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.

和少数几所其他机构一样，哈佛大学非常能够激发人们的想象力。世界上有很多领导人，比如说巴拉克·奥巴马总统和联合国秘书长潘基文都是哈佛大学的毕业生。还有许多商业巨头，比如说摩根大通的CEO Jamie Dimon，宝洁公司的A.G. Lafley，还有高盛银行的Lloyd Blankfein也都是师出哈佛门下。笔者本人也是在哈佛大学的研究生院毕业的，也认为那里接受的学术培训可以说是人生的无价之宝，弥足珍贵。但是，笔者感到课堂下，学到的东西比课堂上更多。下面就是在笔者的职业生涯中非常关键的三堂课，而这些是哈佛的教室中所不曾讲授过的。

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.

第一堂课是我自己的学生身上学到的。我在上研究生的时候，曾经帮助老师教学，教授中国现代历史和政治体系的课程。在上课的时候，我可能从学生身上学到的，要比他们比我学到的要多。

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，学生都会来到我的那个可以俯瞰哈佛大学校园的办公室，我们最后讨论的内容常常会超越中国的问题。我们讨论了学生们的希望，而且更常谈论到的是他们的恐怖。他们常常会恐惧不能赶上同伴们的成就，或是不能达到他们父母的期望。

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.

他们认为这种恐惧应该是每个人都会感受到的。有钱人家的孩子会想他们能够来到哈佛全是因为自己有这样的家庭;少数族裔的学生担心他们是因为肤色才到了哈佛;家庭条件不好的人担心他们不够富有，来到哈佛压力很大。作为他们的老师，我知道他们每一个人来到这里都是实至名归的，虽然其中理由各不一样。但是他们自己想要衡量和他人相比自己做得如何不太容易，而这一点助长了他们的不安全感。