当我站在梦想的大门口

你从小的愿望是什么？对世界充满好奇的孩子们都曾有过胆大狂妄的回答，但我们大多数人长大后都选择了谈笑往昔，平淡生活。而本文作者似乎是个例外。成为飞行员是作者从小学就开始的梦想，但年少的他并不知道这是一个学费贵、课程难、对体格和心理素质都要求极高的职业。当17岁在美国拿到了第一张飞行执照时，作者第一次真真正正地站在了梦想的大门口。然而他的选择是……

By Albert Ma 柒月 注

Remember back in the days, when your elementary school teacher asked you to write something about your dream job? Some people wrote about becoming a policeman, some wrote about becoming successful businessmen, but I was always the odd one out—I wanted to become a pilot.

As a child, I travelled a lot. So far, I’ve set foot on every single continent except for Antarctica, and have travelled to more than 30 different countries before I turned 18. That’s probably what made me interested in aviation. I remember thinking about how cool it would be to not only sit in the back of an aircraft as a passenger, but to have the opportunity to sit in the front tip of the aircraft, with the controls in my hands. That was the dream, and I guess it’ll come true soon.

As I grew older, I started to realize how hard this path could be, not only to become a pilot, but to eventually “climb up the career ladder”. Becoming a pilot is not an easy thing; not only do you need to be physically healthy, keeping up with the rigorous academic courses is also extremely challenging. That’s not all of it…it is VERY expensive to become a pilot. Many students drop out of training courses simply because they were no longer able to bear the costs of training, which is an extremely depressing thing to know, because these people may be giving up their childhood dreams just because of money.

Though the process of becoming a pilot is hard and academically challenging, that is the only way to ensure the quality of our training. You don’t want a person with marginal qualifications to be in charge of your life when you’re on a plane right? For me, there’s nothing more important than safety. My motto is that everything can be compromised, except safety, because nothing is worth more than keeping my passengers and myself alive. I’ve seen a lot of accidents happen due to very basic errors, such as refusing to trust the flight instruments on the plane. On a commercial flight, hundreds of passengers sitting behind the pilot depend on his skills and judgments so that they don’t fall out of the sky, and I pay my deepest respect to those who do everything that is needed to keep their passengers safe and comfortable.

For me, I’m very thankful to have discovered my interest and my dreams since I was a child. Many of my buddies are struggling to figure out what field they want to go into, or what they’ll want to major in, but that’s totally fine! It’s okay to not know; that’s why so many people embrace the American Liberal Arts education, knowing that you can be successful in life no matter what you do, and when you do it.

I still remember back in September 2014, after I received my offer to attend Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, I decided that I was going to defer my offer for one year and to further explore the different areas of my life before going to college. Some have questioned my decision to do so, some thought that it is the dumbest decision I’ve made in my life, but I don’t think so. I personally think that the current education system is failing us, but since it’s the only system we have right now, we don’t have a lot to choose from.

The system fails not because it’s too rigorous or too easy or anything along those lines, but because it doesn’t really prepare our youngsters to face the society out there. There are so many things that we can’t learn inside a classroom. Communication techniques; social skills; qualities of being humble and accountable; trustworthiness… our education system fails to address many of these crucial skills that we need in order to succeed in life, and a student will never develop these skills just by sitting in a classroom and listening to a lecture. This is why I decided to take a year off school, to really experience how our society is like outside my comfort zone.

My plan is to work at an NGO that aims to help underprivileged children to succeed in school through providing after-school tutoring sessions and through other extracurricular activities. I believe that this will be a very valuable experience for me, and this is probably one of the only opportunities that I have to do things like this, as I’ll be dealing with the enormous workload during and after college. This is my choice, be a person feeling valued.

文章转载自“香港文化交流工作室”（Hong Kong Cultural Exchange Workshop）。作者介绍：马钟文（Albert Ma），20岁，目前在美国Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University学习飞行专业。他从小热爱飞行，17岁在美国拿到了第一张飞行执照。

Vocabulary

1. Antarctica: 南极洲。

2. aviation: 航空，飞行。

3. rigorous: 严格的。

4. marginal: 勉强够格的。

5. motto: 座右铭。

6. flight instrument: 飞行仪表。

7. 不知道也没有关系，这也是为什么那么多人选择了美国文理学院的通识教育，他们坚信自己不论做什么，不论何时做，都是可以成功的。Liberal Arts education: 博雅教育，又译为：人文教育、通识教育、素质教育等，是一种基于社会中的人的通才素质教育，不同于专业教育和专才教育。

8. Embry Riddle Aeronautical University: 安柏瑞德航空大学，是美国一所私立航天航空科技大学；defer: 推迟，延期。

9. dumbest: 蠢的（dumb的最高级）。

10. fail: 令……失望，辜负了……的信任。

11. 沟通技巧、社会技能、为人谦逊和有担当、诚信可靠……我们的教育体系并不看重这些人生成功所需的重要技能，而且一个学生如果只坐在教室里听课是永远学不到这些技能的。

12. NGO: 民间组织，非政府组织（Non-Governmental Organization）；underprivileged: 贫困的，物质条件差的；session: 学期，上课时间：extracurricular: （活动等）课外的。

13. workload: 工作量。

（来源：英语学习杂志 编辑：董静）