答案是：你不試試就永遠都不會知道。但如果你不試著去做自己熱愛的事情，不管是玩泥巴還是生物還是金融，如果連你自己都不去追求你認為最有價值的事，你終將後悔。人生路漫漫，你總有時間去給自己留“後路”，但可別一開始就走“後路”。
i think of this as my parking space theory of career choice, and i have been sharing it with students for decades. don't park 20 blocks from your destination because you think you'll never find a space. go where you want to be and then circle back to where you have to be.
我把這叫做我的關於職業選擇的“泊車”理論，幾十年來我一直都在向學生們“兜售”我的這個理論。不要因為怕到了目的地找不到停車位而把車停在距離目的地20個路口的地方。直接到達你想去的地方，哪怕再繞回來停，你暫時停的地方只是你被迫停的地方。
you may love investment banking or finance or consulting. it might be just right for you. or, you might be like the senior i met at lunch at kirkland who had just returned from an interview on the west coast with a prestigious consulting firm. “why am i doing this?” she asked. “i hate flying, i hate hotels, i won't like this job.” find work you love. it is hard to be happy if you spend more than half your waking hours doing something you don't.
你也許喜歡做投行，或是做金融抑或做理財諮詢。都可能是適合你的。那也許真的就是適合你的。或許你也會像我在kirkland house見到的那個大四學生一樣，她剛從美國西海岸一家著名理財諮詢公司的面試回來。“我為什麼要做這個？”她說，“我討厭坐飛機，我討厭住賓館，我是不會喜歡這份工作的。”找到你熱愛的工作。如果你把你一天中醒著的一大半時間用來做你不喜歡的事情，你是很難感到幸福的。
but what is ultimately most important here is that you are asking the question — not just of me but of yourselves. you are choosing roads and at the same time challenging your own choices. you have a notion of what you want your life to be and you are not sure the road you are taking is going to get you there. this is the best news. and it is also, i hope, to some degree, our fault. noticing your life, reflecting upon it, considering how you can live it well, wondering how you can do good: these are perhaps the most valuable things that a liberal arts education has equipped you to do. a liberal education demands that you live self-consciously. it prepares you to seek and define the meaning inherent in all you do. it has made you an analyst and critic of yourself, a person in this way supremely equipped to take charge of your life and how it unfolds. it is in this sense that the liberal arts are liberal — as in liberare — to free. they empower you with the possibility of exercising agency, of discovering meaning, of making choices. the surest way to have a meaningful, happy life is to commit yourself to striving for it. don't settle. be prepared to change routes. remember the impossible expectations we have of you, and even as you recognize they are impossible, remember how important they are as a lodestar guiding you toward something that matters to you and to the world. the meaning of your life is for you to make.