The second prescription has only one sentence: you must cultivate more non-professional interests.
The third prescription has only one sentence: you should have a little confidence.
Open the yellowed photos, a long time ago, vague youth, but the feelings of graduation eulogy are still there. In this season of gardenia parting, let's relive the graduation message of the former president of a famous school, which is a gift from our alma mater and a spiritual treasure of our life. Those sharp words, across just visiting, still have fresh vitality and current significance.
Educator Hu Shi was the president of Peking University from September 1945 to February 1948. This article is Mr. Hu Shi's speech at the graduation ceremony in Peking University on June 27th, 1932. It was a time of bloodshed, and he was the dean of Peking University College of Literature. Hu Shi summed up the way out for young students: after graduation, there are only a few ways to go: a few people can continue to do academic research in domestic or foreign research institutes; A few people can find quite a job; In addition, there are three ways: being an official, running a party, and revolution; Then you are happy at home or unemployed.
Hu Shi: Gifts for this year's college graduates (June 1932)
Student's life is a privileged life, so we might as well be naive and noisy. Society can indulge them and refuse to strictly hold them responsible for their actions. Now they have to hold up their shoulders to carry their own burdens. In the most critical year of this national disaster, their burden is really not light! We wish them success, but at the same time we don't have the heart to give them a few farewell words based on our own experience. Although it may not be a life-saving hair, it may be a self-defense tip!
There are only a few ways to go after graduation: a few people can continue to do academic research in domestic or foreign research institutes; A few people can find quite a job; In addition, there are three ways: being an official, running a party, and revolution; Then enjoy family life or lose your job.
Those who walk the rest of the road can't live without the danger of falling. There are many ways to fall. To sum up, there are probably two categories:
First of all, it is easy to abandon the desire for knowledge when I was a student. When you come to the real world, what you have learned is often useless, and what you have learned is often useless. Often you don't need to study at all, but you can muddle along and be an official. In this environment, even people who have been eager for knowledge and learning can't help but lose heart and gradually cool their desire for knowledge.
Second, it is easy to give up the pursuit of an ideal life when I was a student. When teenagers come into contact with the cold society for the first time, it is easy to feel that their ideals are far from the facts, and they are easy to be pessimistic and disappointed. My life ideals, enthusiasm for transformation and courage to struggle, which I have cherished for many years, seem completely different by this time. In that fierce social fire, a small individual often melts after a long period of tempering, and a lofty ideal is quickly disillusioned. People who come with the dream of transforming society often abandon their armor or become prisoners of evil forces. When you were in that prison, it was as if all the idealism of that youth had become a dream of self-error! From then on, you are willing to give up the pursuit of ideal life and be a docile subject in the present society.
To guard against these two depravities, we must keep our thirst for knowledge and pursue life. What's a good prescription? According to my personal observation and experience, there are three self-defense prescriptions worth trying.
The first prescription has only one sentence: always look for one or two problems worth studying!
After leaving school, we left the learning environment. Without one or two questions worth answering hovering in our minds, it is difficult for us to keep our enthusiasm for learning and asking questions. However, if you have a really interesting problem for you to think about, entice you to solve it every day, and make you helpless every day, you will be as crazy as a woman in love, unable to sit still, unable to sleep well, stealing time to accompany her when you have no time, and shrinking clothes and dieting to please her when you have no money.
The second prescription has only one sentence: you must cultivate more non-professional interests. After leaving school, everyone always looks for a job to eat. However, the job you find may not be what you learned, what you like, or what you learned is not close to your temperament. In this case, work often becomes a chore and you don't feel interested.
A person should have his profession and his non-professional things, which can be called extracurricular activities. Usually his spare-time activities are more important than his career, because a person's achievements often depend on how he uses his leisure time. He used his spare time to play mahjong and became a gambler. If you use your leisure time to do social service, you may become a social reformer; Or if you study history in your spare time, you may become a historian. Your leisure often determines your life.
The third prescription has only one sentence: you should have a little confidence.
The ancients said: Sincerely arrived, the stone opens. He added: As long as you work hard, pig iron will also be ground into embroidery needles. Don't you believe it? When Napoleon's army conquered Prussia and occupied Berlin, a professor named Fichte advised his people to have confidence that their nation had a special mission in the world and would surely revive. When Fichte died, no one could predict when the German unified empire would be realized. However, less than 50 years later, the newly unified German Empire was actually realized.
The rise and fall of a country's strength is not accidental, nor can it escape the iron law of cause and effect. The pain and humiliation we have suffered today are only the result of various evil causes in the past. If we want to reap good results in the future, we must work hard to sow new businesses now. If we sow grain by grain, there will be a house full of crops in Man Cang. This is the confidence we should have today. We must believe that today's failures are all due to past efforts. We must believe that today's efforts will surely yield great gains in the future.
My friends, when you are most pessimistic and disappointed, it is the time when you must summon up strong confidence. You should believe that there is no futile effort. I don't have to succeed, but I don't have to donate my skills.