在接触相机之前，我为想要拍摄的映像列了一张清单：带有水珠的蛛网、倒映在屏幕上的鬼脸、拿在手上的镜子只能看到我的眼睛、猫跑向镜头时露出的腹部条纹、井盖、手拿一块半透明的橘子、牛仔裤的中部、甩到一侧与手臂齐长的秀发、脚底、一张满是肥皂泡的脸。我认为这类似与塑造自我，也许我会得到些启示，即使我从未拍过这些照片。
我已经了解到传记作者将要谈论的贯穿他们一生的双重压力。这双重压力体现在：我开心地在实验室书本的空白处写东西，旁边是一张有关实验数据的图表，“今天把它隔离，美丽的纤细的绳子，蛛网在表面下悬浮着，十分精致的植物的卷须，灰白色的，热情的，雅致的DNA！这就是DNA！太漂亮了！”
我本应该是一个多才多艺的人，那样我可以选择我喜欢的领域自然科学和人文科学。我的思维在漫游，我瞪大眼睛，去看这无穷的空洞和曲线，我应该飞起来，去吞噬空气，并将其融入我的血液里，学习！
这些元素是没有边际的，但是，如果要分开它们，我能在药品和文字周围看到一篇混乱。最好的解决办法是把它们融为一个整体，然后我就可以为它们拍照了。啊哈，它已经在那了，不是吗？你看不到它吗？这让我想起了戴达罗斯，所有的一切都成为塑造我的力量，希望它可以让我获得自由。
音乐就是这样一个元素，参与一次合唱团演奏的经历是对主观的一次调查，这也是对海森堡不确定性原理的一次回忆：一个人越了解粒子的速度，就越难确定它的位置。换句话说，观察者的位置影响到观察的物质，尽管科学是以事实为依据。当我看到琶音消失的时候，我看到小提琴手在明亮的雨点上演奏，单簧管的节奏由蓝色变为黑色，一把长笛的和音更让我们倾倒，这样诗意的安静，被响亮的喇叭声打破。或许，如果你在观众席上，你会体会到其他的感受。
我认为划艇是一项能让我沉思的运动。这些声音，在我闭上眼睛时依然可以听到。我们在水面上天空的倒影中划过，然后倾斜。我们对领导者的地位不予理会，并且还有些许嘲笑，因为我们已经是一个整体，不再需要领导。我们听到浆划过水面的声音，仿佛在说，我们这里没有领导者。
这时我听到所有人的回音。领队说：“不要乱来，听从指挥”教练说：“不要乱来，观察你前面的人是什么做的”
我写下一些关于性格的词汇：他们怎么用这些词，他们怎么处理和操作这些词，他们怎么做他们自己的事情；用一些危险的和不礼貌的词来讨论一些有歧义的观点、事物或现实的本质。或许我也是异想天开，但是，相信我，每个人总会在这些词的某个地方，都是这些词的功劳，我喜爱这些词。
我应该成为一名作家，但是我将会是一名医生，并且我会在哲学的压力之外塑造自我。
分析
这篇文章的成功之处在于它不仅告诉了我们作者是谁，而且也通过激动人心的语言和描述的趣闻轶事，展现在我们面前的是作者多才多艺的一面。
文章的写作随着主题而变动。段与段之间的联系很强，几乎没有断层。就好像是在感受一股让人兴奋的意识流，很快的向着最后的高潮移动。
作者既让人觉得亲近有保持一种神秘感，TA和TA的读者建立了一种亲密的关系，同时TA还处于暗处，但是让读者跟随TA的思维跳跃。
作者将TA的各种想法展现出来，但是这些想法的联系没有太多解释。这里面带着一些有风险的不确定性，但却让人印象深刻，十分有效。
每个打算写这类文章的人应该注意，这样写的风险是很高的。这篇文章的读者会感觉到文章的整体思维有些乱七八糟。文章写了关于表面上相反事物的汇合，但是诗歌不应该忽略掉重要的内容。如果能有一个更直白的主题来帮助读者聚焦的话，这篇文章会更好。
总体来讲，虽然这篇essay大胆而充满激情的展现自己，很出众，但停留在思维阶段的写作让人觉得复杂和难以理解。
参考原文：
A Formation of Self
Before even touching the camera, I made a list of some of the photographs I would take: web covered with water, grimace reflected in the calculator screen, hand holding a tiny round mirror where just my eye is visible, cat’s striped underbelly as he jumps toward the lens, manhole covers, hand holding a translucent section of orange, pinkies partaking of a pinkie swear, midsection with jeans, hair held out sideways at arm’s length, bottom of foot, soap on face. This, I think is akin to a formation of self. Perhaps I have had the revelations even if the photos are nevertaken.
I already know the dual strains the biographers will talk about, strains twisting through a life. The combination is embodied here: I write joyfully, in the margin of my lab book, beside a diagram of a beaker, “Isolated it today, Beautiful wispy strands, spider webs suspended below the surface, delicate tendrils, cloudy white,lyrical, elegant DNA! This is DNA! So beautiful!”
I should have been a Renaissance man. It kills me to choose a field (to choose between the sciences and the humanities!). My mind roams, I wide-eyed, into infinite caverns and loops. I should fly! Let me devour the air, dissolve everything into my bloodstream, learn!
The elements are boundless, but, if asked to isolate them, I can see tangles around medicine and writing. The trick will be to integrate them into a whole, and thenmaybe I can take the photograph. Aahh, is it already there, no? Can’t you see it? Iinvoke the Daedalus in me, everything that has gone into making me, hoping it will be my liberation.
Music is one such element. The experience of plying in an orchestra from the inside is an investigation into subjectivity. It is reminiscent of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: the more one knows the speed of a particle, the less one knows its position. Namely the position of the observer matters and affects the substance of the observation; even science is embracing embodiment. I see splashes of bright rain in violin arpeggios fading away in singed circles, a clarinet solo fades blue to black, and a flute harmony leaves us moving sideways, a pregnant silence, the trumpets interrupt with the smell of lightning. Perhaps in the audience you would sense something else.
I think of rowing as meditation. Pshoow, huh, aaah; pshoow, huh, aaah. I can close my eyes and still hear it. We glide over reflected sky… and lean. And defy the request for “leadership positions,” laugh at it, because it misses the entire point, that we are integral, one organism. I hear the oars cut the water, shunk shunk; there are no leaders.
Once I heard an echo from all quarters. “Do not rush,” said the conductor, “follow the baton.” “Do not rush,” said the coach, “watch the body in front of you.” Do not rush.
I write about characters’ words: how they use words, how they manipulate them, how they create their own realities; words used dangerously, flippantly, talking at cross purposes, deliberately being vague; the nature of talking, of words and realities. Perhaps mine has been a flight of fancy too. But, come on, it’s in the words,a person, a locus, somewhere in the words. It’s all words. I love the words.
I should be a writer, but I will be a doctor, and out of the philosophical tension I willcreate a self.
ANALYSIS（分析）
This essay is a good example of an essay that shows rather than tells the reader who the author is. Through excited language and illustrative anecdotes, she offers a complex picture of her multifaceted nature.
The writing is as fluid as its subject matter. One paragraph runs into the next with little break for transition or explicit connection. It has the feel of an ecstatic stream-of-consciousness, moving rapidly toward a climactic end.
The author is as immediate as she is mysterious. She creates and intimate relationship with her reader, while continuously keeping him/her “in the dark” as she jumps from one mental twist to another.
She openly exposes her charged thoughts, yet leaves the ties between them uncemented. This creates an unpredictability that is risky but effective.
Still, one ought to be wary in presenting as essay of this sort. The potential for obliqueness is high, and, even here, the reader is at times left in confusion regarding the coherence of the whole. Granted the essay is about confluence of seeming opposites, but poetic license should not obscure important content. This particular essay could have been made stronger with a more explicit recurring theme to help keep the reader focused.
In general, though, this essay stands out as a bold, impassioned presentation of self. It lingers in the memory as an entangled web of an intricate mind.
注：出自哈佛成功ESSAY50篇第一版。
