在史丹佛的暑期學校，需要附上一篇500~700字的essay。這篇essay不只是簡單的自我介紹，而是要你回答一個死板的問題，近而考驗你的想像力，看你能不能在近乎離題的灰色地帶遊走，在千千百百篇essay裡，讓考官另眼相看。
說真的，這個題目沒什麼好寫的。
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題目：
Bystander behavior is defined as seeing another person being hurt, and doing nothing about it. Examples are bullying and sexual harassment. If you observed such behavior, what would you do?
我的回應：The day I entered third grade was the day I decided that I wanted to be one of those people who had a lot of people attend their funerals; And according to this article I read, the way to do it was to a lot of people and have them come by moral obligation.
It was then natural for me to help out in school by identifying problematic students to the teacher, demonstrating my support of gender-equality by purposefully targeting girls in dodge-ball, and lending out my toys.
After a while, though, I realized two things:
First, all the toys I lended out were returned either dirty, broken, or not at all. There was this once when I lended a guy my Game Boy, and he deleted my level 100 Pokémon save-file.
No victories came without sacrifices, I guess, if those sacrifices actually lead to victories, which directly brought me to my second discovery: Only part of the benefactee showed any appreciation. In fact, some of them started to avoid me – especially that guy who deleted my save-file.
I did a statistical analysis and the results were shocking. It turned out that whenever I helped a person who asked for my help, they ended up liking me; Whenever I helped a person who needed the help but didn’t ask for help, they ended up disliking me and my toys ended up breaking.
The logical conclusion would be to give help only when it’s wanted. That’s exactly what I did and all was well.
……but then I turned 15. Suddenly my strategy of sitting around and waiting for people to ask me for help ceased to work. They still came for academic help, yes, but instead of requesting explanations of difficult concepts, they just wanted answers without having to go through the difficult task of thinking.
Now that being a homework-helper was no longer an option, I turned my attention to volunteering to be the presenter in PowerPoint-group-projects. That was fun at first, but soon people just straight-out expected me to be the one talking in every situation where speaking is required.
There would be a small-group discussion, and when the teacher asked the groups to share their results, everybody in my group would just stared at me like me answering questions was the most natural thing ever.
The worst part was, in the rare occasion when the planets were aligned, that any of them wanted to present, I ended up not satisfied with what came out. There was nothing I could do because criticizing them wouldn’t make them want to come to my funeral.
There were also the physics labs. Every once in a while, we were required to conduct an experiment in groups and individually we would write the lab report. This meant I got to contribute in the experimental part(that I had to do anyway) without having to take any sacrifice on my grade. It was no coincidence that my group always finished the experiment 20-minus before the other groups.
“What? You want to merge with my group so we only need to do the experiment once? Sure, why not, I don’t see any reas - what do you mean you don’t trust my calculations? Why don’t you check it with your calculator? … See! I was right. Now, onto the next st – what do you mean I’m too fast?”
Geez, I never know things would be this difficult. Not only do I need permission, I am also risking my toys, grades, and sanity whenever I give people a hand.
I really want to say “Screw helping people.” It’s the most sensible thing to do; But, unfortunately, I can’t do that.
My bizarre childhood dream had given me a habit of helping people in need, and I will continue to do so if only out of instinct.
So yes, I will stand up and help the sexually harassed and the bullied, despite the inevitable consequences of getting myself sexual harassed, injured, or killed.
Hopefully the victims I saved would come to my funeral.
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