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| 文章标题：If I Were Eighteen Again…(男儿当自强！) |
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If I Were Eighteen Again…(男儿当自强！)
By Aihua
（作者注：本文应友人陈屹之邀为其《背洋书包的孩子――十个中国小留学生的故事》一书撰写。中文版见另页，由北大附中的谭箴、董璐同学初译，本人润色。）
This past June marked the 20th anniversary of my graduation from MIT.
How time flies! Twenty years ago, personal computer was just making its debut in the U.S. Working with a Harvard dropout named Bill Gates, IBM turned Gates’ Disk Operating System into an industry legend. In the ensuing years, this alliance made Gates immensely rich and powerful, and relegated IBM to almost oblivion on the cyber scene. The rest is history, as historians like to say.
Recently I ran into a friend. She asked me to reflect on my MIT years and ask myself what I would have done differently if I were an incoming student today.
This is a fairly loaded question with no easy answers.
In a few more years, my own children will be knocking on the doors of colleges and universities themselves. Yet, the images of my fifteen hundred days at MIT remain vividly in my memory.
When I tell casual acquaintances that I was once a student at MIT, I often get a strange look on their faces, as though I were some kind of extra-terrestrial creature, not capable of human feelings or other earthly pursuits. That could not be the farthest from the truth!
When I relate my MIT experience to others, I often remind them that besides its academic pre-eminence in the science and engineering disciplines, the school also runs a fine liberal arts curriculum and entertains a large student body with diverse talents and interests. Some parts of that experience stand the test of time and I would not give them up for all the moneys in the world.
I certainly would not trade off the exchange program with Wesley under which MIT students could enroll in the many fine liberal arts classes offered by the All-girl College in the suburb of Boston.
Nor would I forsake the UROP (undergraduate research opportunity program) projects, participation in which gave me an excellent exposure to independent research activities and at the same time paid me a decent stipend.
Nor would I run away from the student-run Ballroom Dance Club program which offers ballroom dance instruction to anyone who cares about acquiring this social etiquette before leaving school.
Nor would I trade in the LSC (Lecture Series Committee) movies on weekend evenings for anything else –– my only formal indoctrination of the Hollywood culture so to speak.
Nor would I relinquish my tie to the Chinese Student Club where I found tranquility and friendship in the midst of the hustles and bustles of the main stream life on the campus.
Nor would I abandon my voluntary work at the Mass General Hospital where I met many Vietnamese-Chinese refugee patients and established some long-lasting friendships that have survived the passage of two decades.
Nonetheless, time has changed. New realities set in. We need to grow with our time.
If I were a student at MIT today, what would I have done that I did not do twenty years ago?
I would major in computer science instead of an engineering discipline as I did – After all, I would like to be a driver instead of a passenger on the car traveling on the information superhighway.
I would take advantage of the Junior Year Aboard program and go to France to broaden my international perspective – In my view, such an experience is increasingly important in the global village that we live in today. Moreover, I regret that I wasted four years of my French training, as I never got to practice it in real life and gave most of it back to the teachers!
I would seek to play a more active role in promoting academic exchanges between MIT and a certain Chinese university – I’d like to see myself as a bridge between China and the U.S. I wish I could do more.
I would tap into the Internet resources, look for ways to get on the e-commerce bandwagon and make a few bucks along the way--such as web-based distant learning, assistance in college admissions, just to name a few.
I would volunteer to spearhead the development of a web-based database to house information for services that are available to all Chinese American communities.
There is so much we can do in this cyber world of ours today.
I once came across a poem by a Chinese writer that reads:
If I had wings,
I would fly.
Do I have wings?
The answer is nay,
So I would not fly.
My answer to that pessimistic view is:
I am not eighteen years of age any more.
So I would not relive my days as a sophomore.
But in my children I see new possibilities
And new horizons within their reach.
I see their future,
And that gives me plentiful pleasure.
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| 本文最后发表或修改时间：2005/1/17 23:30:39 |
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