Picture Dictionary & Books : Free for English Learner!

My Harvard degree and other awards are emblems of the experiences which led me to them.

The wood paneled lecture halls, the colorful fall leaves, the hot vanilla Toscaninis, reading great novels in overstuffed library chairs, running through dining halls screaming: Ooh!

Ah! City steps! City steps! City steps! City steps!

It’s easy now to romanticize my time here.

But I had some very difficult times here too. Not good.”

If only I could finish my work, even if it took eating a jumbo pack of sour Patch Kids to get me through a single 10-page paper.

I felt that I’d accomplished a great feat.

I repeat to myself “Done. Not good.”

A couple of years ago, I went to Tokyo with my husband and I ate at the most remarkable sushi restaurant.

I don’t even eat fish. I’m vegan. So that tells you how good it was.

Even with just vegetables, this sushi was the stuff you dreamed about.

The restaurant had six seats.

My husband and I marveled at how anyone can make rice so superior to all other rice.

We wondered why they didn’t make a bigger restaurant and be the most popular place in town.

Our local friend explained to us that all the best restaurants in Tokyo are that small and do only one type of dish:

sushi or tempura or teriyaki, because they want to do that thing well and beautifully.

And it’s not about quantity.

It’s about taking pleasure in the perfection and beauty of the particular.

I’m still learning now that it’s about good and maybe never done.

That the joy and work ethic and virtuosity we bring to the particular can impart a singular type of enjoyment to those we give to and of course, to ourselves.

In my professional life, it also took me time to find my own reasons for doing my work.

The first film I was in came out in 1994.

Again, appallingly, the year most of you were born.

I was 13 years old upon the film’s release and I can still quote what the New York Times said about me verbatim “Ms Portman poses better than she acts.”

The film had universally tepid critic response and went on to bomb commercially.

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