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节选自《纽约时报》The Sunday Read: "The Man Couldn't Stop Going to College" (Aug. 18, 2024) ......this week Sunday Read is a story I wrote for our magazine about a 48-year-old man named Benjamin Bolger and what makes Benjamin special is that he is America's preeminent perpetual student that is he's someone who collects college degrees over the past 30 years he's received over a dozen degrees they're from the world's most prestigious Harvard Stanford and Yale just to name a few I had the same reaction as many people when they hear about Benjamin for the first time why what would possess someone to dedicate themselves to this kind of life so last summer I decided to go to Boston and ask Benjamin myself and talking to him is almost like talking to a walking freshman seminar we talked about union labor we talked about cryptocurrency we talked about the nature of bridges International and Middle Eastern diplomacy even Joan of arc and I asked him basically 100 different ways why can't you stop going to college and his answer just kind of stunned me in its obviousness he told me I love learning higher education as an institution writ large is so contested today both politically and culturally people take out enormous amounts of debt and we know that a lot of these degrees may not set you up for life in the way we've been told and so when universities have this lofty rhetoric about learning how to think and how to be a complete person but then most of their graduates are just going to earn some ungodly starting salary at a consulting firm in many ways, I think it's natural to ask what is the point is the the only reason to go to college is to have that credential is the actual content less important than the paper that you're given when you graduate but then there's Benjamin someone who has so fully immersed themselves in the ethos of the elite university deeper than anyone else and maybe he just genuinely does enjoy learning and for someone like him maybe this was the right kind of way to live his life what could we learn from Benjamin so here's my article read by Robert Petkoff our producer is Jack Des Adoro our music was written and performed by Aaron Esposito ................ ......... 本周周日阅读是我为我们的杂志写的一个故事 关于一个叫本杰明·博尔格的 48 岁男人 本杰明的特别之处在于 他是美国最杰出的永久学生 也就是说，他是一个在过去 30 年里收集大学学位的人 他获得了十几个学位 他们来自世界上最负盛名的 哈佛斯坦福和耶鲁 仅举几例 当他们第一次听说本杰明时，我的反应和很多人一样 为什么 是什么让一个人献身于 这样的生活 所以去年夏天 我决定去波士顿亲自问本杰明 和他交谈 几乎就像在与一个行走的新生研讨会交谈 我们谈到了工会劳工 我们谈到了加密货币 我们谈到了桥梁的本质 国际和中东外交 甚至圣女贞德 我问了他基本上 100 种不同的方式 为什么你不能停止上大学 他的回答只是让我震惊的是 他告诉我 我喜欢学习 高等教育作为一个机构，在今天在政治和文化上都备受争议 人们背负着巨额债务 我们知道很多这样的学位 可能不会让你的生活 像我们被告知的那样 因此，当大学有如此崇高的言辞来 学习如何思考和如何成为一个完整的人 但大多数毕业生 只会在咨询公司赚取一些不合理的起薪 在很多方面，我认为很自然地会问 这有什么意义 上大学的唯一原因就是获得证书 实际内容是否不如你毕业时获得的论文重要 但是，本杰明 一个人比其他任何人都更深入地沉浸在精英大学的精神中 也许他只是真的喜欢学习 对于像他这样的人来说 也许这是正确的他的生活方式 我们可以从本杰明身上学到什么 所以这是我的文章 由罗伯特·佩特科夫朗读 我们的制作人是杰克·德斯·阿多罗 我们的音乐由亚伦·埃斯波西托创作和表演......... 参看完整视频(时长25:24)：https:///E5MLHWgM_XE?si=QlJ2zL8wJBR6NjRN
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