MBA Prof. Billiard的MBA课程Opeing Speech--From Echo

henry2000888

张俊锋@译海


“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” -- Confucius





我至今还大致记得 Billiard 教授当时的开场白：


It’s interesting yet sad to see many of us go through life saying and doing things that we don’t really understand, learning things that we don’t even know why we learn them.



Some people regard experience as learning. It might be, but most of the time, empiricists turn out to be wrong, yet many of us still believe them. But as we grow and learn more, we slowly begin to change some of our incorrect thinking. But it takes too long to digest the bitter fruits.



Learn by imitation is easy. But in doing so, you rest your own mind and let others rent space in your heads. Just like a parrot, even though it can fly, it prefers to stay in the same comfortable cage, eat the same dry seeds, and listen to the same words over and over again until it can say them easily. But a parrot is satisfied just to do the same thing everyday. In fact, we almost never see a parrot actually fly.



We are responsible to think and find out the truth for ourselves. It’s so important to keep learning by independent thinking. In other words, we need to use our mind to seek real knowledge. Opposite to parrots, eagles have an inner drive to explore everything out there. They have the courage to change and take risks. They are not afraid to leave their familiar and comfortable nest, soaring high, to explore new territory.



So, before we get down to the course. Ask yourself which bird you want to be? If you want to be a parrot kind of person, then you learn this course by imitation and let me do all the thinking. But you’ll never experience anything more other than calculating and filling the statements. However, if you want a full and exciting experience like an eagle, then you learn this course by reflection. Rather than numbers themselves, you would get the story behind the numbers. That is called “insight”. And that makes all the difference between an accountant and a finance executive.