[originaltext] [16]What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty

[16]What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.
    At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, but I was good at passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.
Now I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known heartbreak or hardship. Talent and intelligence never yet immunized anyone against the willfulness of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of quiet privilege and contentment.
    However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. [17]You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown.
    Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had gone off, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears that my parents had for me, and that I had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.
    Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. [18]That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea then how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.
16. What did the speaker fear most at the graduates’ age?
17. What might be one’s driving force according to the speaker?
18. What did the speaker say about the seven years after her graduation?