逍遥右脑 2016-01-27 14:26
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
我在Reed大学读了六个月之后就退学了,但是在十八个月当前——我真正的作出退学决定之前,我还常常去学校。我为什么要退学呢?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
故事从我出生的时候讲起。我的亲生母亲是一个年青的,没有结婚的大学毕业生。她决定让别人收养我, 她非常想让我被大学毕业生收养。所以在我出身的时候，她已经做好了所有的筹备工作，能使得我被一个律师和他的妻子所收养。但是她没有料到,当我诞生之后, 律师夫妇忽然决定他们想要一个女孩。所以我的生育父母(他们还在我亲生父母的察看名单上)突然在深夜接到了一个电话:“咱们现在这儿有一个不警惕生出来的男婴,你们想要他吗?”他们答复道:“当然!”但是我亲生母亲随后发现，我的养母素来没有上过大学,我的父亲甚至从没有读过高中。她谢绝签这个收养合同。只是在几个月以后,我的父母许可她必定要让我上大学,那个时候她才批准。
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
在十七岁那年,我真的上了大学。但是我很笨拙的抉择了一个简直和你们斯坦福大学一样贵的学校, 我父母还处于蓝领阶层，他们多少乎把所有积蓄都花在了我的膏火上面。在六个月后, 我已经看不到其中的价值所在。我不知道我想要在性命中做什么,我也不晓得大学能辅助我找到怎样的谜底。然而在这里，我几乎花光了我父母这一辈子的所有积蓄。所以我决定要退学,我感到这是个准确的决定。不能否定,我当时确切十分的惧怕, 但是当初回首看看,那确实是我这毕生中最棒的一个决定。在我做出退学决定的那一刻, 我终于能够不用去读那些令我提不起涓滴兴致的课程了。而后我还可以去修那些看起来有点意思的课程。
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
但是这并不是那么罗曼蒂克。我失去了我的宿舍,所以我只能在友人房间的地板上面睡觉,我去捡5美分的可乐瓶子，仅仅为了填饱肚子, 在礼拜天的晚上,我须要走七英里的行程，?┕?飧龀鞘械?are Krishna寺庙(注：位于纽约Brooklyn下城),只是为了能吃上饭——这个星期独一一顿好一点的饭。但是我爱好这样。我随着我的直觉和好奇心走, 碰到的良多货色,尔后被证实是价值连城。让我给你们举一个例子吧：
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
Reed大学在那时供给兴许是全美最好的美术字课程。在这个大学里面的每个海报, 每个抽屉的标签上面全都是英俊的美术字。由于我退学了, 不受到正规的练习, 所以我决议去加入这个课程，去学学怎么写出美丽的美术字。我学到了san serif 跟serif字体, 我学会了怎么样在不同的字母组合之中转变空格的长度, 还有怎么样才干作出最棒的印刷式样。那是一种迷信永远不能捕获到的、漂亮的、实在的艺术精妙, 我发明那切实是太美好了。