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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，从耶鲁毕业时，母亲给我的建议是“追随你的幸福”。我本希望得到一些更具体的建议，比如信用卡。什么？信用卡？你喜欢信用卡？没错。但是现在回想起来，“追随你的幸福”确实是个很好的建议。事实上，这个短语并不是我母亲原创的，而是圣劳伦斯学期一位名叫约瑟夫·坎贝尔的教授在一个电视访谈节目中谈到的。你们从这件事多少可以看出我们的关系——她给我的建议都是从电视上学来的。我很庆幸她没有看蒙特尔·威廉姆斯的脱口秀节目或福克斯新闻等收视率较高的节目，否则我将会被摧毁。开个玩笑。
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.
事实上，追随你的幸福是个很好的建议，但问题是你的幸福是什么，而弄清楚这一点并非易事。同你们大多数人一样，我拿到了文科学位，这就意味着我没有任何实际技能。我主修政治学。也许你们现在会很感兴趣，但相信我，这种兴趣是维持不了多久的，这意味着你可以读报纸，但除此之外，我真的不敢确实自己还可以做什么。我还主要研究共产主义，但当柏林墙被推倒时，我变得心烦意乱。我知道，柏林墙的倒塌对许多人来说都是一件欢欣的事情，但相信我，当时学校里所有俄罗斯研究专业的学生都非常失落。我唯一确定自己喜欢的就是电视节目，尤其是新闻节目。从小到大我看了很多新闻节目，所以我想，我获得了耶鲁学位，就试着应聘一下美国广播公司的基层工作岗位，做一中勤杂工。看起来我完全可以胜任这份工作：接听电话，完全听从彼得·杰宁斯的差遣。我却没得到这份工作。整整花了六个月，这让我很痛心。我获得了面试机会，却没有得到这份工作，这也说明了耶鲁学位的价值。
