Students:

Good morning! （1）

At the occation of the celebration for your graduation and also the send-off for some students leaving campus, i would like to say a few words as your conclusion of the university life.

First and foremost, i want to tell the students on the point of working a great truth: there is a great difference between univercity and community.

In the campus, individual effort works but talent takes more effect. Teachers never ask for your material return. As long as you do a great job in examinations and you have no big personality problems, basically you will get teachers’ favor and they will give you reward with the performance of score. In a sense, university is basically a kind of“sage political” or “elite political” environment, just like a family. Basically teachers fix on the evaluation system, reward your intelligence in a centralized manner.

However（2）the community is different. It is more like a place of exchange, a market, a kind of “civil political” environment. The main evaluation is not your intelligence（3） ( although your wisdom can still help you), but it depends on whether you can come up with what other people want. This standard is no longer determined by the center—teachers, but dipersed—identified by the large number of consumers. As a result, despite the 178RMB price, during less than 10 days, the 3000 English version books of “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” in Beijing, Xinhua Bookstore were out of stock, and meanwhile many scholars’ lifetime literature could not be sold so many, or even to “be kept in purdan without being known” （4）. Also as a result, there comes NianGuangjiu of “idiot melon seeds”; there is the saying of “ the guy researching missile is inferior to the guy selling tea-leaf eggs”; there appears the phenomenon of quiting students in IT industry. This “call white black” （5）phenomenon is not perfect, but it just shows the standard of market.

The limitation of human—do not reckon on turning consumers to Qian Zhongshu or Nash （6）by education or other methods. Therefore, our students can’t bring our past 16 years’ accustomed school standard into the community, otherwise you will find that your ability can’t be available in the cummunity, or you only can comfort yourself by LiBai’s saying—“ I must be available since i was born.” （7）. More extremely, you may even be out of tune with the society and market.

Although the society and the market’s hands are invisible, but the core is tangible; it is never about the futures but the spot. （8） You can criticize it short-sighted, but as a matter of fact, it usually will not be so and has no obligation to wait for you to grow and mature. It defines each person entering the community as an equal and never considers fresh graduates without experience. If you lose one opportunity, you just lose it. This situation is not similar with that in school where you can make-up, or beg for leniency from teachers to change scores. “students from Beijing university have potential” others can say yes, but you yourself should’t say so and don’t believe that. This kind of saying is not a placebo, to a certain extent, in fact it implies that you are not qualified, at least not now. If you really have potential and quality, please show me this, show me some esse things—may be a draft of an contract; may be a successful lawsuit.

Liberal arts students, during the four-year university life, usually contact with the most exciting events and people in history, just like “talk” with masters at all times and in all over the world. （9） You acquaint yourself with the Trial of Socrates; （10） you are seized of the Marbury V. Madison （11） and awared of the “Magna Carta” （12）  and so on. You can also comment Confucius, Mencius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu and discuss Plato, Aristotle, or even “Who but myself can do” （13）. The liberal arts education in university usually make many people tend to prefer the kind of exciting mement from their heart, even expand that feeling. But this is not and can’t be most people’s true lives, but only the life in the imagination of college life. Each of us can only live in day-to-day and trivial lives.

As a result, the second sentence I would like to say is“abide by the law and behave oneself” （14）, which suits every student.

This saying in our time perhaps was out of date, but to you it can also be available. Cause i have never worried about whether graduates of Beijing University will have lofty ideals. I worried more about whether you can be easily ambitious; about whether you can face the ordinary life calmly and easily, especially when the ideal of a young man become increasingly distant, dim and fuzzy. Also it is because, i would like to say, almost—if not all—every ambitious people can not be completely destined to achieve his ideals.

I certainly hope and believe that here among you will emerge distinguished statesmen, entrepreneurs, lawyers, scholars, but only a few among you can be—more can’t squeeze; more can’t be valuable—diminishing marginal utility. Whether upon mundane vision or self-evaluation, the vast majority of people must have been less successful.

However, we must realize that success must not be linked with happiness. Being unsuccessful may not be unhappy. So as you are leaving the campus, you’d better not only to establish your own ambition, but also have to define your own success.

“Abide by the law and behave oneself”is not a derogatory sentence, not even a neutral sentence. “Abide by the law”is not easy, in this era, “behave oneself”is even more difficult.