不要困扰于别人怎么说或怎么想。史蒂夫·乔布斯曾经说过，在大学里你的热情会创造出很多点，在你随后的生命中你会把这些点串联起来。在他著名的斯坦福毕业典礼演讲中，他举了一个很好的例子：他在大学里修了看似毫无用处的书法，而十年后，这成了苹果Macintosh里漂亮字库的基础，而因为Macintosh有这么好的字库，才带来了桌面出版和今天的办公软件（例如微软Office）。他对书法的探索就是一个点，而苹果Macintosh把多个点联结成了一条线。所以不要太担心将来你要做什么样的工作，也不要太急功近利。假如你喜欢日语或韩语，就去学吧，尽管你的爸爸曾说过那没什么用：）尽兴地选择你的点吧，要有信念有一天机缘来临时，你会找到自己的人生使命，画出一条美丽的曲线。

Follow your passion in college. Take courses you think youwillenjoy. Don’t be trapped in what others think or say. SteveJobssays when you are in college, your passion will create manydots,and later in your life you will connect them. In his greatspeechgiven at Stanford commencement , he gave the great examplewhere hetook calligraphy, and a decade later, it became the basisof thebeautiful Macintosh fonts, which later ignited desktoppublishing,and brought wonderful tools like Microsoft Word to ourlives. Hisexpedition into calligraphy was a dot, and the Macintoshbecame theconnecting line. So don’t worry too much about what jobyou willhave, and don’t be too utilitarian, and if you likeJapanese orKorean, go for it, even if your dad thinks “it’s notuseful.” ：）Enjoy picking your dots, and be assured one day you willfind yourcalling, and connect a beautiful curve through thedots.

在功课上要尽力，但不要给自己太多压力。你妈妈和我在成绩上对你没什么要求，只要你能顺利毕业并在这四年里学到了些东西，我们就会很高兴了。即便你毕业时没有获得优异的成绩，你的哥伦比亚学位也将带你走得很远。所以别给自己压力。在你高中生活的最后几个月，因为压力比较小，大学申请也结束了，你过得很开心，但是在最近的几个星期，你好像开始紧张起来。（你注意到你紧张时会咬指甲吗？）千万别担心，最重要的是你有在学习，你需要的唯一衡量是你的努力程度。成绩只不过是虚荣的人用以吹嘘和慵懒的人所恐惧的无聊数字而已，而你既不虚荣也不慵懒。