你從小的愿望是什么？對世界充滿好奇的孩子們都曾有過膽大狂妄的回答，但我們大多數人長大后都選擇了談笑往昔，平淡生活。而本文作者似乎是個例外。成為飛行員是作者從小學就開始的夢想，但年少的他并不知道這是一個學費貴、課程難、對體格和心理素質都要求極高的職業。當17歲在美國拿到了第一張飛行執照時，作者第一次真真正正地站在了夢想的大門口。然而他的選擇是……

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.

文章轉載自“香港文化交流工作室”（Hong Kong Cultural Exchange Workshop）。作者介紹：馬鐘文（Albert Ma），20歲，目前在美國Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University學習飛行專業。他從小熱愛飛行，17歲在美國拿到了第一張飛行執照。

Vocabulary

1. Antarctica: 南極洲。

2. aviation: 航空，飛行。

3. rigorous: 嚴格的。

4. marginal: 勉強夠格的。

5. motto: 座右銘。

6. flight instrument: 飛行儀表。

7. 不知道也沒有關系，這也是為什么那么多人選擇了美國文理學院的通識教育，他們堅信自己不論做什么，不論何時做，都是可以成功的。Liberal Arts education: 博雅教育，又譯為：人文教育、通識教育、素質教育等，是一種基于社會中的人的通才素質教育，不同于專業教育和專才教育。

8. Embry Riddle Aeronautical University: 安柏瑞德航空大學，是美國一所私立航天航空科技大學；defer: 推遲，延期。

9. dumbest: 蠢的（dumb的最高級）。

10. fail: 令……失望，辜負了……的信任。

11. 溝通技巧、社會技能、為人謙遜和有擔當、誠信可靠……我們的教育體系并不看重這些人生成功所需的重要技能，而且一個學生如果只坐在教室里聽課是永遠學不到這些技能的。

12. NGO: 民間組織，非政府組織（Non-Governmental Organization）；underprivileged: 貧困的，物質條件差的；session: 學期，上課時間：extracurricular: （活動等）課外的。

13. workload: 工作量。

（來源：英語學習雜志 編輯：董靜）