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编者按:
每个人迟早都会在一些人生重大事情上遇到挫折——无论它是工作、梦想，还是一份感情。我相信，被法学院开除使我成了一名更好的法官。它确实教我认识了人性的弱点，体会到给予人们第二次机会的必要性。
但失败也使我懂得，人生之路充满了未知的变数，要充分利用这些变数，你就不能让自己被一次挫折击垮，也不能让别人束缚你的手脚。
The Day I Flunked out of Law School
The dean of the University of Colorado School of Law decided that I couldn’t return to classes next fall because my grades were too low. He said I would never make a lawyer.
Even today words cannot describe my upset. I’d never really failed at anything significant.
After all, the University of Colorado at Boulder was a Taj Mahal—the door to judicial clerkships and prestigious law firms.
But I decided to try again and went to see Clifford Mills, the dean of Westminster College of Law—a poor man’s school with no tenured professors or law review.
After reading my college transcript, Dean Mills let me enroll at Westminster, on one condition, that I repeat all my first-year classes, this time paying attention.
“I’ll be looking over your shoulder,” he said.
One door had closed. But others opened.
Given a second chance, I worked much harder, becoming fascinated by the law of evidence.
In my second year the professor who taught the course passed away. I was asked to take over—inconceivable at a law school like Boulder.Evidence became a lifelong specialty, and for many years I taught classes on the subject for judges, law students and practicing lawyers throughout the country. Meanwhile I worked days in the Denver City Attorney’s office as a clerk. It was anything but glamorous. But it led to a job as an assistant city attorney after graduation. I became a county judge at age 28, one of Denver’s youngest.
Later I was elected as a district judge, and then appointed by the President to the federal judiciary as a U.S. district judge.And, ultimately, I did return to Boulder—to receive the University of Colorado’s George Norlin Award, and an honorary doctorate of law.
Sooner or later everyone will fall short at something important to them—whether it be a job, a dream or a relationship.
Flunking out of law school, I believe, made me a better judge, it certainly taught me about the frailties of the human condition, and about the need to give people second chances. But failure also taught me that life is a road with unpredictable forks and unexpected tomorrows.To take advantage of them, you can’t let yourself be destroyed by a defeat, or let others set the limits on your ability to achieve.
