Occasionally—for you will need some help in fleshing out the answers—you may have to prod your professors to see if they take the text at hand to be true. And you will have to be tough if the professor mocks you for uttering a sincere question instead of keeping matters easy for all concerned by staying detached and analytical. (Detached analysis has a place—but, in the end, you've got to speak from the heart and pose the question of truth.) You'll be the one who pesters your teachers. You'll ask your history teacher about whether there is a design to our history, whether we're progressing or declining, or whether, in the words of a fine recent play, The History Boys, history's "just one fuckin' thing after another."
时不时地——为了得到更加完善的答案，你们需要一些帮助——你们可能需要要求教授核对他们手里的文本是否正确；假如那位教授嘲弄你，因为你问了一个严肃的问题而不让有关的人都太平，那你就必须要坚强，保持你超然的、分析的态度。你们要成为打破砂锅问到底的人，你们要问历史老师历史是否有定式可循，我们是在前进还是在倒退，或者用最近的一部好剧——《历史系男生》的台词来说， 就是“历史不过是该死的觅重复”。
The whole business is scary, of course. What if you arrive at college devoted to premed, sure that nothing will make you and your family happier than a life as a physician, only to discover that elementary school teaching is where your heart is?
当然，读大学可能是一件可怕的事情。万一你们来到学校全心投入医学预科的学习，确信除了成为医生外没有任何事能让你们和你们的家庭更幸福，结果却发现自己真正心属的是小学老师怎么办？
You might learn that you're not meant to be a doctor at all. Of course, given your intellect and discipline, you can still probably be one. And society will help you. Society has a cornucopia of resources to encourage you in doing what society needs done but that you don't much like doing and are not cut out to do.
你们可能会明白自己并不一定要成为博士，当然，根据你们的智力和约束力，你们仍然有可能成为博士。而且社会将帮助你们，社会有大量的资源激励你们做社会需要你们做的事，而事实上你们并不喜欢，也并不适合。
Education is about finding out what form of work for you is close to being play—work you do so easily that it restores you as you go. Randall Jarrell once said that if he were a rich man, he would pay money to teach poetry to students. (I would, too, for what it's worth.) In saying that, he (like my father) hinted in the direction of a profound and true theory of learning.
教育就是要发现你们最乐在其中的工作形式——无须太费力就能完成，并且可以让你们恢复自我的工作。兰德尔·贾雷尔曾经说过，如果他变得富有，他愿意自己出钱去教学生诗歌。（不管值不值，我也愿意。）他的话(和我父亲的一样），指明了一个深刻的、其正的理论学习方向。