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But her advice to me at Yale graduation was "Follow your Bliss". I was hoping for something a little more specific, like plastics. What, plastic? You like plastic? All right. In retrospect, "follow your bliss" was pretty good advice. My mom didn't actually coin the phrase--actually it was a professor at Sarah Lawrence College named Joseph Campbell who did--and my mom had seen a taped interview on TV. It kind of shows you our relationship--she was giving advice she had gotten off of television. I'm thankful she wasn't watching Montel Williams or something, or Fox News. So I kid, because they have huge ratings. They kill me.
但是，從耶魯畢業(yè)時(shí)，母親給我的建議是“追隨你的幸福”。我本希望得到一些更具體的建議，比如信用卡。什么？信用卡？你喜歡信用卡？沒錯(cuò)。但是現(xiàn)在回想起來，“追隨你的幸福”確實(shí)是個(gè)很好的建議。事實(shí)上，這個(gè)短語并不是我母親原創(chuàng)的，而是圣勞倫斯學(xué)期一位名叫約瑟夫·坎貝爾的教授在一個(gè)電視訪談節(jié)目中談到的。你們從這件事多少可以看出我們的關(guān)系——她給我的建議都是從電視上學(xué)來的。我很慶幸她沒有看蒙特爾·威廉姆斯的脫口秀節(jié)目或福克斯新聞等收視率較高的節(jié)目，否則我將會(huì)被摧毀。開個(gè)玩笑。
The problem, of course, with "follow your bliss" (and I actually think that's pretty good advice), but the problem with "follow your bliss" is actually trying to figure out what your bliss is, and that's not an easy thing to do. Like many of you, I have a liberal art degree, which is to say, I have no actual skill. And I majored in political science. You're excited about it now, but believe me, it doesn't go very far. It means you can read a newspaper, but other than that, I'm not really sure what else. I also focused a lot of my studies on communism, which when the Berlin Wall fell, I was totally screwed. I know, it was a happy occasion for a lot of people, but on this campus, believe me, all of the Russian studies majors were very down in the dumps. The one thing I knew I liked was television and particularly television news. I watched a lot of it growing up so I figured okay, I've got a Yale degree, I'll go give that a shot, I'll apply for an entry-level job at ABC News, a gopher position. Like I'm totally qualified for this: answering phones, I'll go do whatever Peter Jennings wants. I could not get this job. It took six months; they stung me along; I did interviews, I could not get the job, which shows you the value of a Yale education.
事實(shí)上，追隨你的幸福是個(gè)很好的建議，但問題是你的幸福是什么，而弄清楚這一點(diǎn)并非易事。同你們大多數(shù)人一樣，我拿到了文科學(xué)位，這就意味著我沒有任何實(shí)際技能。我主修政治學(xué)。也許你們現(xiàn)在會(huì)很感興趣，但相信我，這種興趣是維持不了多久的，這意味著你可以讀報(bào)紙，但除此之外，我真的不敢確實(shí)自己還可以做什么。我還主要研究共產(chǎn)主義，但當(dāng)柏林墻被推倒時(shí)，我變得心煩意亂。我知道，柏林墻的倒塌對(duì)許多人來說都是一件歡欣的事情，但相信我，當(dāng)時(shí)學(xué)校里所有俄羅斯研究專業(yè)的學(xué)生都非常失落。我唯一確定自己喜歡的就是電視節(jié)目，尤其是新聞節(jié)目。從小到大我看了很多新聞節(jié)目，所以我想，我獲得了耶魯學(xué)位，就試著應(yīng)聘一下美國(guó)廣播公司的基層工作崗位，做一中勤雜工。看起來我完全可以勝任這份工作：接聽電話，完全聽從彼得·杰寧斯的差遣。我卻沒得到這份工作。整整花了六個(gè)月，這讓我很痛心。我獲得了面試機(jī)會(huì)，卻沒有得到這份工作，這也說明了耶魯學(xué)位的價(jià)值。
