Yes, if you are in an environment where everyone wants to get ahead and everyone wants to save face.

For example, if you are a university teacher and someone asks you "I'm going to be a professor soon", can you say "I just want to teach well"?

For example, if you are a civil servant and someone asks you "I will be promoted soon", can you say "I just want to do my job well"?

For example, if you run a company, people ask you, "Did you make a lot of money?" Can you say, "I just want to make good products and services?"

If you ask relatives and friends similar questions, I think you will only get two answers. They just got a promotion and a raise, or they are on their way.

If I say that there is a teacher who teaches students, "I just hope everyone can have the courage to be the most ordinary person", do you think this teacher is crazy, or do you question "where can there be such a teacher?" Then I tell you, there is such a teacher, and he is Mei Yiqi, president of Tsinghua University.

He teaches students to be ordinary, so how can he be ordinary?

Be a "quiet gentleman". Mei Yiqi has a mantra-"I follow the crowd". As the principal of a school, he seldom expresses his views first, always lets the professors finish, and then carries out them according to the opinions of most professors. So that the students made up a jingle: "Probably or maybe, but we dare not say, but the school always thinks it seems impossible."

Reduce the power of the headmaster. When Mei Yiqi became president, he did not implement the National Tsinghua University Charter formulated by the National Government, but implemented the Tsinghua University Organization Outline drawn up by Tsinghua himself, and automatically gave up the power granted by the government to the president, making the "Professors' Association" the highest authority of the school, while the president himself was just a "virtual monarch".

Hands-on Mei Yiqi thought that teachers were the most important thing in universities, so he personally went to the railway station to meet Zhao Yuanren and went to the Summer Palace to attend Wang Guowei's funeral. Schools moved around with the progress of the war. He searched for school buildings, bought land and saved money everywhere. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he organized the relocation to ensure that furniture, cookers and complete sets of tableware were delivered one by one on the day when every faculty member moved back to the Tsinghua campus. After his death, people opened the handbag he had been carrying with him and found that it contained Tsinghua University's financial ledger, and even bought two notebooks in the ledger.

What he does is something that those who have a good face and want to get ahead disdain to do. What's good about this for him?

As far as academic achievements are concerned, there are not many writings and anecdotes about celebrities by Mei Yiqi. In addition to expounding his educational thoughts in "A Solution to the University" published during his tenure at National Southwest Associated University, there is also a famous saying in his inaugural speech that "the so-called scholar is not an architect, but also a master".

From the perspective of income, Mei Yiqi himself canceled the privileges and treatment of the principal, and his life still depends on family subsidies. Once, when giving a class to a student, Mei Yiqi rushed to the classroom panting, explaining, "My wife went to work in the morning and asked me to look after the pastry stall for her. When she couldn't finish it, I lost the stall and ran over. But today's business is really good, and there are many people buying cakes. "

Judging from the life in Mei Yiqi, it is no good to be the most ordinary person. People who want to write his biography also think he is cold.

Mei Yiqi, born in 1889, graduated from Nankai Middle School and was admitted to Baoding Zhili College. After that, I was admitted to the first batch of boxer indemnity students studying in the United States. 1965438+In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering of Worcester Institute of Technology and returned to China as a lecturer in the Department of Physics of Tsinghua University. 1926 was elected as the provost by the professor, and later served as the supervisor of the student supervision office in Tsinghua University. 193 1 year as president of Tsinghua university. After that, 1962 died, and the president of Tsinghua University was almost the only thing he did.

Why does it take courage to be the most ordinary person? Because it's hard to be the most ordinary person.

What Mei Yiqi wants to be most is to run Tsinghua University well according to Tsinghua University's school purpose and system. Such an "ordinary person" is not easy to do.

It takes will to establish the authority of the system. Mei Yiqi's nephew, Mei Zuwu, applied for Tsinghua, and his grades were not enough. He didn't use his power to enter the back door for his nephew, so he had to go to Beiyang University. A few years later, his youngest daughter, Mei Zufen, also applied for Tsinghua, and her grades were not up to standard. Mei Zufen went to yenching university.

It takes wisdom to achieve the purpose according to the reason of the purpose rather than the form. Mei Yiqi's intention is not just to obey the rules. For talents, Mei Yiqi spared no effort. China has only a junior high school education. He was first recruited to Tsinghua University for training, then changed from a department librarian to a teaching assistant, and then sent to Cambridge University for "visiting study", and finally was directly hired as a professor.

In the era of frequent wars, it takes courage to deal with all aspects of relations. The students rebelled against the soldiers who came to the school for inspection, grabbed their guns (there was an order not to use bullets before the military action), detained the leader's head, overturned the transport vehicle, and the military asked the principal to hand over the list of students and accommodation who made trouble. Mei Yiqi couldn't stop the army from moving, so he gave them a list of last year's names and residences, so that the army couldn't arrest people.

It takes brains to keep one's position in a changing world. Mei Yiqi once said, "In a novel society, don't forget yourself". After going south, the Kuomintang government invited Mei Yiqi to join the cabinet many times, but Mei Yiqi refused. He told reporters: "If you don't come out, you will feel sorry for your friends in the south. When I came, I became an official and could not explain it to my friends in the north. " This is consistent with his statement that he wanted to protect school property from the government before leaving the mainland. Throughout his life, he pursued the middle position of school independence.

Being the most ordinary person, you can't make a name for yourself, and the result of your efforts can only be to focus on the development of your career.

Chen Daisun recalled that when he went to Tsinghua to teach in 1929, the number of applicants was not large. He planned to enroll 150 students, but only about 400 people signed up. Mei Yiqi has been the president for less than 10, and the whole school has set up five colleges and 26 departments of arts, science, technology and agriculture, making Tsinghua a top university in China from a well-known school with no academic status.

After arriving in Taiwan Province Province, Mei Yiqi used the interest of the Tsinghua Foundation to set up the Tsinghua Institute of Atomic Science, the predecessor of Taiwan's Hsinchu Tsinghua University. Because he laid the foundation of Tsinghua in Taiwan Province Province, Mei Yiqi was called "President of Tsinghua on both sides of the Taiwan Strait". Later, Tsinghua students called him "the eternal headmaster" of Tsinghua.

There are many famous people in history, some are famous in history, some are notorious for thousands of years, and some have different opinions before and after death. "Gentlemen are famous all over the world, and slander follows", while Mei Yiqi had no rumors before his death and no slander after his death. This may be the result of his personal practice of "not talking much about politics, only paying attention to politics"

Compared with the professors he hired and the students trained by Tsinghua, Mei Yiqi is an ordinary person. As far as what he has done is concerned, it cannot be summarized by the word "ordinary", although "being the most ordinary person" is his own goal.

I often think, who is supporting the continuous development of this world, are those people with great fame and high income? The vigorous things done by some celebrities in history did have an impact, but those who buried themselves in their work silently were precisely those who guarded the fire in the dark and comforted their souls in the cold winter.

If there are fewer and fewer such people, it will be easy to understand. It is common for them to steal university teachers' papers, build relationships with civil servants, and manufacture and sell fake and shoddy goods.

No matter how capable a person is, he will die. Only by leaving your career and spirit behind and letting thousands of Qian Qian people walk in their footprints can it last forever. The most important thing Mei Yiqi did in his life was to be the president of Tsinghua University. He doesn't have much fame, but Tsinghua's fame is not as good as Mei Yiqi's.

I hope more people can understand Mei Yiqi's teaching "Be the most ordinary person". More people understand this sentence, and the foundation of this world will be solid.