Harvard captures the imagination like few other institutions. World leaders from President Barack Obama to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon are Harvard graduates. Business titans like Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, A.G. Lafley of Procter & Gamble and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs are too. I’ve found the academic training I received at graduate school there invaluable--but I learned even more outside the classroom than in it. Here are three key lessons that helped my career that Harvard didn’t teach me in the classroom.

和少數幾所其他機構一樣，哈佛大學非常能夠激發人們的想象力。世界上有很多領導人，比如說巴拉克·奧巴馬總統和聯合國秘書長潘基文都是哈佛大學的畢業生。還有許多商業巨頭，比如說摩根大通的CEO Jamie Dimon，寶潔公司的A.G. Lafley，還有高盛銀行的Lloyd Blankfein也都是師出哈佛門下。筆者本人也是在哈佛大學的研究生院畢業的，也認為那里接受的學術培訓可以說是人生的無價之寶，彌足珍貴。但是，筆者感到課堂下，學到的東西比課堂上更多。下面就是在筆者的職業生涯中非常關鍵的三堂課，而這些是哈佛的教室中所不曾講授過的。

I learned the first lesson from my own students. I was a teaching fellow at the time, educating them on China’s modern history and political system. I probably learned more from them than they from me.

第一堂課是我自己的學生身上學到的。我在上研究生的時候，曾經幫助老師教學，教授中國現代歷史和政治體系的課程。在上課的時候，我可能從學生身上學到的，要比他們比我學到的要多。

Every day students would come to my office overlooking Harvard Yard, and we’d usually end up talking about more than just China. We’d discuss their hopes and, more often than not, their fears. They were afraid of not keeping up with their peers and not living up to their parents’ expectations.

每天，學生都會來到我的那個可以俯瞰哈佛大學校園的辦公室，我們最后討論的內容常常會超越中國的問題。我們討論了學生們的希望，而且更常談論到的是他們的恐怖。他們常常會恐懼不能趕上同伴們的成就，或是不能達到他們父母的期望。

They felt this way pretty much across the board. Rich kids and legacies thought they’d gotten there because of their families; minority students worried they were there because of their skin color; brains from humble backgrounds worried they weren’t rich enough to be there. As their teacher I could see that they all deserved to be there for different reasons. But they themselves couldn’t easily gauge how their work measured up against others’, and this fed their insecurities.

他們認為這種恐懼應該是每個人都會感受到的。有錢人家的孩子會想他們能夠來到哈佛全是因為自己有這樣的家庭;少數族裔的學生擔心他們是因為膚色才到了哈佛;家庭條件不好的人擔心他們不夠富有，來到哈佛壓力很大。作為他們的老師，我知道他們每一個人來到這里都是實至名歸的，雖然其中理由各不一樣。但是他們自己想要衡量和他人相比自己做得如何不太容易，而這一點助長了他們的不安全感。