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2024年3月26日发(作者：)

Unit 2 College Pressures

Dear Carlos: I desperately need a dean’s excuse for my chem.（化学） midterm

（期中考试）, which will begin in about one hour. All I can say is that I totally blew it

this week. I’ve fallen incredibly（难以置信地，非常地）, inconceivably（不可思议地）

behind.

敬爱的卡洛斯院长：还有一个小时就要化学期中考试了，我急切需要一个院长给我点

建议。我唯一能说的就是，我这周过得浑浑噩噩，课业落下一大截。

Carlos: Help! I am anxious to hear from you. I’ll be in my room and won’t

leave it until I hear from you. Tomorrow is the last day for…

帮帮我！我非常需要你的回应！我会一直在房间里等，直到你给我回应。明天就是最

后一天...

Carlos: I left town because I started bugging out again. I stayed up all night to

finish a take-home make-up exam and am typing it to hand in on the tenth. It was

due on the fifth. PS: I’m going to the dentist. Pain is pretty bad.

我离开城镇是因为我又得赶时间开溜了。我熬了一整晚做完家庭完成的考试，然后打

印出来在第十周上交。规定截止时间是第十五周。PS:我要去看牙医。牙疼的厉害。

Carlos: Probably by Friday I’ll be able to get back to my studies. Right now,

I’m going to take a long walk. This whole thing has taken a lot out of me.

也许周五我能赶回来继续学习。现在，我要走一段好远的路了。这些事情让我疲惫不

堪。

Carlos: I’m really up the proverbial（谚语的，众所周知的）creek（小溪）. The

problem is I really bombed the history final. Since I need that course for my major

I…

我真的是有大麻烦了。我考砸了历史期末考。由于我的专业要求学这门课，我......

Carlos: Here follows a tale of woe. I went home this weekend, had to help my

Mom, and caught a fever so didn’t have much time to study. My professor…

讲个悲伤的故事。我这周末回家，帮我妈做事，结果发烧了，没怎么学习。我们教授...

Carlos: Aargh! Trouble. Nothing original but everything’s piling up at once.

To be brief, my job interview….

不是吧！真遭罪。祸不单行啊。话说，我的工作面试...

Hey Carlos, good news! I’ve got mononucleosis（单核细胞增多症）!

好消息！我得了单核细胞增多症！

Who are these wretched（可怜的） supplicants（祈求者）, scribbling（乱写，

潦草地书写） notes so laden（苦恼的） with anxiety（焦虑，渴望）, seeking such

miracles of postponement（延期） and balm（香油，镇痛软膏）? They are men and

women who belong to Branford College（布兰福德学院）, one of the twelve

residential colleges （住宿学院） at Yale University, and the messages are just a few

of the hundreds they left for their dean, Carlos Hortas - often slipped（塞入） under

his door at - last year.

这些可怜的祈求者是谁？字条上潦草的字迹如此痛苦焦虑。乞求着延期的奇迹和止痛

剂。这些男女都是布兰福德学院，耶鲁大学12个住宿学院之一的学生，而以上不过是他

们给院长Carlos Hortas成百纸条中的寥寥几个。去年，这些纸条总是被塞入他的办公室

门里，在早上4点。

But students like the ones who wrote those notes can also be found on

campuses from coast to coast - especially in New England and many other private

colleges across the country that have high academic standards and highly

motivated students. Nobody could doubt that the notes are real. In their urgency

and their gallows humor（黑色幽默，绞刑架上的幽默） they are authentic（真实的）

voices of a generation that is panicky（恐慌的，惊慌失措的） to succeed.

然而像这样写小纸条的学生，在全国各地是常见的——尤其在新英格兰，很多有高水

平学术和高度自发自觉的学生的私立院校。没人会怀疑这些纸条真实性。从这些迫切性和

黑色幽默不难看出一代人迫切渴望成功的真实声音。

My own connection with the message writers is that I am master of Branford

College. I live in its Gothic quadrangle and know the students well. (We have 485 of

them.) I am privy to their hopes and fears - and also their stereo music and their

piercing cries in the dead of night (“Does anybody ca-a-are?”). If they went to

Carlos to ask how to get through tomorrow, they come to me to ask how to get

through the rest of their lives.

我是耶鲁大学布兰福德学院的院长。我住在校内，非常了解学生。（我们有485名学

生。）我常听他们诉说自己的希望和恐惧——也常听他们的立体声音乐和他们在夜深人静时

发出的刺耳喊叫（“有什么人关心吗？”）。他们问Carlos 明天怎么办，他们到我这儿来，

问我如何度过余生。

Mainly I try to remind them that the road ahead is a long one and that it will

have more unexpected turns that they think. There will be plenty of time to change

jobs, change careers, change whole attitudes and approaches. They do not want to

hear such liberating news. They want a map - right now - that they can follow

unswerving to career security, financial security, social security and, presumably, a

prepaid grave.

我主要是试图提醒他们，前面的路途漫长，沿途中的曲折将比他们想象的要多。将来

有时候会改变工作，改变职业，改变整个的态度和处理问题的方式。他们不想听这种无关

紧要的消息。他们现在就想要一张地图，能据以直接通向业保障、经济保障、社会保障，

也许还通向一座预购的坟墓。

What I wish for all students is some release from the clammy（湿冷的） grip 紧

握），（柄，支配） of the future. I wish them a chance to savor （品尝） each segment

部分）of their education as an experience in itself and not as a grim（冷酷的，残忍

的） preparation for the next step. I wish them the right to experiment, to trip and

fall, to learn that defeat is as instructive （有益的，教育性的） as victory and is not

the end of the world.

我的希望是所有学生能从未来的严酷无情中得到一些解脱。我希望他们有机会把他们

每一阶段的教育纯粹作为一种经历来享受，而不是作为一种为下一步作准备的令人厌倦的

要求。我希望他们有权利失误、有权利跌倒，并懂得失败同胜利一样有教育意义，而不是

世界的末日。

My wish, of course, is naïve. One of the few rights that America does not

proclaim （宣告，公布） is the right to fail. Achievement is the national god,

venerated（尊敬） in our media – the million-dollar athlete, the wealthy executive

– and glorified in our praise（赞扬） of possessions（财产）. In the presence of such

a potent（强有力的）state religion, the young are growing up old.

当然，我的希望是天真的。在美国人没有声明拥有的为数不多的权利之中，有一个便

是失败的权利。成就是民族之神，它在我们的媒体中受到崇拜——身价百万的运动员，富

有的主管人员——在我们对财富的赞扬中得到荣耀。年轻人就是在这样一种强有力的国教

的熏陶下长大的。

I see four kinds of pressure working on college students today: economic

pressure, parental pressure, peer pressure, and self-induced pressure. It's easy to

look around for villains— to blame the colleges for charging too much money, the

professors for assigning too much work, the parents for pushing their children too

far, the students for driving themselves too hard. But there are no villains（坏人）,

only victims.

我发现有四种压力影响着今天的大学生：经济上的压力，父母的压力，同伴的压力，

和自己导致的压力。四处寻找罪魁祸首并不难——指责大学收费太高，指责教授布置作业

太多，指责父母望子成龙过于心切，指责学生把自己逼得太紧。但罪魁祸首是没有的，只

有受害者。

“In the late 1960s,” one dean told me, “the typical question that I got from

students was ‘Why is there so much suffering in the world?’ or ‘How can I

make a contribution?’ Today it’s ‘Do you think it would look better for getting

into low school if I did a double major in history and political science, or just

majored in one of them?’ ” Many other deans confirmed this pattern. One said:

“They’re trying to find an edge（边缘，优势） – the intangible（无形的，难以言

喻的） something that will look better on paper if two students are about equal.”

“1960年代末，”一位院长对我说，“学生问我的典型问题是“为什么世界多磨难？”

或“我能做些什么？”如今问的是“你觉得，如果我学历不高但有历史和政治科学的双学

位，会不会比较好？或者只是学其中一门？”其他院长也面临这样的的问题。其中一个说：

“他们尝试找到一种优势——当两个学生差不多的时候，可以让成绩看起来更好的无形东

西。”

Note the emphasis on looking better. The transcript has become a sacred

document, the passport to security. How one appears on paper is more important

than how one appears in person. A is for Admirable and B is for Borderline, even

though, in Yale's official system of grading, A means "excellent" and B means "very

good". Today, looking very good is no longer good enough, especially for students

who hope to go on to law school or medical school. They know that entrance into

the better schools will be an entrance into the better law firms and better medical

practices where they will make a lot of money. They also know that the odds are

harsh. Yale Law School, for instance, matriculates 170 students from an applicant

pool of 3,700; Harvard enrolls 550 from a pool of 7,000.

对看起来更好的追求。使得成绩单成为一种神圣的文本，安全的护照。这些书面表达

的内容比一个人本身表达的内容更重要。A是被艳羡的，B是勉强接受的，即使在耶鲁大

学官方评分系统里，A是“极佳”，B是“非常好”。如今，非常好已经不够好，尤其是

对于那些想继续法律或医学学习的学生。他们知道更好的学校意味着更好的就业公司，更

好的医疗实践能让他们金银满钵。他们还知道成功很难。以耶鲁大学的法学院为例，3700

个申请者只有170个被录取；哈佛大学7000申请者中录取550个。

It’s all very well for those of us who write letters of recommendation（推荐信）

for our students to stress the qualities of humanity that will make them good

lawyers or doctors. And it’s nice to think that admission officers are really reading

our letters and looking for the extra dimension（方面） of commitment（承诺，保

证，委托） or concern. Still, it would be hard for a student not to visualize these

officers shuffling（洗牌） so many transcripts studded（镶嵌） with As that they

regard a B as positively shameful.

对于我们这些做院长的人来说，为学生写推荐信，并在信中强调学生的人文素养与品

质倒也是件好事，这些素养与品质也将使他们成为优秀的律师或医生。同样值得高兴的是，

招生面试官在认真阅读我们的信的同时，也会留意其它能够确保学生品质的证书或是有关

文件。然而，一个学生很难想象到的是，面试官已经阅遍无数标满了A的成绩单，在他们

眼中，一个B就会被理所当然地认为是可耻的。

The pressure is almost as heavy on students who just want to graduate and

get a job. Long gone are the days of the “gentleman’s C”, when students

journeyed through college with a certain relaxation, sampling a wide variety of

courses - music, art, philosophy, classics, anthropology, poetry, religion - that

would send them out as liberally educated men and women. If I were an employer

I would rather employ graduates who have this range and curiosity than those

who narrowly pursued safe subjects and high grades. I know countless students

whose inquiring minds exhilarate me. I like to hear the play of their ideas. I don't

know if they are getting As or Cs, and I don't care. I also like them as people. The

country needs them, and they will find satisfying jobs. I tell them to relax. They

can't.

对于想毕业去找工作的学生来说，这种压力也是几乎一样沉重的。拿个C等成绩便万

事大吉的日子早已过去了，那时的学生可以轻松地度过大学生活，广泛涉猎各门课程：音

乐、艺术、哲学、古希腊罗马文学、人类学，诗歌，宗教等，这些课程把一批批经受过人

文教育的学生送出校门。如果我是雇主，我宁愿雇佣那些有这种视野和好奇心的毕业生，

而不是那些囿于追求简单科目和高分的毕业生。我所认识的许多学生都能以他们勤学好问

的头脑使振奋起来。我喜欢听他们的想法。我不知道他们考试成绩是A还是C，我不在乎。

我也喜欢作为人而存在的他们。国家需要他们，他们也会找到令自己满意的工作。我告诉

他们对未来放松一点，而他们往往放松不下来。

Nor can I blame them. They live in a brutal economy. Tuition, room, and board

at most private college now comes to at least $ 7,000, not counting books and fees.

This might seem to suggest that the colleges are getting rich. But they are equally

battered by inflation. Tuition covers only 60 percent of what it costs to educate a

student, and ordinarily the remainder comes from what colleges receive in

endowments, grants, and gifts. Now the remainder keeps being swallowed by the

cruel costs – higher every year – of just opening the doors. Heating oil is up.

Insurance is up. We are witnessing in America the creation of a brotherhood of

paupers – colleges, parents, and students, joined by the common bond of debt.

我也不能责怪他们。他们生活在残酷的经济体制下。大多数私立学校的学费、住宿费

和学费达到至少7000美元，这其中还不包括书本费和杂费。这也似乎暗示着大学正在变

得富有。然而，大学会受到通货膨胀的打击。在大学将一名学生培育成才所需的成本里，

学费只占了百分之60，其余部分来自其在赞助、赠款和礼物上获得的收入。如今，只要一

打开门办校，成本就年年上涨，这剩下的百分之40的价值因而不断缩水，油价在上涨，

保险费在上涨，什么都在涨。我们在美国目睹着一个贫困群体的创立 —— 由于背负巨债，

大学、父母和学生们都一同落入了身无分文的境地。

Today it is not unusual for a student, even if he works part time at college and

full time during the summer, to accrue $ 5,000 in loans after four years - loans that

he must start to repay within one year after graduation. Exhorted at

commencement to go forth into the world, he is already behind as he goes forth.

How could he not feel under pressure throughout college to prepare for this day

of reckoning? I have used “he”, incidentally, only for brevity. Women at Yale are

under no less pressure to justify their expensive education to themselves, their

parents, and society. In fact, they re probably under more pressure. For although

they leave college superbly equipped to bring fresh leadership to traditionally

male job, society hasn’t yet caught up with this fact.

如今，一个学生，甚至是一个上学时部分时间打工，暑假里全日打工的学生，在四年

之后欠下5，000美元债务的情况并不罕见——这笔债务学生必须在毕业后一年之内开始

偿还（顺便说一句，并非像许多非大学生的人们所以为的那样都是低息贷款）。虽然在毕业

典礼上学生们被鼓励迈步走向社会，但他们刚出发就已经落后了。为准备迎接这一结帐之

日，他们整个大学期间又怎能不感压力沉重呢？耶鲁的女生比男生压力更大，因为她们要

向自己、父母和社会证明她们值得接受昂贵的教育。因为虽然她们离开大学时已经具备了

出众的才能，完全可以给一贯由男性从事的工作注入新鲜的领导力量，但是社会的进步还

没有到认识这一事实。

Along with economic pressure goes parental pressure. Inevitably, the two are

deeply intertwined.

伴随着经济压力的是来自父母的压力。这两者不可避免地深深交织在一起。

I see many students taking pre-medical courses with joyless tenacity. They go

off to their labs as if they were going to the dentist. It saddens me because I know

them in other corners of their life as cheerful people.

我看到学生们下定决心毫无欢乐地在修医学预科课程。他们去实验室，就像是去看牙

医。这使我感到悲哀，因为我知道他们在生活的其它方面都是些高高兴兴的人。

“Do you want to go to medical school?” I ask them.

“你想进医学院吗？”我问他们。

“I guess so,” they say, without conviction, or “Not really.”

“我想是这样的吧，”他们不能肯定地说，或者“并非真的想。”

“Then why are you going?”

“那你为什么还打算进呢？”

“Well, my parents want me to be a doctor. They’re paying all this money

”

“父母要我当医生。钱都是他们付的，而且……”

Poor students, poor parents. They are caught in one of the oldest webs of love

and duty and guilt. The parents mean well; they are trying to steer their sons and

daughters toward a secure future. But, the sons and daughters want to major in

history or classics or philosophy - subjects with no ‘practical’ value. Where is

the payoff on the humanities? It is not easy to persuade such loving parents that

the humanities do, indeed, pay off. The intellectual faculties developed by studying

subjects such as history and classics - and ability to synthesize and relate, to weigh

the cause and effect, to see events in perspective - are just the faculties that make

creative leaders in business or almost any general field. Still, many parents would

rather put their money on courses that point toward a specific profession - courses

that are pre-law, pre-med., pre-business, or as I sometimes heard it put,

‘pre-rich’.

可怜的学生们，可怜的父母们。他们被困在一张最古老的由爱与责任以及负疚感交错

的网中。父母们初衷良善，他们试图引导自己的儿女们通往一个有保障的未来。只是儿女

们想主修的是历史或文学——一些不“实用”的专业。读人文科学的回报在哪里呢？要说

服爱心拳拳的父母们人文科学确有回报，不是件容易的事。学习历史和文学之类的学科所

获得的智力——综合、相互联系、通因明果、洞察深入——正是那些在商界乃至几乎一切

领域具有创造力的领袖所必需的能力。然而，许多父亲们仍然宁愿将金钱花在职业指向明

确的课程上——法律预科、医学预科、商业预科——我有时称之为“财富预科”。

But, the pressure on students is severe. They are truly torn. One part of them

feels obligated to fulfill their parents’ expectations; after all, their parents are

older and presumably wiser. Another part tells them that the expectations that are

right for their parents are not right for them.

然而学生身上的压力就非常严重了。他们真的备受折磨。一方面他们觉得有义务实现

父母的期望，毕竟父母比自己年长，应该较为见多识广。另一方面，他们又觉得父母的期

望对于父母是合适的，但对于自己却未必合适。

I know a student who wants to be an artist. She is very obviously an artist and

will be a good one - she has already had several modest local exhibits. Meanwhile

she is growing as a well-rounded person and taking humanistic subjects that will

enrich the inner resources out of which her art will grow. But her father is strongly

opposed. He thinks that an artist is a ‘dumb’ thing to be. The student vacillates

and tries to please everybody. She keeps up with her art somewhat furtively and

takes some of the ‘dumb’ courses her father wants her to take - at least that are

dumb courses for her. She is a free spirit on a campus of tense students - no small

achievement in itself - and she deserves to follow her muse.

我认识一个想当艺术家的学生。她显然就是一名艺术家的样子，而且将会成为一名优

秀的艺术家——她的作品已经有过好几次小型本地展览了。同时，她也正在成长为一个多

才多艺的人；她正在攻读人文学科，这些学科的丰富内涵将会充实她的艺术素养。但她的

父亲对此强烈反对。他认为搞艺术是一个“愚蠢”的事情：艺术生总是踌躇不定，又试图

取悦所有人。而她暗自坚持了自己的艺术爱好，并按父亲要求去上一些“愚蠢”的课程——

至少这些课对她来说是显得愚蠢的。在校园里，在一群神经兮兮、又碌碌无为的学生之间，

她就像一个自由的灵魂——她顺从自己的本心是值得的。

Peer pressure and self-induced pressure are also intertwined, and they start

almost at the beginning of freshman year.

来自同伴的压力和自我导致的压力也是相互交织的，而且它们从一年级一开始就出现

了。

“I had a freshman student I’ll call Linda,” one dean told me. “Who came in

and said she was under terrible pressure because her roommate, Barbara, was

much brighter and studied all the time. I couldn’t tell her that Barbara had come

in two hours earlier to say the same thing about Linda.”

“我有一个一年级的学生, 我就称她为琳达吧，”一位老师告诉我，“她进来对我说

她的压力极大，因为她的室友芭芭拉比她聪明得多而且整天用功。我没法启口告诉她两个

小时之前芭芭拉也进来这样说过琳达。”

The story is almost funny - except that it is not. It is symptomatic of all the

pressures put together. When every student thinks every other student is working

harder and doing better, the only solution is to study harder still. I see students

going off to the library every night after dinner and coming back when it closes at

midnight. I wish they would sometimes forget about their peers and go to a movie.

I hear the clack of typewriters in the hours before dawn. I see the tension in their

eyes when exams are approaching and papers are due: “Will I get everything

done?”

这件事近乎可笑——但事实上并不可笑。这是所有种种综合的症状。每个学生都认为

别的学生更用功、学得更好时，唯一的办法便是更加努力地学习。我看见学生们每天晚上

吃完饭后就去图书馆，到半夜关门时才回来。我真希望他们能够有时候忘掉他们的同学，

去看一场电影。天亮以前几个小时我就听见打字机的敲击声。当考试来临，论文该交时，

我看到他们眼中的紧张；“我能完成所有的事情吗？”

Probably they will not. They will get sick. They will get ‘blocked’. They will

sleep. They will oversleep. They still bug out. Hey Carlos, HELP!

或许他们不能。他们会生病。他们会睡着。他们会睡过头。他们会退却。

Part of the problem is that they do more than they are expected to. A

professor will assign a five-page paper. Several students will start writing ten page

papers to impress him. Then more students will write ten page papers, and a few

will raise the ante to fifteen. Pity the poor student who is still just doing the

assignment.

出现这一问题的部分原因是：他们会远远超额完成任务。老师布置一篇5页的论文，

一些学生就会写上10页，而少数人甚至会把赌注升到15页。可怜那些仅仅写了5页的学

生。

“Once you have twenty or thirty percent of the student population

deliberately overexerting,” one dean points out, “It’s bad for everybody. When

a teacher gets more and more effort from his class, the student who is doing

normal work can be perceived as not doing well. The tactic works,

psychologically.”

一位系主任指出：“一旦20％或30％的学生刻意地去超量学习，对每个学生来说都

不是好事。当一位教师在班上看到越来越多的努力尝试，那些只是正常完成作业的学生就

会被看作是表现不够好。就心理上而言，这个策略还是有效的。”

Why can’t the professor just cut back and not accept longer papers? He can,

and he probably will. But by then term will be half over and the damage done.

Grade fever is highly contagious and not easily reversed. Besides, the professor’s

main concern is with his course. He knows his students only in relation to the

course and does not know that they are also overexerting in their other courses.

Not that it is really his business. He did not sign up for dealing with the students as

a whole person and with all the emotional baggage the student brought along

from home. That is what deans, masters chaplains, and psychiatrists are for.

为什么教授就不能要求学生删减论文，或是干脆不接受太长的文章了？他当然可以，

而且他很可能会这么做。但到那时，学生们的成绩就会下降一半，因此也会造成一些损失。

学生们对于成绩的狂热是易于传染，且不易逆转的。此外，教授主要关心的是他自己的课

程。他只知道学生会来上自己的课，而不知道这些人还需为其他课程奋笔疾书，那不关他

的事。他的确是来教书的，但他并不会负责处理学生们从家里带来的各种情感包袱。仿佛

这些工作应该由院长、专职教士、或是心理医生来负责。

To some extent this is nothing new: a certain number of professors have

always been self-contained islands of scholarship and shyness, more comfortable

with books than with people. But the new pauperism has widened the gap still

further, for professors who actually like to spend time with students do not have as

much time to spend. They are also overexerting. If they are young, they are busy

trying to publish in order not to perish, hanging by their fingernails onto a

shrinking profession. If they are old and tenured, they are buried under the duties

of administering departments - as departmental chairmen or members of

committees - which have been thinned out by the budgetary ax.

就某种程度而言，这并不是什么新鲜事：一些教授潜心学术，不善交际，犹如一座封

闭的孤岛。他们与书本在一起比与人类在一起感到更自在。但是这种新型的交流匮乏进一

步扩大了教师与学生之间的鸿沟。即使有些教授愿意与学生在一起，他们也没有那么多的

时间。他们也在超负荷地工作。在他们还年轻的时候，他们又要忙着出版，把自己的未来

寄托于逐渐萎缩的专业上，以免被冠以学术不端的罪名。当他们年纪大了，并得到了终身

职位的时候，他们又要作为部门领导或委员会成员在管理部门埋头苦干——而这些职位的

薪资已经被大学那紧张的预算狠狠削减了。

Ultimately, it will be the students’ own business to break the circles in which

they are trapped. They are too young to be prisoners of their parents’ dreams

and their classmates’ fears. They must be jolted into believing in themselves as

unique men and women who have the power to shape their own future.

最终，学生想要跳出这些囹圄也只能靠他们自己了。他们还年富力强，不能被父母的

梦想和同学的恐惧所束缚。他们必须保持警醒，并相信自己是独一无二的、有能力塑造自

己的未来的人。

“Violence is being done to the undergraduate experience,” says Carlos

Horta. “College should be open-ended; at the end it should open many, many

roads. Instead, students are choosing their goal in advance, and their choices

narrow as they go along.”

“本科教育正在偏离正轨，”Carlos Horta说。“大学本应该是开放式的，且最终应

该为学生打开许多道路。然而，现在的学生提前选择了他们的目标，他们越是前行，所能

拥有的选择就越来越少了。”

It is almost as if they think that the country has been codified in the types of

jobs that exist - that they have got to fit into certain slots. Therefore, fit into the

best paying slots. “They ought to take chances. Not taking chances will lead to a

life of colorless mediocrity. They’ll be comfortable. But something in the spirit will

be missing.”

他们仿佛认为这个国家已将所有的现存工种编成了不可更易的法典，他们只能适应某

个固定的职位，因此当然要适应报酬最优厚的职位了，”卡洛斯·霍泰斯说道，“他们应该

冒一下险。不然难免终生都平庸而无趣。他们会过得舒适，然而精神上会有缺失。”

I have painted too drab a portrait of today’s students, making them seem a

solemn lot. That is only half of their story: If they were so dreary, I would not so

thoroughly enjoy their company. The other half is that they are easy to like. They

are quick to laugh and offer friendship. They are not introverts. They are usually

kind and are more considerate of one another that any student generation I have

known.

我对当今学生的描绘过于悲观，使他们看上去过于严肃。这只是他们的一半情况；另

一半情况是，这些学生都是些可爱的人，你很容易喜欢上他们。他们爱笑，待人友善。他

们比我所了解的任何一代学生都更加相互关爱。

Nor are they so obsessed with their studies that they avoid sports and

extra-curricular activities. On the contrary, they juggle their crowded hours to play

on a variety of teams, perform with musical and dramatic groups, and write for

campus publications. But this in turn is one more cause of anxiety. There are too

many choices. Academically, they have 1300 courses to select from: outside class

they have to decide how much spare time they can spare and how to spend it.

他们也并不是过度热衷于学习从而对体育和课外活动敬而远之。相反，他们在拥挤的

时间里参与各种团队，与音乐或戏剧团体一同表演、为校园刊物写文章。但这转而又是一

个令学生焦虑的因素：他们面临的选择太多了。在学术上，他们有1300门课程可供选择；

课外，他们又必须决定他们可以抽出多少空闲时间以及如何度过这些时间。

This means that they engage in fewer extracurricular pursuits than their

predecessors did. If they want to row on the crew and play in the symphony they

will eliminate one, in the ‘60s they would have done both. They are tending to

choose activities that are self-limiting. Drama, for instance, is flourishing in all

twelve of Yale’s residential colleges, as it never has before. Students hurl

themselves into these productions - as actors, directors, carpenters, and

technicians - with a dedication to create the best possible play, knowing the day

will come when the run will end and they can get back to their studies.

这就意味着他们参与课外活动要比他们学长少得多。如果他们既想参加划船社又想加

入交响乐团，则他们必须舍弃一项；但在20世纪60年代，他们却可以两项都参加。他们

也往往选择一些自我限制的活动。例如，戏剧在12个耶鲁大学的住宿学院中盛行，但这

在之前是从来没有过的。学生们都投身于演出中，有演员，导演，木匠和技术人员，他们

都力争能拍出一部最好的戏剧。因为他们明白当演出结束的那天来临时，他们就要回到学

习中去了。

They also cannot afford to be the willing slaves of organizations like the Yale

Daily News. Last spring the one hundredth anniversary banquet of that paper,

whose past chairs include such once and future kings as Potter Stewart, Kingman

Brewster, and William F. Buckley, Jr. much was made of the fact that the editorial

staff used to be small and totally committed and that ‘newsies’ routinely

worked fifty hours a week. In effect, they belonged to a club; Newsies is how they

defined themselves at Yale. Today’s students will write one or two articles a week,

when he or she can, and is defined as a student. I have never heard the word

newsie except at the banquet.

他们也受不起为耶鲁日报这样的报社卖命。去年春天，这家报社举办了一百周年纪念

宴会。当时在座的有这家报社曾经和未来的社长们，如波特·斯图尔特，金曼·布鲁斯特和威

廉·巴克利。他们大多都知道，从前，报社编辑职员规模很小，大家都要为报社尽心尽力，

这群“卖报人”因而每周工作五十小时。实际上，他们属于一个俱乐部; “卖报人”是他们

在耶鲁报社的自称。今天的学生每周才写一两篇文章，这还要等他或她有空才行，如此他

们竟然也能被定义为学生。唉，除了在那次宴会上，我再也听不到“卖报人”这个词了。

If I have described the modern undergraduate primarily as a driven creature

who is largely ignoring the blithe spirit inside who keeps trying to come out and

play, it is because that is where the crunch is, not only at Yale, but throughout

American education. It is why I think we should all be worried about the values that

are nurturing a generation so fearful of risk and so goal-obsessed at such an early

age.

如果我把他们主要描绘成了受到逼迫而大大忽略了生活的欢乐一面的人，那是因为这

正是问题之所在——不仅在耶鲁，而且在整个美国教育界都是如此。这就是为什么我认为

我们都应该为培育着这一代人的价值观感到担忧，他们年纪这么轻就这样害怕冒险，这样

沉溺于目标的追求。

I tell students that there is no one ‘right’ way to get ahead - that each of

them is a different person, starting from a different point and bound for a different

destination. I tell them that change is a tonic and that all the slots are not codified

nor the frontiers closed. One of my ways of telling them is to invite men and

women who have achieved success outside the academic world to come and talk

informally with my students during the year. They are the heads of companies or

ad agencies, editors of magazines, politicians, public officials, television magnates,

labor leaders, business executives, Broadway producers, artists, writers,

economists, photographers, scientists, historians - a mixed bag of achievers.

我告诉学生们并没有一条“正确的”成功之路——他们每个人都是一个不同的人，开

始的起点不同，前往的目的地也不同。我告诉他们变化是有益的，人们不必去适应事先安

排好的职位。我告诉他们这个道理的办法之一便是在学年中邀请已经在校外获得成功的男

女人士来同我的学生们随意交谈。我邀请公司领导、杂志编辑、政治家、百老汇制片人、

艺术家、作家、经济学家、摄影家、科学家、历史学家——各种各样事业的成功者。

I ask them to say a few words about how they got started. The students

assume that they started in their present profession and knew all along that it was

what they wanted to do. Luckily for me, most of them got into their field by a

circuitous route, to their surprise, after many detours. The students are startled.

They can hardly conceive of a career that was not pre-planned. They can hardly

imagine allowing the hand of God or chance to nudge them down some

unforeseen trail.

我请他们简单谈谈他们是如何起步的。学生们总以为他们从一开始就在干现在的工作，

而且始终都知道那就是他们想干的。但事实上，他们大多数人是通过一条曲折的道路，走

过不少弯路后才到达现在的位置的。学生们惊讶不已。他们简直想象不出一个不事先计划

好的职业生涯。他们简直不能想象让上帝或者命运来带领他们沿着某条未曾预见到的小路

走去。

本文标签： 学生压力父母大学学习