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Take It Easy to Learn Better
不慌不忙学得更好
Donald A. Laird
唐纳德·A·莱尔德
Spare-time learners are usually the best learners. Their rate of learning is helped, of course, by the fact that they want to learn and consequently try to learn. But they are also helped by circumstances — they are forced to take their learning by easy stages.
业余时间的学习者往往是最成功的学习者。当然，他们的学习进度得益于这样一个事实： 他们想学，因而努力去学。但他们也得益于自身所处的环境——迫不得已他们只好从容地、循序渐进地学习。
Edgar Burchell, the janitor who became a leading medical scientist and teacher, is an example. He was one of nine children, and he had to leave school and go to work before finishing the grades. At twenty-two he was scrubbing floors twelve hours a day at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary.
埃德加·伯切尔，那个后来成为卓越的医学家、教师的大楼管理工，就是一个例子。他是一家9个孩子中的一个，没念完小学就不得不辍学打工。22岁时,他在纽约眼耳科医院每天擦洗12小时地板。
But during his lunch hour he attended staff lectures, carefully pretending he was in the lecture hall for janitor work, but drinking in every word that was said. When his twelve-hourshift was over he remained at the infirmary, watching the interns in the laboratory. "Teach me how you do these things," he said to them, "and I'll do them for you." Then, from hissmall savings, he bought a second-hand anatomy text which he studied in his other spare moments.
可他利用午餐时间去听为医务人员举办的讲座。他小心翼翼地装作在演讲厅里做清洁工作，但却如饥似渴地记住听到的每一个字。他干完12小时一班之后还留在医院里，在实验室里看实习医生工作。“如果你们能教会我怎么做这些活，”他对他们说，“我就来替你们做。”他还用微薄的积蓄买了本旧的解剖学教材，在别的空闲时间钻研。
Picking up his education in this way, Burchell made himself one of the world's authorities on bacteriology and on the anatomy of the head. Surgeons from all over the country consulted this former janitor before performing puzzling head operations. He had never been a medical student, yet he was given one of those rare honorary degrees of Doctor of Science.
伯切尔就靠这样自学，使自己成为世界上细菌学和脑部解剖学方面的权威之一。全国各地的外科医生在进行脑部疑难手术前，都来请教这位过去的大楼管理工。他从来没上过医学院，却被授予最难得的荣誉学位之一——科学博士。
