Nia Damany: 智梦杭州顾问，毕业于曼荷莲学院，人类学学士，东亚研究学士，在校期间完成了旧金山和宁波两地的实习。曾任无锡天一高中升学顾问，在此期间，Nia指导了无锡去年唯一一例常青藤本科录取案例（康奈尔大学），Nia指导的学生中也有范德宝大学全额奖学金获得者。
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You hear it again and again. “Choose your major wisely, it will determine the course of your life.” Many adults urged me to pick a “practical” major that would allow me to live well. You know the majors: Engineering, Pre-law, Business/Economics, and Pre-medicine. As an Anthropology major, I am here to tell you that no matter what your desired occupation, choosing an undergraduate major outside of that field will not preclude you from getting good job offers. In fact, many employers value a well-rounded applicant.
你的耳边不断地萦绕着别人对你的嘱咐：“选择正确的专业，这将决定你的命运。”许多大人曾都敦促我去选一个“实用”的专业，这样的话我能活得更好更轻松。大家都知道，工程类、法律预科、商务/经济类以及医学预科都是这样的专业。但是作为一个人类学专业的学生，我在这郑重地告诉你，不管你理想中的职业是什么，选择一个与那块职业领域无关的本科专业并不会影响你去取得一份上佳的聘书。实际上，众多招聘官看重全面发展的人才。
My roommate in college was a great example of this. At Mount Holyoke, her studies focused on Dance, French, and African Studies. Her first job out of college was in finance at one of the largest investment banking firms in the world. Some people scratch their head at the notion of a dancer working in the corporate world. Some people might even assume that she had some type of inside connection that allowed her to get the job. As a witness to her superior work ethic, I can assure you that the position wasn’t simply handed to her—she earned it.
我的大学室友就是这一个好例子。在曼何莲女子学院的学习生活中，她注重学习舞蹈、法语以及非洲研究。她的第一份工作是在世界上最大的投资银行公司之一从事财政方面的工作。一些人因为她是一名舞者却在企业中工作而感到莫名，一些人甚至认为她是靠着某些内部关系才能进来工作的。作为她卓越的工作能力的见证者，我可以向你保证，这个职位绝不是那么简单地交给她的——她值得。
So how did she, and others like her, do it? Is it there some secret formula to it? Philip A. Bean, Dean of Academic Affairs at Haverford College, gives us some insight into the issue of choosing majors as undergraduates:
那么她，以及像她这样的人是怎么做到的呢？是不是有什么秘诀呢？哈佛大学的教务处主任菲利普 A·比恩给我们深入探讨了关于本科生选择专业的问题:
If you were held to rigorous standards, solid grades regardless of major, speak to the most lasting value of a college education: the ability to identify, define, research and offer well- composed analyses for complex problems.
如果你无论是什么专业都一直坚持严谨的学习标准，扎实的成绩，那么说到大学教育影响最持久的价值就在于培养学生的识别、定义、研究以及为解决难题提供良好的组成分析能力。
From this perspective, it is not so much your major that matters as how well you choose and therefore perform in a major and how well your mind consequently matures in college.
由此得来，你的专业对于你的选择有多好、你在这一专业内的学习有多好以及你的心智最终在大学的教育下变得如何成熟并不重要。
The value of a college education that Dean Bean describes is the value of the student’s work. The problem with that is you will never know if the major is useful and practical—you have to see your own performance in that field to make that conclusion.
比恩主任所描述的大学教育的价值其实是学生学习的价值。问题在于你将永远不知道这个专业是否实用——因为你必须在看到你在领域里的成果展现才能下结论。
I once heard the joke that Anthropology majors actually majored in unemployment. I suppose this joke means that people who “study humankind”—as the dictionary so blandly defines the field—lack skills that are valuable to the world. Famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who has a reported passion for Anthropology outside of his music, would tell you how far from the truth that joke is. The truth is the world is not split into practical majors (usually in the hard sciences) and impractical majors (usually in the social sciences, art and humanities). The hard sciences depend on fields like Anthropology, Sociology, Literature and Philosophy and vice versa. For example, doctors depend on medical ethicists to understand cultural and religious concerns around patient treatment. On the other hand, anthropologists have long engaged in scientific research in a sub-field called Biological Anthropology.
我曾听到过这样的玩笑：人类学专业其实是失业专业。我想这玩笑的意思是正如字典那般平和地定义人类学这一领域一般，那些“研究人类”的人们缺乏对世界有价值的技能知识。据报道，著名大提琴家马友友除却他的音乐外对人类学也充满学习的热情，他会告诉你这个玩笑离真相有多远。事实上这个世界本就不会把专业分为实用专业（通常指的是硬科学）和非实用专业（通常指的是社会科学、艺术类以及人类学类）。但硬科学也依赖于相关领域，像人类学、社科学、文学和哲学等等。例如医生依靠医药伦理学家才能理解在治疗病人时要注意的文化宗教概念。另一方面，人类学家也长期参加一个叫生物人类学的子领域方面科学研究。
At the beginning of my last semester as an Anthropology major, my professor welcomed us to class by saying, “Welcome to the hallway of never-ending mirrors.” Anthropology is not intended to be an objective study on society. On the contrary, we aimed to complicate our understanding of culture by participating in it, rather than reduce it to simple answers by just looking at it. We asked our questions reflexively and recognized the limits of our biased perspective. We even questioned seemingly unquestionable facts. We didn’t just study to know human culture; we studied how humans produce knowledge and where it leads us. Doing research as an Anthropology major was invariably enlightening and energizing because there was always something more to learn.
在我作为人类学专业学生的上学期伊始，我的教授用这样的话来欢迎我们上课：“欢迎来到永无止境的镜子走廊。”人类学并不想成为对省会的一种客观性研究。相反，我人类学的目标在于通过参与进不同的文化中来讲我们对不同文化的理解复杂化，并不是仅仅通过看去简化对文化理解的想法。我们会条件反射问自己问题，并且认识到我们带有偏见的观点的限制。我们甚至之一看似毋庸置疑的事实。我们并不是仅仅学习去了解人类的文化，我们学习人类是如何产生知识并且这些知识是在哪些地方引领我们前进的。对于一名人类学专业的学生来说，做研究一直是一种启发与激励因为它让我们知道我们总有更多的东西要去学。
In college, I found a major that made me excited to be in class. So, my advice to the students who are profoundly undecided about their college major is: do not prematurely decide a major based on a misguided sense of practicality. The true value of your college major depends on your ability to learn deeply in a subject that you enjoy working hard at.
在大学的学习生活中我找到了能让我能够兴奋地去上课的专业。所以对于那些还不是很确定他们大学专业的学生 我给出的建议是：不要根据误导性的专业实用感来过早地决定你要学的专业。你大学专业的真正价值取决于当你能够享受努力学习这个专业的过程时你深入研究该专业的能力。
reflexively: relating to social science method of taking account of the researcher’s presence and how it affects their investigation.
这里的条件反射与社会科学研究方法相关，该方法将研究者的存在以及这个存在性将如何影响调查考虑进社科研究中。
Sources:
http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/16/choosing-a-practical-major/?_php=true&_type=blogs&smid=tw-share&_r=0
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2009/2/12/yo-yo-ma-goes-beyond-the-music/
http://chronicle.com/blogs/headcount/whats-your-major/29187
【智梦简介】
智梦是一家专注美国本科留学的教育咨询机构。
我们的使命：
“智梦教育团队深知留学申请关系到学生及其家长的前途和未来，我们将竭尽所能帮助每一位智梦学员发掘其潜在的特质，以开放透明的申请方式，让他们能不留遗憾的争取到自己的理想学校。与此同时，培养他们成为诚实守信、独立思考、德才兼备的国际化人才。”
我们的愿景：
“智梦教育将成为一所发掘学术兴趣，培养学术能力，塑造具有公民意识的新时代留学生的学校。”
